Luck, Circumstances and Some Pretty Good Choices

The question of compulsory diversity in education has raised it's head in Hunter College High School, a public school for the gifted, centering on its admissions standards and use of standardized testing which has the effect of (depending on who you talk to) keeping academic standards high and rigorous or forcing a student population which is heavily skewed to whites and Asians. The tension came to a head when Justin Hudson, a black and Hispanic senior told his fellow students at a graduation address, “More than anything else, I feel guilty. I don’t deserve any of this. And neither do you.” Why? Because he believed they had been labeled gifted based on a test they passed “due to luck and circumstance.”

On one hand, I agree that whoever is in a position to get into a good school, whether it be high school, college or graduate, should be thankful and humble realizing that circumstances outside their doing were certainly a factor in terms of their admission. From a theological perspective, I'd also say that it behooves Christians who believe in a sovereign and gracious God who gives all good things to give glory to God and not to themselves.

But insomuch Justin is implying that their place at Hunter was awarded solely by luck and circumstances and not by some good choices and hard work along the way, I think he's off base. From a cosmic and theological perspective, if you believe that you have no control over who your parents are and that your actions are ultimately preordained by a higher power, sure, his point has some merit. But to leave the hard work and good decisions of the students who got in and the parents who encouraged them and the sacrifices that were made count for something, don't they?

When that future Hunter student studied countless hours to practice for their entrance exam while other people "hung out" and played video games, doesn't that have something to do with it? When the single mother of another future Hunter student worked two jobs to pay for extra tutoring, and also made enough time to double-check the child's homework, are you going to really going to chalk that up to luck? I'm wondering if maybe there's a way to acknowledge the privilege of being a Hunter student and fortuitousness of getting in without devaluing the hard work and good decisions made by students and parents which helped them get in.

What also troubles me about Justin's "success guilt" is part of what troubles me about parts of Affirmative Action policies (which I'm not a priori against). Deliberate or not, he's victimizing the people that don't get into good schools and unhelpfully inviting them to use that as a cop-out instead of clawing their way out. Or to flip the good decisions and hard work done by the future Hunter student. The fact that the Hunter "reject" chose to play video games instead of studying or found it a better use of their time to goof off in class instead of paying attention is apparently irrelevant, since what's implicit is the individual is powerless to make good choices despite bad circumstances. Instead, it's easier to blame the surrounded circumstances which made success impossible.

Funny - we used to celebrate the perseverance of people, notably poor and language-challenged immigrants, to fight through circumstances to achieve great levels of success. But maybe it would've just been easier to fail and blame bad luck and circumstance. If this is the our new way of inspiring people, I hate to see it.