Posted on 12/05/2002 7:41:48 AM PST by Jakarta ex-pat
You want to go to the University of Michigan, and you're a minority applicant. Ka-ching. You automatically receive an extra 20 points on your application.
You want to attend the University of Michigan Law School, and you're a minority applicant. Ka-ching. It doesn't matter if your qualifications are low compared with other applicants. Your race or ethnicity can land you a spot.
A couple of points are worth noting here. First, Michigan admits it engages in such race-based discrimination. There's nothing coy or concealed about its affirmative action admissions process. The university acknowledges further that its race-based discrimination isn't a way to make up for any past discrimination.
No, Michigan argues that raw discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity is just dandy -- not only constitutional but indispensable -- simply to promote its brand of "diversity."
And it's the sheer brazenness of the university's affirmative-action claims that makes the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to take up the two Michigan cases so constitutionally fraught. We're here, we're discriminating on the basis of race, get used to it, Michigan is saying. Now, we'll see what sayeth the Supreme Court and Constitution.
"This is a story that begins with Brown v. Board of Education -- the whole effort to really try to achieve an integrated society and get the full benefits of racial diversity in America," Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger, who was president of Michigan when the new cases began, pronounced earlier this week.
What self-righteous silliness.
First, there is no evidence that ending race preferences will lead to the "resegregation" of the nation's institutions of higher education. It didn't happen in California or Texas.
Second, there is no evidence to support the University of Michigan's claim that racial diversity benefits all students, red and yellow, black and white. Oh, the university ordered up a study to make this case, but it was never submitted for peer review and came in for a drubbing at the hands of even affirmative-action buffs. Indeed, economists Harry Holzer and David Newmark concluded, in the Fall 2000 Journal of Economic Literature: "There is no evidence of the positive (or negative) effects of a diverse student body on educational quality."
And how exactly do Michigan's racial preferences fulfill Brown v. the Board of Education? Bollinger and Michigan see current race-based discrimination as an extension of the 1954 case. In fact, Michigan's racial preferences would seem anathema to the Brown decision. It signaled an end to the right of educational institutions to discriminate on the basis of race in their enrollment decisions. After all, the Topeka Board of Education was doing just that. It was practicing race-based discrimination. So is Michigan.
Is Michigan's discrimination less odious because Bollinger and company think it's for a worthy cause? Well, Topeka school leaders a half-century ago believed they were discriminating on racial grounds for a worthy cause. They, too, were operating in what they deemed the best interests of their institution.
But an institution's needs -- for racial diversity or racial uniformity -- shouldn't trump an individual's right to equal treatment. Not under our Constitution or creed. Such a race-based system punishes individuals for being people of the wrong color.
Ah, but diversity is such a sweet concept. Yes, in many ways it is, and the more the merrier. Greater ideological diversity on America's campuses would be a nice start. But think of all that's implicit in Michigan's bid to promote racial diversity to achieve "viewpoint diversity." It assumes that all African Americans, Hispanics or whatever think alike. How's that for stereotyping? I guess this is OK if the Archie Bunkers hold doctorates.
The child of Jesse Jackson or Oprah receives an extra 20 points on an application just for being black. And a poor white kid whose single mom takes the early bus to work receives no such break. There's something repugnant -- unAmerican even -- about this. I think it's called judging people by the color of their skin, not the content of their character.
BINGO! And I think that way down, they too feel that way and are tired of the RATS, in effect, portraying them as idiots to be taken for granted for their votes.
And the typical response would be, "I hope California fall in the ocean".
If you folks in Michigan start fleeing, don't come to California. Try Idaho.
There are so many capable blacks, folks who have no trouble making it on their own that it's almost racist for white liberals to claim that blacks need these crutches. It is as racist as Belafonte claiming that Powell and Rice are less than adequate because they do not claim to believe this "we are not equal and demand special credit" silliness.
Why don't we have affirmative action suits from whites against the NFL and NBA? Affirmative action in graduate schools admissions does nothing but "give" black candidates soemthing they haven't earned, discredits the capability of black graduates and dilutes the value of all degrees from that school.
Yes, indeed, except their definition of diversity is extremely narrow.
I don't know, motivation maybe?
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