Dedication to diversity is a hard road for many to follow.

It is a path surrounded on all sides by detractors both hostile and apathetic.

Scholarships for students taking race into account or making race a primary concern will always be at the center of controversy in a society that is no where nearly as color blind as it likes to claim.

The question has often been asked by those who feel that race-based scholarships are unfair: How come they don’t offer scholarships for whites? If they did that people would go nuts.

Well, if you haven’t heard, they do offer scholarships for whites-only in Alabama.

Upon first hearing about this program, this editorial board thought it was some kind of joke or “turn-around-is-fair-play” gambit on the part of detractors in the state of Alabama.

Turns out the program is not only legitimately dedicated to increasing diversity but does not even originate within the state of Alabama.

The scholarship program is part of a program that began in 1995 as the result of a federal desegregation order covering Alabama’s state universities.

According to CNN.com, Alabama State and Alabama A&M each receive $100 million specifically to upgrade their facilities and diversify their student populations.

The money for these scholarships takes no money from otherwise deserving black students in need of financial assistance.

Still the program is offensive to many who feel that scholarships labeled “whites-only” sends the wrong message in a country where whites are not at the bottom of the social schema.

But when taking a look at the big picture, one sees how this program is completely in line with other attempts to diversify our nations campuses.

If we are ever to live in a country which truly is color blind, we must all first begin to cross boundaries and borders we would not normally go anywhere near.

And if it seems a bit premature to start diversifying the historically black schools of the South, perhaps we should all take a look at other attempts to diversify in the past.

Even Martin Luther King Jr. was encouraged by sympathetic whites to not push too hard for integration.

He was asked to give people time to get used to the idea.

In response he told them it had been a hundred years since the end of the Civil War, how much longer should we all wait?

Integration needs to be everyone’s concern, black and white.

Increasing white enrollment in Alabama state universities from 7 to 10 percent is not too much of a sacrifice for a color blind country.