Does Being Accepted to Yale Automatically Equal White Privilege?

By Sarah Lee | 8:37 PM on October 24, 2017

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That’s what one charming young Facebook poster thinks apparently, after shaming another Facebook user over her ‘white privilege’ following that user’s post indicating she had been accepted into Yale’s prestigious medical school.

A student accepted to Yale University who posted her big news on Facebook wasn’t congratulated — but shamed, for what one critic called her “white privilege.”

In a Facebook post cited by the Daily Mail, an unnamed user wrote about her acceptance into the Yale School of Medicine. It wasn’t long before another user, named “Melissa,” said Yale accepted the future student because of her “white privilege.”

“Good job, might I add a shout out to your white privilege for you,” Melissa wrote.

So let’s sort this out: because the Yale admit is white, she cannot — according to Melissa — take full credit for her accomplishment. Even despite the fact that, as the future Yale student notes, she came from anything but ideal circumstances, including alcoholic parents and foster homes.

But overcoming those obstacles isn’t as important to Melissa as the mere fact of the original poster’s whiteness. Melissa explicitly state that the poster’s race is partially responsible for her admission into a school that only accepted 6.5% of 4,425 applicants for the Class of 2020, according to the university’s online figures.

“You make it seem like you did all this yourself, but I’m just keeping things real by giving a nod to your privilege,” Melissa says.

Interestingly, there are racial quotas in some school acceptance rates as a result of affirmative action. The Trump administration’s Department of Justice has indicated a desire to find lawyers willing to help with a project “related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.”

It makes one wonder what the reaction might be if someone like Melissa from Facebook suggested to a traditional minority student, who was granted admission to a university through an affirmative action program, that they were only there because of their race.