I don't think financial assistance for education should be based on any sort of group membership criterion. Someone can either afford to attend or they cannot. Allocation of grant money should ideally be based on nothing other than financial need (of course, seeing that grants/scholarships are investments of sorts, good risk management practices would include only allocating grants to good performers, but I think that's better left to an admissions process --
if your application is accepted
and you need financial assistance,
then we'll see what we can do).
The way it stands currently, I'm not eligible to receive financial aid while Barack Obama, Kanye West, and Morgan Freeman -- all men who have far more income than I do -- are eligible. I'm not eligible, yet my wife is eligible, even though we have precisely the same household income and financial assets. What's the point of that? Do you think giving an "underprivileged" person money will somehow make them less underprivileged? That seems a non-sequitur to me, while on the other hand it's obvious how giving a poor person money would make them less poor.
> To your point about "no black people", that would be racist / bizarre because it's not clear that the category you've defined is discriminated against.
That was exactly my point. In our society, it's considered normal and acceptable to exclude white men from benefits or assistance, while at the same time withholding those same benefits or assistance from black people is considered racist and bizarre. Is that not a "double standard"?
Note that I'm in no way advocating that we stop providing assistance to the present recipients, only that we also consider others who may need assistance. The way I see it, "diversity" of some group seems to be defined roughly as the ratio of non-white/non-male members to white, male members. (In this case, it appears to be non-(white|Asian)/non-male to (white|Asian) male, but the idea is the same). Now, when attempting to increase a ratio, there are two approaches you can take (note that they're not mutually exclusive):
1) Increase the numerator.
2) Decrease the denominator.
Both of these actions will result in a larger ratio. From a purely mathematical standpoint, they're equivalent. But from a moral standpoint, when the numerator and denominator represent people, choosing to reduce the denominator over augmenting the numerator seems questionable at best, and it leads us away from justice!
Of course, from a practical standpoint, a school or other institution will have a limited amount of resources -- space, educators, funds, etc. -- and it's not feasible to always be growing. What I propose instead is to shift preference away from aid policy and toward admissions policy. If you want to give underprivileged applicants a leg up, give them an appropriate preference/priority during the admissions process such that you can make an earnest attempt to reach some well-defined goal for diversity. Then offer an appropriate amount of financial aid to as many admittants as possible -- based on need only. With such a scheme, it's possible to still foster diversity without utterly excluding any one group of people in particular. (In fact, I'd argue that such a scheme would be better at fostering diversity -- see < https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12121291 > for an explanation).