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The limitation in looking at statistics is that it can only tell you what is happening, and not why.
It certainly looks bad if less than 2/3rds of all students are getting more than 3/4's of available scholarships and grants, but there's a few other numbers I'd need to know before I can tell if it is damning. Taking a closer look white students make up 61.8% of the student body, 5.5% of them get private scholarships. Black or African American students make up 14% percent of the student population, and 4.4% of them get private scholarships. The average awarded to whites was $2,368, and blacks was $2,671 (and No, this is not playing into AshleyO's hopes to see me cry about white victimization).
Of course 5% of a bigger number means white students "get more", but on an individual level they aren't that far off. Those statistics also do not include awards that are restricted by race, so there is an incomplete data set. The distribution in funding seems to run relatively consistent with
the student population. 60 something percent of students get 60 something percent of the funding. In any case those statistics don't seem to provide
any information on how class affects the likelihood of a given student getting help. A family that is struggling to get by is not going to have
the time or resources to help their kids fight for the aid they need.
On crime - the economic class is also a strong factor for both victims and incarceration rates. "Refusing to address the role that class plays in the criminal justice system, and politics in general, makes it all but impossible
to address the root causes of 2 million people behind bars in the U.S.
Race and racism do play a factor, but only indirectly. To the extent that
blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately poor compared to overall society, they are disproportionately represented in the prison population. Few studies have examined the correlation between race and class. One of the few that did, (cited in Elliott Currie's Crime and Punishment in America), looked at the crime, arrest and incarceration rates in a poor black neighborhood and a poor white neighborhood in Ohio.
The not so surprising conclusion was that it is the poor, regardless of race, who bear the brunt of the war on crime, which sounds better than a "war on the poor." This explains why whites are in prisons and the relative absence of wealthy minorities from prisons and jails." (Taken from Paul Wright's 'The Crime of Being Poor')
It isn't difficult to track social ills back to wealth disparity. Low income area Schools are shitty because they are underfunded. Employment opportunities for people from underfunded schools tend to suck, and a lowsy start makes it less likely to get the further education required for better careers. People with lousy employment opportunities are more likely to suffer from crime or be arrested themselves. Address the wealth disparity and other problems can get addressed.
Seems like we have a disagreement over what is a cause and what is a symptom.
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