The elite college admissions cheating scandal could not have been exposed at a better time, since it does not involve the usual suspects : black students whose admissions to such schools are too often and incorrectly associated with the lowering of academic standards and affirmative action. This scandal involves wealthy white parents and their scions who have fraudently gained admission to some of the nation's most prestigious schools, based not on legitimate transcripts, recommendations and test scores, but exclusively on the strength of well endowed bank accounts. The national exposure of the criminal scandal should be a teachable and reflective moment for America, because it intersects with the roles that white privilege, wealth, race, college admission loopholes, and gross inequities in school to college pipelines play in college admissions.

Elite college degrees do not necessarily provide the best education, but there can be no doubt that they provide the master key for opening the doors to the corridors of American power. Founded for the education of the white elite and not common persons , only after World War II did these schools begin to purposefully expand enrollments to include a miniscule amount of the very best and brightest non-white students, though an isolated number of black and non rich white students began matriculating in these schools in the decades following the Civil War. Prior to that time, a small number of black students enrolled in institutions of higher education at Oberlin, Bowdon, Amherst , Ohio University, Franklin ( Indiana), Rutland (Vermont), and Middlebury Colleges, and the Harvard Medical School, though all other black college students of that era enrolled in one of the three ante-bellum HBCUs : Cheyney, Lincoln, and Wilberforce.

If it is a law of geometry that the shortest distance between two objects is a straight line, then there is a corollary social law affirming that admission to elite colleges is the shortest distance to success in America. The problem with the latter is that the standards for admission to elite colleges unsurprisingly do not square with fairness and the manipulation of admission policies for the super wealthy. Almost none of the richest families in America have problems in having their progeny admitted to elite schools because the admission process in those schools have always provided loopholes as reliable as grandfather clauses in late 19th century state constitutions, which denied blacks the right to vote. In fact the logic employed the same template. Only those whose grandfathers voted prior to the Civil War were allowed to vote -- effectively denying the franchise to all of the descendants of former slaves -- and for admission to elite schools special consideration was given to those whites whose parents and grandparents attended those schools, many from America's oldest and wealthiest families, often blurring the lines between tradition, standards, and entitlement. In higher education this became a form of weathy white privilege, because for generations it excluded average white people regardless of demonstrated academic potential -- as a result of admission being predicated on social networks and having attending exclusive prep schools. Since WW I, however, the list of elite colleges has become longer, extending beyond New England and includes both private and state supported schools, consistent with increases in the numbers of wealthy white people.

The entry point into the pipeline for elite colleges is one not easily accessible to blacks, and begins in elite private and the best of the public secondary achools. There is virtually no entry point for students who attend low performing, underfunded, and segregated public schools. Even in places like Washington, D.C. admission to good charter and magnet schools is determined by lotteries and highly selective admission criteria. The applications to these schools exceed the available slots, and only a small percentage of those who apply are admitted. In New York City, a similar situation exists in its most highly selective public schools. At Stuyvesant High School --an established and respected pipeline to elite colleges --only 7 slots in the freshman class were offered to blacks out of 895 slots. Those 7 represent a disturbing downward trend as 10 were admitted last year, and 13 the year before. Another specialized pipeline school, Bronx High School, accepted 12 blacks, down from 25 the year before. What makes these numbers more incredulous is that black and Hispanic students constitute close to 70 percent of New York City's public school system, but only 10 percent matriculate in its eight specialized high schools. Similar patterns exist in large urban school districts across the nation. The problem is getting worse exponentially.

In all of the elite colleges the "above board" standards of admission are high and the number of quality applicants far exceed the admission vacancies, though the "below the board" or "back door" admission practices of the "nouveau riche" and corrupt college admission and college test-taking officials constitute the new shortest distance between student applications and illegal admissions. The under the table costs are exorbiant for those who choose this route , but it is the safety net and only way unqualified students with morally degenerate but wealthy parents can gain admission to some of the nation's most prestigious schools. It is a pristine example of wealthy white privilege, but --again -- not one available to most other whites, who now complain about the advantages of the super wealthy whites entrapped in the net of the cheating scandal -- but who are in either complete denial or oblivious to the daily white privileges they routinely enjoy without regret , apology, second-thought or comment , as if they do not even exist. In identifying the privileges of wealthy whites they have 20-20 vision , but blindness when acknowledging their own privileges over people of color.

Simply by not being black, most white people in America regardless of class, intellect or social standing benefit from the everyday default and non-cerebral advantages of white privilege: whether it be in hailing a taxi; buying a skin-toned band aid; not being pulled over for driving while black; being sentenced for an identical crime committed by blacks; not being stressed or made to feel uncomfortable while shopping in a retail establishment by intense monitoring and surveiilance by store security; not being worried about their children being murdered by policemen or racists because they are white ; never being challenged in the right to vote, or having any doubt that the vote will be counted; never having to worry that the contributions and struggles of your race will not be properly represented in school textbooks; never being told that the exclusive resort or hotel has no space when you're holding confirmed reservations; never experiencing the anxiety of having a rental housing or mortgage application being denied based on your race; never having to suffer the humiliation of defending yourself against research claims that you are a member of a inferior race; and never being questioned by political opponents about your grades after making Law Review at Harvard University.

The vast majority of white people , however , do not share the advantages of super-wealthy white people who enjoy a reserved level of white privilege -- one that is cognitive, calculating, manipulative, and designed to sustain measured difference and distance between themselves, their progeny and the remainder of civilization. On a daily basis, the laws to which all others are accountable either do not apply, or are not monitored and administered with the same vigilance by the judicial systems of America.

Nowhere have these two levels of white privilege been more conspicious than in two recent incidents, one receiving considerably more publicity than the other, though both illustrative of a dual standard grounded in white privilege and wealthy white privilege. One involves a black American woman whose shameful and ignoble imprisonment is more a product of racism and the Trump political climate than any deliberate legal violation; while the other is about greed, arrogance and a sense of wealthy white privilege and entitlement. In both instances, the motivation for the "crimes" has to do with access to better educational opportunities, though the methods bear nothing in common. One is about hopes, dreams, survival and limited options, while the other is unscrupulously Machiavellian and consistent with the practices and definition of a continuing criminal enterprise. When examined together they are a tale of two worlds.

Early in 2019, an aspiring but impoverished black Ohio mother, Kelly Williams-Bolar was sentenced to 10 days in jail and placed on three years probation after sending her children to a school in a district in which they did not reside. After a jury deliberated for seven hours she was convicted on two counts of tampering with court records for registering her two daughters as living with their father while they actually lived with her in a housing project. Moreover, the father of the children was charged with a fourth degree felony of grand theft for defrauding the school system of two years of services for their girls, determined to be an amount of $30,500. Making her point that zip codes matter, the judge in the case, Patricia Cosgrove, defended the sentence, saying it was appropriate " so that others who think they might defraud the school system perhaps will think twice." Not an ounce of sympathy or compassion was given the defendant, nor consideration that schools in poor neighborhoods are generally of less quality than schools in middle-class, upper class and wealthy neighborhoods, or the mitigating circumstance that the "false" address was the residence of their tax-paying biological father.

As if that was not enough, the judge dismissed what should have been another mitigating factor in the case when she decided to exercise the nuclear option on Kelly Williams-Bolar, who is enrolled in college seeking to become a teacher and improving life for herself and her daughters. " Because of the felony conviction, you will not be allowed to get your teaching degree under Ohio law as it stands today, " she admonished the devastated young mother, as if driving a final nail in her crucifixon. Unable to afford the type of lawyers who likely could have negotiated better results, the defendant became another victim of everything that is racially and economically wrong with America's educational and criminal justice systems. On the universal scales of blind justice, Williams-Bolar was severely and maliciously penalized for doing all of the things required to eliminate poverty and improve the quality of her life and that of her children. Not one major American newspaper wrote an op-ed piece on this story, nor did any major broadcast network find it worthy of commentary or airtime.

Less than two months later, a massive college admissions scandal became public, reminding us that some wealthy white parents can and will swindle their way to more privilege and advantages. Federal prosecutors charge that at least 50 people orchestrated a scheme that involved either cheating on standardized tests or bribing college coaches and schools officials to accept students at elite schools as athletes, even though the students had not played the sport. Two prominent actresses are among the dozens of wealthy white parents facing federal charges. Those charges include two SAT/ACT administrators, an exam proctor, a college administrator, nine coaches and a corrupt CEO who has admitted that he wanted to help the wealthiest families secure the admission of their children to elite schools. The CEO, Rick Singer, has pleaded guilty , admitting that everything a prosecutor has charged him with " is true."

The costs were expensive and beyond the check-books and imaginations of the non wealthy. Two parents allegedly paid $500,000 to get their daughters admitted into the University of Southern California. Some parents paid between $15,000 and $75,000 per test to guarantee a near perfect score on the SAT and ACT college admissions examinations. One former Georgetown University tennis coach , according to charging documents, was paid more than $2.7 million in bribes in order to designate 12 applicants as Georgetown tennis recruits, which facilitated admission to the university. The parents had no problems in making their chidren complicit in the schemes. A charging document alleges that one applicant claimed that she was in the top 50 of the United States Tennis Association's Junior Girls rankings, though the document says that USTA records find that she played no tournaments in high school. The sophisticated scheme involved taking photos of students playing sports they never played, and even going as far as to photoshop the faces of the high school students into photos of athletes. Yale, Georgetown, University of Southern California, and Wake Forest are among the schools implicated in the scandal.

By reason of Lori Longhlin and Felicity Hoffman , two noted and wealthy celebrities, being implicated in the scandal, it has gotten more attention than any college admissions irregularity ever. Across the board, social media, political commentators, op-ed contributors, syndicated columnists, education publications, and print and broadcast journalists have all weighed in with public outrage and indignation, which will probably be sustained until the litigation is completed. The theme most refrained is that the scandal illustrates the extent to which wealthy white families, some with no college pedigree, will go in breaking the law to get their undeserving children admitted to elite schools, and the assistance provided towards that goal by corrupt elements of the college preparatory industry and college officials. Andrew Lelling, U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, describes the parents as a group comprising " a catalogue of wealth and privilege," a view with which most agree, with some suggesting that the scandal represents only the tip of a "back door" admissions iceberg. Ironically, few of those same individuals who cry foul by the wealthy will bring race into the vortex of the discussion. They do not connect Kelly Williams-Bolar to Longhlin and Hoffman, nor will they sufficiently explore what the scandal discloses about education and wealth inequalities, the myths of pure meritocracy in elite college admissions, and the hoax they impose on infinite numbers of well qualified black and poor children and their parents. The scandal should make it clear that low-income and black students will not benefit from legacy admissions, admissions based on family philanthropy, expensive preparatory school educations, test-taking "assistance," participation in expensive extra-curriculars, diplomas from high performing high schools, and costly tutoring, all of which assist in getting into elite and good schools. Instead, blacks and lower income students are underserved and forced to make best in school districts with inferior schools. Aside from the exclusive private secondary schools of wealthy students, predominately white public school districts, according to a recent report from EdBuild, receive $23 billion more in funding than districts that serve students of color from low income families. This helps explain the findings of a 2015 Brookings Institute report which indicated that black students made up only 4 percent of students in top-tier colleges, but made up 26 percent of students at the bottom tier of colleges. But a larger problem beneath those statistics is that most poor black students cannot afford the costs of attending any college, and many often abandon college hopes and aspirations as early as middle school. Consider that one of the parents in the scandal allegedly paid more than $500,000 to have his child admitted to an elite school. That amount is more than the value of the homes of lower income and average income Americans, and would pay for 4 years of tuition and expenses at any college in America. It is also the difference between white privilege and wealthy white privilege.

The scandal is symptomatic of the truths and consequences of two systemic cycles as it relates to elite college admissions: mutigenerational weath and privilege and multigenerational deprivation and marginalization. These entrenched cycles only widen the gaps of educational achievement and wealth accumulation, because they generally define access to good schools and bad schools. There is a truth that Kelly Williams-Bolar understood that her children's chances of reaching their full potential would be much better in a well finanaced school district, and like most good mothers, she was willing to take the risk by using their father's address rather than her own for enrollment purposes. There were also eye-opening consequences for her actions that no white person under similar circumstances would have had to endure. But it never made national news. For those wealthy white parents who have pleaded guilty in the college admissions scandal and for those who may be found guilty, it is unlikely that the penalties they will suffer will be as severe as that of Williams-Bolar who did not have a well heeled attorney. They will be represented by high powered and expensive teams of lawyers who have mastered the game of representing wealthy whites before judicial systems that have a history of being as deferential and sympathetic to their clients, as they are mean-spirited to marginalized blacks.

Finally, this scandal places America's assumptions and beliefs in meritocracy in elite college admissions at ground zero, which is higher than it should be. It is a myth that perpetrates inequalities ; routinely excludes untold numbers of qualified non whites and poor people; and is a cruel injustice and affront to hard working and disciplined parents and students who subscribe without question to the protestant ethic and the core American values of fairness. This scandal has the capacity to shatter those beliefs beyond repair. No way around it, elite school education -- and good school education as well -- create a balancing act and tension between meritocracy and equal opportunity. American mythology is dependent upon the falsehood that all indivuduals can succeed with personal uplift, and now that myth struggles to co-exist with America's worst kept secret : the deck of the education system is stacked and favors the wealthy and the privileged. The fortuitous individuals who inherit resources, social capital, and education pedigree , compound that luxury by defining the game of admission short cuts, and investing in the expensive luxury of cheating. Clint Smith , who studies education and inequality at Harvard, explained in a recent edition of The Atlantic : " The very idea of our society, higher education or otherwise being a 'meritocracy' is something that was made up to justify and reify existing social hierarchies. It's not real. What's real is how wealth and race combine to give people things they tell themselves they inherently deserve."

Many decent and honest black and low income parents may decide to teach their children the truth about meritocracy in preparing and cushioning them for future disappointments. The advice that has been given for generations will soon have no currency with the millennials. Admonishing their children that the playing field can be leveled by working twice as hard is no longer credible. It is also dishonest. Some already have begun developing lesson plans for their children's survival with a new type of "home schooling " and practical wisdom, both grounded in common sense. No one knows the consequences when those chickens come home to roost. The evidence that American ideals, core values and beliefs are not credible in the education of marginalized people continues to mount. Faith is no longer sufficient for things that were once not understood. Stevie Wonder may have expressed the predicament best in his song, "Superstitious," when he warned : "When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer." Perhaps, he should have added that when you believe in things that work against you, it gets worse.