Administration Causes Racial Cliques
By C. Apollo Morgan, CMC '04

In the Editorial Board's opinion, "Affirmative Action is a Step Toward Increasing Diversity," you inadvertently show the most negative outcome of racially-based practices at Pomona College. Oddly enough, you presented a problem and its cause but did not connect the two in order to state the most obvious solution.

Problem: Pomona has "racial cliques."

Your solution: "[T]he Pomona community must examine why minority students might feel that need for separation."

You then mention that there are "Chicano/Latino Student Association, Office of Black Student Affairs, [and] Pan-African Student Association retreats."

Also mentioned in the story are the separate admissions policies for non-white students, not only race-based preferences for admission, but also "special prospective weekends for them to come stay at Pomona; the Admissions office even ensures that part of the minority prospective weekend consists of discussions about what it means to be a student of color at the Claremont Colleges."

You mentioned in passing special mentors from the Chicano/Latino Student Association, but I also know that there are also separate "Asian" and black mentors as well.

Perhaps you did not see it because it is so simple, but the answer is right there. Non-white students (let us talk straight: that is what is meant by "minority") are led into "racial cliques" by the Pomona administration and the cult of victimhood that thrives amongst some elements of the student body and faculty.

If non-white students are given separate admission standards, separate on-campus weekends as prospective students (during which they are told how different it is to be a non-white person on campus than a white person), separate groups to cater to each race, a mentor selected for you based on race, and a vocal element of the faculty and student body repeating its mantra of neo-Marxist victimhood, OF COURSE there are going to be "racial cliques!" As any psychology professor will tell you, people tend to act as they are expected to act, and at Pomona, non-white students are expected to be different from the white majority, as well as from other non-white races.

The question is now back to you, Editor: How can you treat people differently based on race for most of their Pomona experience and reasonably expect them not to form "racial cliques?"