Posted on 04/08/2010 10:04:09 AM PDT by Charles West
American Thinker has an article worth reading about the Obama administration's involvement in Fisher v. University of Texas. The plaintiffs in the case are two White students who claim they were denied admission to the university on the basis of race. The University of Texas does use race as a factor in admissions: 1/4th of each entering class is admitted on the basis of racial factors.
The Obama Justice Department has filed a brief against the two White students...
(Excerpt) Read more at westernyouth.org ...
Ok. So I'm Jewish. These Obamabots must think I'm a liberal who voted for Obama, Kerry, and Gore, who hugs trees, adores feminazis, and thinks there is no place for religion in the public square.
Maybe I should file a friend of the court brief explaining how stupid this line of reasoning is.
UT admissions is based on the Top Ten Percent Rule.
If you are in the top 10% of your high school class, you are admitted to UT.
If not, you can go to one of the other schools in the state.
The kid should have worked a little harder in high school and kept up with the top 10% of his class.
That statement is nonsensical.
I am an older, white, Mormon male. I offer experience and culture that is different. Can I get access to Affirmative Action?
Nope. Being White disqualfies you. But on the bright side, you, being White are the cause of all the troubles in the World, going back to Adam and Eve. Don’t believe that? Ask any member of the alphabet Democrat propganda machine or any Black poverty pimp, a.k.a Black leader..
If that was the only criteria, no problem, but “The University of Texas does use race as a factor in admissions.” That is a Big Problem. That is a racial discrimination problem, and if the left taught us anything, they taught us racial discrimination is wrong.
And yes, I know that takes some work, but my son is at UT now and he worked hard enough to gain admission.
The top 10% rule did supplant racial preferences, or was substituted as a proxy for racial preference. The result is that kids in the 89th percentile from very good schools don’t get in, while kids in the 90th from marginal schools do. A lot of private schools just don’t give a rank in class to avoid this. Side effect is that is it much easier to get into to the flagship universities at the sophomore or later levels, because huge vacancies occur from inadequately prepared students admitted by the top 10% rule. My understanding is the last legislature has changed this rule.
Now, how would you have reacted if your boy was rejected in favor of a minority that graduated in the top 10% of some no-name HS?.
Wouldn't like that, in fact, I wager, you would be howling. And I know UT, lectured there many times and they are mostly left-wing nutburgers in the pol-sci department. I am not impressed by UT.
My son went to one of the better public high schools in Austin, it is the same school where the Bush daughters attended and most of the local political and business elite send their kids. It is a tough school to place in the Top 10% but it obviously can be done.
And if my boy had been rejected from UT in favor of some minority kid that would have been just fine with him. He would have instead done his first year at one of the other UT schools and entered UT as a sophomore and would still graduate with that UT degree.
No big deal as it is only the freshman year at UT that kids are missing out on.
Great. I'm impressed. Seriously. I am. No kidding. Wow.
So, in that high school of his, the bottom half are performing well beyond the top 10% of some low-end school, but yet, the low end students get preference because of their race?
“And if my boy had been rejected from UT in favor of some minority kid that would have been just fine with him.”
Sure. I am sure he wouldn't have given it a thought that he worked hard and was rejected because of his race. I'm sure he would understand and agree with that attitude/policy.
The core issue remains: Is it fair to reject someone that was in the top of their class BECAUSE of their race?
Answer, for the liberals out there, no, it is not fair.
For now, if you are in the Top 10% of your class, you can gain admission to UT no matter your race.
However, even with that standard, UT is overwhelmed with admissions and is changing the policy to what amounts to the Top 8%.
There are no easy answers and even with the Top 10% rule, less than 5% of the undergraduate population is African American.
Therefore, there is little evidence that white kids are being denied admission to UT in favor or African American kids.
Because they do discriminate based on race.
Also, look at all back HS’s in Dallas or Houston, then your numbers are wrong. Like I said, hard workers in a “high”-standard HS are discriminated because some black guy graduates from some low-standard HS. So, some nice guy in your high school gets passed over because a) he is white, and b) some black kid in some low end school is in the top 10 or 8%; (but would have been in the bottom 50%, or to be generous, the top 25% of your school.)
That's what I thought, too. But, according to the original article in American Thinker, that's no longer the case:
Thus, following the decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, race was once again considered as a factor in admissions, and the number of African-American students admitted to the university doubled. In similar fashion, the number of Hispanic students increased by 65%.
I really have no desire to look back at my high school in Houston and none of the numbers I posted are wrong.
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