COMMENTARY: When working hard isn’t hard enough

Felicity Huffman, an actress best known for her role as Lynette Scavo in the 2004-2012 television show “Desperate Housewives,” has now been prosecuted for her participation in the college admissions scandal. Fellow actress Lori Loughlin, best known as Aunt Becky on the beloved series “Full House,” was also caught in the crossfire for committing the same crime. Loughlin still awaits her final hearing in court.

Huffman was one of the 52 people who were caught paying large thousands of dollars to get their children admitted to prominent universities. Huffman specifically paid $15,000 to change her daughters SAT score with the purpose of admittance into a respected college.

As a result of their high-profile lifestyles and celebrity status, both Huffman and Loughlin received numerous hours of attention on various media platforms. All 52 parents who have been caught are equally guilty and to blame for this horrendous monstrosity of putting dollars in front of hard work and true values.

White privilege is more evident than ever before, in a poor example of the standard our country sets for social class. Huffman was sentenced to only 14 days behind bars, 250 hours of community service and a $30,000 fine.

This was the weakest form of punishment our justice system could have handed out to someone who would stoop so low as to rip educational opportunities from the hands of students willing to do the work. That’s the advantage of white privilege; one automatically gains the authority to make the decision for others who have no control of their fate.

Kelley Williams-Bolar, an African American single mother of two from Akron, Ohio, who was prosecuted for using her father’s home address with the intention of providing both of her daughters with a better education back in 2009, comes up in discussions debating if Huffman’s sentence is fair. Ohio’s school system is similar to most states in the U.S., where a 30-mile radius can make a world’s difference when comparing the quality of public school education.

Williams-Bolar was found guilty on felony charges for “tampering.” Williams-Bolar was initially sentenced to five years in prison but then was dropped to a 10-day prison sentence tagged onto three years of probation and 8- hours of community service. This punishment came from using her parents’ (the children’s grandparents who did contribute to the school district tax base) address instead of her own.

The standard for conviction in the U.S. is biased, dependent on how much money you make and the color of your skin. In the past, white people made the argument that “they worked hard for everything they had.” While that may be true, they never had to face the obstacles that were there by default for every person of color.

As a person with white privilege, it has been eye-opening to come to the realization that those of us with white privilege have been benefiting from it even if we were not aware of it. We have the luxury of not acknowledging that it is a problem because it hasn’t been a problem for us.

We haven’t had to think about the problems that people of color face because those problems will never cross the path of a person born with white privilege. That is why white privilege has been a prominent driving force in our immoral justice system.

The college admission scandal is another unfortunate example of how people of color are almost always given a harsher punishment for the same crime or a crime that was even less severe. Huffman and Williams-Bolar are both mothers who wanted their children to benefit from the educational experience.

One mother, a millionaire with a lovable status for numerous acting roles. The other, a single mother who struggles to make ends meet as a teacher’s aide in a high school for special needs students. Both wanting to place her children in a better space to learn.

One in an elite college for which she deliberately committed bribery and fraud. The other for a more recognized school district than the inner-city school district she was zoned to and for which she did not even realize was a crime. Both mothers are fined the same amount of money, disregarding that both women had completely different intentions or the severity of their actions. Hoffman is sentenced to only 14 days, which will be passed in a “supervised facility,” while Williams-Bolar served ten days behind bars of a 5-year sentence.

The standard for what is right and wrong has turned into what is white and what is the wrong color. Some crimes are okay to commit if the person committing it is above the law. If the person committing a crime is of privilege, the sentence is often a slap on the wrist. Class, race and socioeconomic status play a pivotal role in the outcome of the consequences.

This has existed generation after generation, but molds are currently being broken to progress and recognize that, in fact, white privilege is a problem not a prerequisite in life. This uneven standard is hidden between the subtleties that our culture has created. In this country, white privilege is a problem, but not recognizing or acknowledging that some are privileged is the biggest problem of them all.