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A recent study of the applicants to seven elite colleges in 1997 found that Asian students were much more likely to be rejected than seemingly similar students of other races. Also, athletes and students from top high schools had admissions edges, as did low-income African-Americans and Hispanics. Translating the advantages into SAT scores, study author Thomas Espenshade, a Princeton sociologist, calculated that African-Americans who achieved 1150 scores on the two original SAT tests had the same chances of getting accepted to top private colleges in 1997 as whites who scored 1460s and Asians who scored perfect 1600s...

September 26, 2009 BY MARK J. KONKOL Staff Reporter/mkonkol@suntimes.com Will fewer black students get admitted to Chicago's magnet and selective enrollment schools next year? That's the question school watchdogs are asking after a federal judge this week lifted a nearly 30-year-old consent decree ordering the desegregation of Chicago Public Schools. The ruling will likely end the consideration of race as a factor in determining who gets accepted to some of the city's best-performing public schools. "Our primary concern is to ensure there is a fair and equal access to selective enrollment and magnet schools throughout the city," ACLU legal director...

New rules issued by the Bloomberg administration allow minority- and women-owned businesses to circumvent the system for awarding small city contracts -- an advantage denied white-owned firms, The Post has learned. In a memo issued July 15, the mayor's Office of Contract Services told city agencies they could no longer solicit vendors to bid on small contracts -- defined as between $5,000 and $100,000 -- unless they're certified as at least 51 percent minority- or female-owned. That means that even longtime vendors won't be able to sell goods and services to the city in that price range if the owner...

The University of Illinois, which employs communist terrorist Bill Ayers as a professor, has been hit by an admissions scandal which has forced the resignation of the chairman of its board of trustees. An investigation by the Chicago Tribune found that more than 800 undergraduate applicants received special consideration from 2005 to 2009 because "they had powerful patrons, including elected officials, trustees and donors." It added that "Dozens more law and graduate school applicants also got preferential treatment." But how did Bill Ayers get his job? All signs point to his rich father, Thomas Ayers, who was CEO of Commonwealth...

More goodies in the Obamacare Bill. Money for Community Health Organizations includes billions for ACORN. Federal money to med schools will be based upon their proving they are "properly diverse in admissions" and in sending doctors to the proper inner-city communities. (Goodie! More affirmative action doctors!) Will create a new organization to track healthcare to find "racial discrimination" in medical treatment outcome -- to be passed to DOJ for prosecution. Beck also mentioned something about reparations, but at that point I went deaf with horror.

All 1,018 pages of the Democrats' health care bill can be inspected here. The bill includes racial preferences. Under the Democrats' health care bill, if a medical school wants to increase its chances of receiving many different kinds of grants and contracts from the federal government, it should have a demonstrated record of training individuals who are from underrepresented minority groups. This is because the Democrats' health care bill requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to give preference to the entities that have demonstrated such a record in the awarding of these contracts to medical schools and other...

The Supreme Court's decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, the case of the New Haven firefighters, was a ringing endorsement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964's ban on racial discrimination and a repudiation of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's decision in the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. While five justices flatly rejected Sotomayor's ruling, even the four dissenters wouldn't have let stand her ruling allowing the results of a promotion exam to be set aside because no black firefighter had a top score. Ricci is also something else: a riveting lesson in political sociology, thanks to the concurring opinion...

AP: President Barack Obama says he's never believed that affirmative action is as much of an issue as it's been made out to be. He says it hasn't been as "potent a force for racial progress" as its supporters have said, and that it hasn't been as bad for white students or job applicants as its critics say. In an Associated Press interview Thursday, Obama said affirmative action can be made an "afterthought" when problems such as malnutrition, poverty and substandard schools are dealt with, and "everybody has a level playing field." President Barack Obama said Thursday the Supreme Court...

I was not academically qualified for Princeton or Yale and was accepted, despite low test scores, because of affirmative action.

COURT OVERTURNS SOTOMAYOR; SIDES WITH WHITE FIREFIGHTERS

The Senate is about to pay off the unions for helping get Obama elected. Senator Max Baucus (D, Mont.) looks to be about ready to propose a plan to pay for Obama’s massive, more than $1 trillion in new government spending on healthcare by instituting a new tax on many employees that currently have healthcare through their workplace (nearly 1 in 8 workers according to Peter Barnes). Never having been “income” before, Senator Baucus is prepared to claim it is and will be taxed accordingly. … unless, of course, you happen to be a union member. If you are a...

Yes, you read that right. When democrats floated the idea of taxing employer sponsored health care benefits the unions howled, as they have better health care benefits than just about anyone but politicians. Kimberly Strassel calls it a union payoff. That sounds about right. Mr. Baucus, the Finance Committee chairman who is helping lead the Obama health effort, is still deciding what to include in the bill. But his far bigger headache remains how to pay for this blowout. He and other Democrats have been inching toward the taboo benefits-tax, putting them on a collision course with liberal special interests...

It appears that there will be discrimination in choosing the next Supreme Court nominee. Not white. Not male. Not a career judge. Those were just some of the criteria senators outlined Sunday as they discussed their hopes for the next Supreme Court justice. With Justice David Souter retiring this summer, Democrats in particular said the vacancy is an opportunity for President Obama to diversify the high court -- not just by choosing a woman or minority justice, but a candidate with a resume that includes something other than years on the bench.

Asian-Americans blast UC admissions policy They say new standards are unfair, will reduce their numbers on campus April 24, 2009 SAN FRANCISCO - A new admissions policy set to take effect at the University of California system in three years is raising fears among Asian-Americans that it will reduce their numbers on campus, where they account for a remarkable 40 percent of all undergraduates. University officials say the new standards — the biggest change in UC admissions since 1960 — are intended to widen the pool of high school applicants and make the process more fair. But Asian-American advocates, parents...

[Quote]OPEC Engineered Obama’s Harvard Admission (oops! More Obama Skeletons) September 03, 2008 This just surfaced, rather innocently, as a matter of fact. Legendary civil rights lawyer, Percy Sutton, 87 yrs old, was being interviewed and just innocently admitted that years ago, Dr. Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al-Mansour called him and asked him to use his (Percy’s) connections at Harvard to help Barack Obama get him into law school. Now the question is who is this gentleman? Turns out, “his business and professional interests include co-founding the International Law Firm of Al-Waleed, Al-Talal & Al-Mansour, representing the O.P.E.C. interest of the famous...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A state appeals court breathed new life Tuesday into campus integration efforts, ruling that Berkeley does not violate California's ban on racial preferences when it considers the makeup of students' neighborhoods in deciding where they will go to school. Berkeley's policy "does not show partiality, prejudice or preference to any student on the basis of that student's race," said the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco. "All students in a given residential area are treated equally." The ruling is the first by an appellate court on a school district's voluntary integration plan since California voters...

I'm seeing a huge difference in the way that FR is displaying. On two PCs, the Browse page has changed dramatically. One PC's display format of the Browse Articles page changed while I was viewing it. Has anyone else experienced this in the past 10 minutes? Or am I on drugs?

All aspects of federal contracting programs favoring minority-owned businesses have been turned upside down by an injunction issued by a judge in San Antonio.

The incoming Obama administration will have to deal with the issue of racial preferences sooner rather than later thanks to the Supreme Court's decision today to take up an appeal in an affirmative action case, Ricci v. DeStefano. New Haven firefighter Frank Ricci and 18 others sued after the fire department failed to promote them when they scored well on the department's promotion exam. Since too few black firefighters scored high enough to justify promotions, the city threw out the exam altogether. Ricci and his co-plaintiffs - including one Hispanic argue that their promotions were denied solely because of their...

  I'd also like to add one personal note, in response to the letter from Mr. Jim Chen which was published in the October 26 issue of the RECORD, and which articulated broad objections to the Review's general affirmative action policy. I respect Mr. Chen's personal concern over the possible stigmatizing effects of affirmative action, and do not question the depth or sincerity of his feelings. I must say, however, that as someone who has undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action programs during my academic career, and as someone who may have benefited from the Law Review's affirmative action policy when I...

A state appellate court has put a financial cloud over the future of tens of thousands of undocumented California college students, saying a state law that grants them the same heavily subsidized tuition rate that is given to resident students is in conflict with federal law. In a ruling reached Monday, the state Court of Appeal reversed a lower court's decision that there were no substantial legal issues and sent the case back to the Yolo County Superior Court for trial. "It has a huge impact," said Kris Kobach, an attorney for the plaintiffs and a law professor at the...

A state appeals court has reinstated a lawsuit challenging a policy that allows some illegal immigrants to pay lower in-state tuition to attend California's public colleges and universities. The 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento said Monday that a lower court erred in dismissing the suit brought by 42 students who paid far more to attend college because they were out-of-state residents. At issue is a 2002 law that made any California high school graduate who attended at least three years of high school in the state eligible for in-state fee breaks, regardless of immigration status.

A professor who said he suspects UCLA is cheating to illegally admit black students resigned Thursday from its admissions committee, saying the university refused to provide him the data he needs to investigate his suspicions. "A growing body of evidence strongly suggests that UCLA is cheating on admissions," political science Professor Tim Groseclose wrote in a report he released Thursday. "Specifically, applicants often reveal their own race on the essay portion of the application."Students typically report their race on their applications, but the people who evaluate their files don't see names, race or ethnicity. If race does come up in...

PHOENIX (AP) -- With one brief criticism of affirmative action, John McCain has brought new attention to ballot issues aimed at dismantling preferential treatment programs for women and minorities. The question is whether McCain's support for one of those initiatives, in Arizona, will make any difference. . . .McCain's comments also have drawn critics who pointed to comments he made a decade ago calling similar measures "divisive."

Opposing race-based preferences could help power a McCain comeback.

Lansing, Mich. (AP) -- A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging a Michigan law that bans racial and gender preferences in government hiring and university admissions. The ruling on Tuesday upholds the constitutionality of a measure approved by Michigan voters in 2006. It had been challenged by groups including the NAACP

Harman's law to reject white workers for ethnic minorities is slammed by campaigners By DANIEL MARTIN Last updated at 19:11pm on 16th March 2008White men could be legally blocked from getting jobs under new anti-discrimination laws being considered by Labour. Employers would be able to give jobs to women or ethnic minority candidates in preference to other applicants, under the plans unveiled by equalities minister Harriet Harman. If two candidates were equally qualified for a position, employers would be able to reject the white person or the man in favour of a black person or a woman. But the plans...

United Parcel Service Inc. has added lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT)-owned businesses to its supplier diversity program. The move comes with a partnership with the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC), Atlanta-based UPS (NYSE: UPS) said. The NGLCC represents the interests of some 1.4 million LGBT-owned businesses. UPS began its supplier diversity process in 1992, giving UPS business opportunities for small businesses and those owned by minorities, women, veterans and now lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. LGBT-owned businesses also will get a discount on UPS shipping services.

Racism is so entrenched in the Connecticut State Police that basic hiring practices ensure only a few minority troopers will even enter a training class, never mind be promoted in the ranks, an attorney representing a black troopers' coalition said Thursday.

Tough, tough crowd. Ward Connerly, the California businessman behind a movement to end race- and gender-based affirmative action in Nebraska, faced jeers and interruptions Tuesday evening as he defended his position on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus. About 200 listeners, mostly students, drilled Connerly with questions about his motives, beliefs and even his salary. One young woman asked whether his efforts are funded by the Ku Klux Klan. “No,” Connerly said. Then he added: “What a stupid question,” drawing boos. Connerly leads the California-based Super Tuesday for Equal Rights, which seeks to end racial and gender preferences in hiring and...

What do you think is more dangerous? Terrorists getting their hands on a biological weapon that can be smuggled into the country or another hurricane like Katrina? Which is the smarter way to keep Social Security solvent? Raise the retirement age or raise taxes? How can the current economic crisis be averted? Give Americans cash to spend or slash mortgage interest rates to restart the housing market? As millions of Americans gather to vote for presidential candidates in tomorrow's Democratic and Republican primaries, what they are really being asked to do is make a number of policy choices. The problem...

The question I’d like to pose this Martin Luther King Day weekend is: Are we likely to witness the end of racial preferences soon — not just in our lifetimes, not just within the 25 years that Justice O’Connor “expected” in 2003, but in the next, say, 5 to 10 years? I think there is a good chance that we will. But I’m a non-determinist, so nothing is inevitable. In other words, I think we’ll win, but I know that we can still lose. There are different ways to think about this question, and different factors to consider. Demographics, Law,...

A year after the city's racial quotas kept their daughter out of an elite public school, an Indian couple from Brooklyn is filing a class-action lawsuit to make sure it doesn't happen again to her or any child. "Children should be judged on the content of their character, not on the color of their skin," said Dr. Anjan Rau, the girl's dad, about the quotas at Mark Twain School in Coney Island. "The selection process should be colorblind," Rau said. For decades, the school has enforced racial double standards on its tests to maintain a 6-4 white-to-minority ratio to comply...

Women who own small businesses — about a third of all small businesses in the United States, in fact — have been pushing for years for a bigger piece of government contracts, which now total $400 billion a year. But few were happy when the Small Business Administration finally announced new rules in December to ensure that 5 percent of the contracts would go to female-owned businesses. First, the critics noted, it took seven years for the S.B.A. to develop the rules after Congress ordered the agency to create them in 2000. But perhaps more important to the critics, among...

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LINCOLN, Neb. - A petition filed with Secretary of State John Gale all but guarantees Nebraska will be an affirmative-action battleground heading into the November 2008 election. Public institutions including colleges and universities would be barred from using race, sex and other factors in hiring and admissions decisions under the proposed constitutional amendment. The petition drive will be guided by a California-based group that has been successful squashing affirmative action in other states. Ward Connerly, a former University of California regent best known for dismantling state programs that gave preferences to minorities, is behind the petition. It would give Nebraska...

In a recent article, The Economist called blacks and Hispanics “natural allies.� Citing Barack Obama’s “brothers in the fight for equality� reference to the two groups, the writer conceded that with blacks and Hispanics, there’s no such thing. I frequently blog about what I perceive as a growing battle between blacks and Hispanics for “preferred minority� status. A preferred minority group is one that ostensibly is under-represented in certain professions and universities. This status goes beyond mere numbers and focuses on “oppression.� For example, while Asians are a minority group in America, they’re not considered oppressed in the same sense,...

SAN FRANCISCO (UPI) -- A court in San Francisco ruled that a roommate-matching Web site may be held accountable for what users say about their preferences. A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court ruled in favor of two California fair housing groups that brought the complaint against Roommate.com, saying the Web site violates the Fair Housing Act by allowing users to specify roommate preferences based on sex, race, religion and sexual orientation, The New York Times reported Wednesday. The ruling took away the main argument of the defense: that a 1996 ruling granting immunity to Internet service providers that...

If you thought the turbulent Civil Rights Movement – culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – ended skin color discrimination, you were mistaken. Half a century ago, America faced a moral and legal struggle to end government-mandated preferential treatment based on race. Half a century later, America faces a moral and legal struggle to end government-mandated preferential treatment based on race. Our government still treats people differently based on the color of their skin. This time around, minorities (Asians excluded) benefit from unconstitutional race-based programs. So-called equal opportunity policies in federal, state, and local agencies across the country...

University of California, Berkeley, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau is creating a top-level post to focus on keeping the campus fair and welcoming. Birgeneau said he wants to make sure there is equal opportunity for students, faculty and staff regardless of religion, sexual orientation, race, gender or whether someone has a disability or not. "I very strongly believe that every single person (should) feel that this is a place where they belong, where they are respected for their individuality, for what they represent and their background," Birgeneau said Wednesday in announcing the new position at a back-to-school briefing. A national search is...

The effort to put an anti-affirmative-action proposal before Michigan voters was wrought with fraud and should be blocked from the November ballot, lawyers for the proposal's opponents argued in federal court Friday. But lawyers representing the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative and state elections officials told U.S. District Judge Arthur Tarnow that voters would be harmed if they're not allowed to decide whether to ban race and gender preferences in government hiring and public-university admissions in Michigan.

Not at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Of nearly 10,000 black students who graduated from Los Angeles County high schools this past June, just 1 percent will attend UCLA, according to NPR's Morning Edition. Why? For many, the culprit is Proposition 209, the 1996 anti-affirmative-action bill backed by former UC Regent Ward Connerly, which made it illegal to use race-based preferences in admissions, employment and contracting throughout the state. When Connerly's term ended in January 2005, his message was clear: Don't bring back affirmative action, according to Black Issues in Higher Education. UC may not be able to...

America's motto is "E pluribus unum," Latin for "Out of many, one." Some U.S. senators seem to be reading it backward. This week the Senate will consider legislation that would create an independent, race-based government for Native Hawaiians. If the bill becomes law, it would create a racial spoils system that would hand special privileges to up to one-fifth of the state's population--including many with only a trace of Hawaiian blood. It could inspire mainland groups such as Hispanic separatists to seek similar spoils, should they ever gain enough political leverage.

SACRAMENTO -- A state agency won't use race anymore when awarding contracts. The California Department of Transportation made the decision because it could not show minorities suffered discrimination in contracting, Caltrans said. The department said it took the step early this week after a recent ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals set out that standard. Caltrans has had a goal of giving 10.5 percent of its federal contracting dollars to disadvantaged businesses. ...At stake is $5.1 billion for 1,400 transportation projects throughout California over the next five years. "Caltrans funds so many different projects around the state...

Before checking the box to identify her race on her college admissions application, Cecilia Vaughn hesitated for a moment, torn by conflicting emotions. It was an optional but important question that might increase her chances of being admitted if for no other reason than the fact she is black. Yet she believed her application was strong enough to stand on its own. She decided to answer the question. "I'm selling myself, and I want them to know as much about me as possible," said Ms. Vaughn, now a senior at Duquesne University. "I don't want anything to be a surprise."...

Just this week, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer paid a visit to his high school alma mater, Lowell High School in San Francisco. He took a tour of the school’s campus, which moved in 1962 from downtown San Francisco to its present Sunset District location, and then spent an hour taking questions from the school’s junior and senior classes. According to AP, Justice Breyer (Class of 1955) was treated like a “rock star” during his visit to the highly-selective school’s campus. Besides the change in location, Lowell High School has in recent years undergone an immense transformation of its student...

More African-Americans Claim They Are Passed Over For Hispanics in Hiring By MIRIAM JORDAN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL January 24, 2006; Page B1 LOS ANGELES -- Donnie Gaut, an African-American with 12 years of warehouse experience, applied for a job in 2002 at Farmer John Meats, a large Los Angeles pork processor. When he was turned down for the position, a job stocking goods that paid $7 an hour, Mr. Gaut decided the problem wasn't his résumé -- it was his race. He filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency that...

Attorneys representing college students from 19 states filed a class-action lawsuit seeking hundreds of millions of dollars from officials for charging them significantly more than illegal aliens pay to attend state-run colleges in California.,P. The state allows illegal aliens to pay in-state tuition, while making out-of-state American citizens pay higher tuition fees. The 42 plaintiffs allege that California lawmakers and members of the board of regents for the University of California "knowingly violated a federal law enacted in 1996 that says any state that offers discounted in-state tuition to its illegal aliens must provide the same lower rates to all...

TAMPA - Muslims may get a religious holiday recognized by a public school in the Hillsborough County school district. Terrace Community School, a charter school housed at the Museum of Science & Industry, is considering changing its school calendar to give a day off for Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan. The school's board will vote on the proposal at its monthly meeting at 7 p.m. Wednesday. The proposal came from Principal Gary Hocevar after controversy erupted in the Hillsborough County school district. Last month, the Hillsborough County school board decided to eliminate all days off coinciding...

<p>CHICAGO — The U.S. Justice Department has threatened to sue Southern Illinois University next week unless the college opens up three paid fellowship programs once reserved for minority and female students.</p> <p>The government says it will file the lawsuit because the fellowships discriminate against "whites, nonpreferred minorities and males," according to a letter dated Nov. 4.</p>