Posted on 01/24/2003 7:06:10 AM PST by Uncle Bill
HILL OF BEANS
New York Press
By Christopher Caldwell
January, 2003 - Volume 16, Issue 4
No Action
Last week, President Bush submitted two amicus curiae briefs to the Supreme Court, regarding the University of Michigan’s affirmative action program. The controversial admissions program ranks applicants on a 150-point scale, and awards a 20-point "bonus" right off the bat to blacks and selected other minorities. The admissions regime once had two tracks–one for whites and one for targeted minorities–and it protected those minorities from direct competition with the wider pool. The Bush administration, quite correctly, held that this made it a de facto quota system, and thus "plainly unconstitutional."
Supporters of the president have hailed the briefs as inaugurating a new era of race-blind, quota-free aid to the nonwhite. It would replace a bean-counting reverse racism with "what the Army has done," as Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander hopefully put it. But Democrats went berserk. According to Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, the administration has proved itself willing to "side with those opposed to civil rights and opposed to diversity in this country." University president Mary Sue Coleman complained, "It is unfortunate that the president misunderstands how our admissions process works at the University of Michigan."
Alexander, Daschle and Coleman are–in their different ways–completely wrong. The Bush memos are the most important substantive defense of affirmative action ever issued by a sitting president. If the Court accepts the president’s reasoning, it will have rescued affirmative action from what appeared to be a terminal constitutional illogic. More than that–it will have secured for this rickety program an indefinite constitutional legitimacy.
Affirmative action has been fragile since Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978). Back then (if I may simplify), the Court ruled that race-based quotas were illegal, but permitted race to be taken into account as a "plus factor" in admissions. Increasingly over the last two and a half decades the rationale for that plus factor has been "diversity." Diversity, in fact, is the stated rationale behind the University of Michigan’s modus operandi. Unfortunately for proponents of affirmative action, "diversity" has always been a vague concept–and it has never been clear whether, as a matter of law, it was sufficient grounds for flirting with racial discrimination against majorities. In Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education (1986), a plurality found against an affirmative action program justified on the grounds of diversity. And in the current controversy over the University of Michigan, many conservatives–including Florida Gov. Jeb Bush–have taken Wygant as a starting point for rejecting the diversity rationale. In an amicus curiae brief of his own, filed last week, the Florida governor noted: "This Court specifically indicated that such a theory has no logical stopping point, and would allow discriminatory practices long past the point required by any legitimate remedial purpose… Racial diversity is no more compelling a goal in the higher education context than in the context of other institutions or areas of state decision making."
That is not the view of our president. One of his briefs specifically endorses the diversity criterion. It runs: "Ensuring that public institutions, especially education institutions, are open and accessible to a broad and diverse array of individuals, including individuals of all races and ethnicities, is an important and entirely legitimate government objective. Measures that ensure diversity, accessibility and opportunity are important components of government’s responsibility to its citizens." It would be difficult to find a more hardline defense of the doctrine of diversity-for-its-own-sake anywhere in the Democratic Party. It would also be difficult nowadays to name a school that violates these ideals, aside from maybe Bob Jones. (Didn’t the president campaign there once?)
This is where the president’s brief gets tangled up in either its own illogic or its own dishonesty. The White House, again, is appalled by "quotas," and it has a smoking gun to prove that Michigan was using them. From 1995-’98, Michigan had an actual, explicit quota system. And in discussing the program that replaced it after 1998, the university admitted openly that it wanted, in the brief’s words, to "change only the mechanics, not the substance, of how race and ethnicity were considered."
The problem is, this is precisely what the administration wants to do itself. Nowhere does it express the slightest gripe about the demographic or academic outcomes generated by Michigan’s race-focused policies. Indeed, it promises solemnly to replicate them. It merely wants to obtain those results without saying the dirty word "race." So it recommends a set of bogus procedures that lead to exactly the same end. "[U]niversities may adopt admissions policies that seek to promote experiential, geographical, political or economic diversity," write the President’s Men. Universities can also "modify or discard facially neutral admissions criteria" [in other words, board scores and grades] "that tend to skew admissions results in a way that denies minorities meaningful access" [in other words, admission] "to public institutions."
"The government," according to the brief, "may not resort to race-based policies unless necessary." It sounds like Bush is arguing that race-based policies are always necessary–since elsewhere in his brief he says that diversity is "an entirely legitimate government objective." That is indeed what he’s arguing for, but more disingenuously than, say, Bill Clinton would have.
Bush, to let him make the case in his own words, wants to use "race-neutral alternatives" to achieve exactly the same race-conscious results that Michigan has been obtaining for years. And he has a "race-neutral" model in mind: the "affirmative access" program he initiated while he was governor of Texas. Under this program, the top 10 percent (by grade point average) of students in every high school in Texas are automatically admitted to any state university they choose. This tends to produce college-admissions results that mirror the ethnic composition of the state. But the reason it produces affirmative-action-compatible results is that the state’s schools are so heavily segregated–if they were integrated you would have the same problem of whites being disproportionately represented in that "talented tenth." (Other problems include overcrowding and plummeting academic standards at the state’s flagship Austin campus, but that’s another article.) As Terrence J. Pell of the Center for Individual Rights argues, such programs are not really race-neutral; rather, they involve "reverse engineering the admission system to get a certain racial outcome."
The fancy, legalistic way of describing what Bush’s Texas program possesses and what Michigan’s lacks is "narrow tailoring." Old-fashioned affirmative action, the Bush reasoning goes, uses the broad-brush criterion of race. "Because it operates much like a rigid, numerical quota," the brief says, the university’s "policy imposes unfair and unnecessary burdens on innocent third parties." Bush-style "affirmative access," by contrast, directly attacks the real problem, which is kids who are for socioeconomic reasons stuck behind the eight ball, regardless of what race they belong to. But on closer examination, Bush’s policy imposes just as many burdens; it merely makes those aggrieved innocent third parties harder to identify and help. The working-class black kid who finishes 29th in a class of 300 at a lower-class school full of dropouts may not be a rocket scientist, but he’s got it made–he’s off to Austin. The identical working-class black kid whose parents have made the fatal mistake of enrolling him in a challenging school full of overachievers and who finishes 31st in a class of 300…well, he’s destined to a life working at the car wash.
"In light of these race-neutral alternatives," the president complacently concludes, the University of Michigan "cannot justify the express consideration of race." This sounds like it’s anti—affirmative action, but the "express consideration of race" that Bush pretends to deplore is a synonym for frank consideration of race. And that is all the difference between affirmative action and Bush’s phony alternative. The Bush plan achieves everything affirmative action does, only less honestly. In so doing, it manages to give affirmative action not just a new lease on life, but a good name. "In light of these race-neutral alternatives, respondents cannot justify the express" (in other words, honest) "consideration of race."
Bush to Propose Funds for Black, Hispanic Education
Bush Administration Defends Affirmative Action
Rush Limbaugh says the affirmative action brief still keeps promoting race preference and its bad
"In other words, more color-coded government"
Bush's affirmative action ambush: Ilana Mercer contends president clings to faulty logic
Condoleezza Rice Partly at Odds with Bush on Race Case
Powell Says He Disagrees With Bush on University of Michigan Affirmative Action Case
Affirmative Action Faces a New Wave of Anger
Bush Adviser Backs "Use of Race" in College Admissions
Affirmative action: Its time is long past
Two More Myths About Affirmative Action (Almost Clintonian approach) Cornell Review
Bush: My Quotas Are Better Than Yours!
Bush's Affirmative Action Briefs Walk Fine Line
Bush brief to high court doesn't tackle affirmative-action ruling
Bush administration skirts key legal question in affirmative action case
Good to see you!
The only true voice for "small government" are the pipsqueaks in the Libertarian Party, and they're hanging onto the toilet bowl rim by their fingernails.It's unwise to pretend that Reagan had no flaws or made no mistakes. It's also unwise to ignore the fact that Reagan never had a GOP House of Representives.
If the GOP had controlled both houses of Congress in the '80s, do you believe that government have been larger, or smaller than it actually was when Reagan left office in '89?
There are many times more "small government" voices in the GOP than there are registered voters in the LP. These voices are votes that the GOP requires to be a majority party.
This fact is inadvertently confirmed by every poster who blames them for abandoning Bush 41 in 1992 and enabling Clinton's victory.
It would likely have been just as large as it was, if not larger.
Did Ronald Reagan actually ever propose anything that would have made government smaller? Hell, he never once suggested the elimination of the Department of Education, a promise he ran on.
No, the only way to "shrink" government is to starve it, which Reagan did, and Bush is doing, with tax cuts.
One is forced to take solace in the thought that government would not be as large as it would have been, had there been no tax cutting.
This would reward the fecklessness and appeasement of the RINOs in the meantime. What constitutes a "solid majority?" A filibuster-proof Senate?
Republican proponents of larger government are a second front in the battle we face. Creating a new prescription drug entitlement on the eve of the retirement of the babyboomers could very well be politically lethal to those of us "working to roll back decades of governmental largesse."
I don't see how we can afford to focus exclusively on Democrats while ignoring the threat from within.
This doesn't sound like a defense of diversity for the sake of diversity to me. It sounds like a defense of the concept of equal opportunity. It uses that smarmy litle D word, but there's nothing here that really bugs me.
The author's main concern seems to be the demographic results of Affirmative Action, not the principals behind it.
I've been here, just over on the religion forum.
I had to come back over here to get away from the vitriol!
At least over here I'm not consigned to the pits of hell every time someone disagrees with me!
I am a "grass root" electorate now as I was in '92. The Bush 41 campaign did little to motivate me and Conservatives did nothing to motivate me, especially Rush Limbaugh, who disappointed me by influencing many of his listeners to not support Bush.
It was the Clintons and Ross Perot's hatred of Bush that motivated me to vote for Bush again. If the "base" had paid more attention to the bad guys, they would have gotten the "fuel" they needed instead of running on empty.
*/me gives sinkspur the "whore of Babylon" secret handshake.*
Did Ronald Reagan actually ever propose anything that would have made government smaller? Hell, he never once suggested the elimination of the Department of Education, a promise he ran on.
No, the only way to "shrink" government is to starve it, which Reagan did, and Bush is doing, with tax cuts.That was a promise that he shouldn't have broken, the Democrat House notwithstanding.
However, where did Reagan advocate the expansion of government through brand new entitlements? What makes you think he would have done so with an all GOP legislature?
BTW, if you seriously believe that the government could have grown larger under the all-Republican scenario I proposed, that's actually an argument for divided government. This would indicate that the Bush expansion we're currently experiencing is a systemic problem. This would be an argument against voting for a straight Republican ticket.
If I'm for smaller government and I accept the logical consequences of your position, and since it appears the GOP will hold Congress in 2004, would you suggest that I should consider voting for a Democrat Presidential candidate?
I'm all for tax cuts, but they stand a better chance of shrinking government if Bush and the Republicans aren't simultaneously advancing irresponsible spending sprees on new entitlements, just to keep up with AlGore and the Democrats.
When President Bush 41 went along with Democrat tax increases, that proved to be a risk that lost him many of his 1988 constituency when he ran for re-election in 1992. That was a big risk that failed.
When President Bush 43 goes along with Democrat expansion of the welfare state by way of his proposed prescription drug entitlement, isn't that a big risk as well?
That wasn't supposed to happen. This medicare debacle and creating this giant government monster is not a Gringrich-esque tactical plan, it's base political pandering (it's not even means tested for God's sake) at the expense of others and it's wrong. You don't really think that the medicare drug entitlement is going away, do you? Entitlements (especially for the elderly) don't go away ever, they just grown and become more and more destructive. I don't see any real world indication that we're even slowing the growth of government, much less reversing anything.
We'll see what happens on '04, but at some point if things keep devolving, we have to admit that it's not working. I hope you're right about incrementally implimenting conservatism, I'd love that more than anything. I've just become very cynical and don't trust any of them anymore. I'm real tired of being used.
Jim, Bush's proposals will mean trillions of dollars in additional outlays over the next few decades. We're already looking at a train wreck at that time, when Social Security is scheduled for insolvency. "Full speed ahead" sounds great, but we're looking at a headlong stampede over the cliff.
Who's going to pay for Bush's compassion?
And the St. Dept.
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