In class today we discussed a controversial poster that read “looking for roommates Chinese preferred.” At first I did not really like the sound of it. It seemed unfair to those of other ethnic descent to display such a thing publicly. However, now that I have thought about it some more I think that if having a Chinese roommate was very important to the person who made these posters, then there should be no problem with what he wrote. We discussed the possibility that perhaps he should have written nothing and eventually just only reached out to those of Chinese descent, but I think this would have created more problems. If I was looking for a roommate and saw this poster I would realize that applying would be useless, but if it said nothing about preferring a Chinese roommate then the poster would probably get my hopes up just to have them later crushed. If somebody would prefer to live with someone similar to themselves, then I probably would not want to live with that person anyway and wouldn’t want it to be a secret that they preferred someone with a different background.
Applying for things is very stressful. I have recently applied to many internships, and honestly I have no idea if I am going to get any of them. One reason that I am left with this mystery is that when applying to jobs there aren’t always clear cut qualifications that indicate what the employer is looking for. I’m not saying that employers should point out that they are looking for a 6’2 , 20 year old Jewish guy that goes to Baruch, but I think that would definitely make the whole process easier. Now, while that gets fishy when it comes to finding a job because of all of the laws protecting different ethnicities… I think that restricting a search may be a good idea in other types of applications and processes. For example, there is an honors program at a college in New York which states that a student cannot get in unless they have a 1400 or over on their SATs. This system may not seem fair at first, but imagine when applying to colleges there was no stress because you pretty much knew whether or not you were getting in. I think that would take a huge weight off of people’s shoulders and decrease a lot of worries.
While singling out a certain ethnicity nowadays may be frowned upon I think that unless it is truly damaging to another ethnicity it may not be the worst idea. We should consider the fact that while writing “Chinese preferred” on a poster might bother some people I think that not being accepted as a roommate and being in suspense for a while could bother people even more.
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