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Yes

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Yes, for four simple, but empowering reasons:

FIRST: We tend to recruit in our own image and likeness, we are comfortable with our own kind and we always gravitate towards people who look like us, no matter how 'fair' we try to be. There is nothing discriminatory about that. It is a natural law of nature to ensure we reproduce our own species. Colleges are also funded, at least in part, by the taxes which everyone pays, no matter what race they are. Ipso facto, a college cannot then serve just one privileged section of its community. It has to seek to reflect that community through genuine diversity by closely monitoring its intake to ensure people are not being excluded by omission or otherwise; that as many sections of that community genuinely believe they have access and can achieve too, given the opportunity.

SECOND: The nature of equality has nothing to do with 'sameness', or levelling everyone to the same common denominator. If you invite me to your home and offer me chocolate as dessert, because everyone else is having it, without appreciating that my situation could be different from yours, you could put my life at risk, with me being a diabetic. I can only be treated equally by being treated differently according to my needs. True equality is thus about acknowledging difference in order to ensure people feel included. It is appreciating that diverse individuals of all ilk will have diverse needs. Furthermore, for a variety of reasons, the history of slavery and discrimination against Black people is such a hot subject, always lurking beneath the subconscious, Americans have to travel a very long road before they can even begin to talk about true equality for all. The very legacy of slavery, which has never been properly addressed, ensures that genuine equality, with consistent action, is a pipedream.

THIRD: People who are not reflected are invisible, and invisible people without a voice eventually become alienated. Worse still, without a stake in that community, or being excluded from it, they would seek to destroy it in one way or another. White people, who create the standards of admission, who control the press, political offices, commerce and educational institutions, take such representation for granted. They see it as automatic and as given, without ever questioning the history leading up to such control and privilege. The very fact that it has taken hundreds of years to have the first real Black presidential candidate says a lot about the nature

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