So I've been writing my college essay and some past experiences clicked together in my head and I had a pretty disturbing conclusion. I never really thought much of race, but it seems really apparent to me that I have extra benefits in education compared to my peers, which though I benefit, I still believe is absolutely disgusting.
I've always been an average writer at best. I know that there are many other students at my school who are deserving of higher marks than I am. But I've never received below a B in English after learning one simple way to add substance to my essays and get them done quicker. Most students will make biblical allusions if relevant. I decided, after making biblical allusions in essays and receiving mediocre grades (C to B range) to use some of my own culture's myths instead in my essays. After including the Creek myths instead of the standard biblical/Greek myths and personal anecdotes about my experience growing up Creek outside of my own culture, my grades shot up to B to A range. I haven't taken any conscious steps to improve my writing, but somehow my grade went up by painting myself as an underrepresented and oppressed minority.
The argument I'm trying to make is that by being in a minority group, the experience of education becomes SIGNIFICANTLY easier. I think this is absolutely disgusting and teachers who participate in such grade boosting on account of race should be reprimanded severely. I got together with some other students to write a formal letter of complaint to the school and this is my last chance to change my view before we write the letter. We verified that the grade boost wasn't a result of using a "unique" allusion because we had my french-canadian friend use a Lakota creation story in her essay and put her sweat, blood, and tears into perfecting it and she got a B- while I spent 15 minutes on mine and got an A-. A full letter grade on account of race simply isn't acceptable in my eyes.
Convince me, forums. Am I right in trying to purge this injustice or is it "acceptable" to throw away academic integrity because of the terrible treatment of a particular group in history?
