Affirmative Action
I’ve had it with the hypocrisy of George W. Bush on affirmative action. He misuses words like “quota” while pandering to the people who think non-whites have no disadvantages in our society and that illiterate black people are keeping hard-working white people out of jobs.
First, let’s look at the University of Michigan FAQ regarding admissions:
While students with very low grades and test scores typically are denied admission, and students with very high grades and test scores typically are admitted, most applicants do not fall into either of these categories. For that large pool of qualified applicants in the middle range, many other factors — including, but not limited to, race and ethnicity — can make a difference in admissions decisions.
…
Applicants receive up to 40 points for other factors that indicate an applicant’s potential contribution to LSA. They may receive 20 points for one of the following: membership in an underrepresented minority group, socioeconomic disadvantage, attendance at a predominantly minority high school, athletics, or at the Provost’s discretion. Reflecting the University’s commitment both to state residents and to broader geographic diversity, counselors assign ten points for Michigan residency, six additional points for residency in underrepresented Michigan counties, and two points for residency in underrepresented states. Applicants receive one or four points for alumni relationships. The personal essay can earn up to three points. Based on an applicant’s activities, work experience, and awards, counselors may assign up to five points for leadership and service, and five more points for personal achievement.
Interestingly, the Bush administration is incensed by the idea of race affecting admissions, but seems unconcerned about other criteria, such as “underrepresented Michigan counties” which is as likely to benefit rural whites as anyone. Of course, we know why Bush can’t bring up “alumni relationships”. This is a man that would never have attended Phillips Andover, Yale, or Harvard without rich white guy/connected father/alumni affirmative action. Check out Danziger on the subject. Ellis Henican from Newsdays tells us:
He was a C student at Phillips Andover.
He got a not-so-stellar 1206 on his SATs – 566 verbal, 640 math. That was a full 180 points below the median score for the Yale University class of ’68.
But boola-boola for him!
In the fall of 1964, George W. Bush was welcomed inside Yale’s ivy-covered walls as a “legacy admittee.”
And in the years that followed [at Yale], young W never pulled his average above a C. His college transcript, in an eye-popping leak to The New Yorker magazine, showed a 73 in Introduction to the American Political System and a 71 in Introduction to International Relations, to cite two examples that could mean something in hindsight.
Do you know anyone else who was admitted to Harvard Business School with an undergraduate C average?
Yesterday’s Newsday reported that Condoleezza Rice had issued a statement that using race as a factor to achieve diversity on college campuses is “appropriate” — contradicting the President but saying she supports the decision to challenge the University of Michigan policy. She was responding to a Washington Post story that said she was instrumental in shaping the administration’s decision to intervene in the Michigan case.
In today’s Newsday, Jimmy Breslin says Powell: Act or Resign. Colin Powell spoke very eloquently about affirmative action in a speech at the 2000 GOP convention:
The subject was affirmative action, of which Powell was a recipient in his time. Here is a guy who got out of City College, where Frankfurter went, where Salk went, and public taxes paid for his education and gave him a chance to get where he is now. It is what the country should be about.
And to his audience, which was 94 percent white, affirmative action was as dangerous as wired dynamite.
Powell said:
“We must understand the cynicism that exists in the black community, the kind of cynicism that is created when, for example, some in our party miss no opportunity to roundly and loudly condemn affirmative action that helped a few thousand black kids get an education.
“But hardly a whimper is heard over affirmative action for lobbyists who load our federal tax codes with preferences for special interests.”
Right after that, Powell told interviewers, "You need to be a little careful when you see nothing wrong with that kind of preference or affirmative action, and say it’s fine, whether it’s sugar growers in Florida or somewhere else in the tax code, but suddenly a preference system, as you call it, an affirmative action program, as I prefer to call it, that allows a few thousand kids to get an education somehow is so damaging to our constitutional process that it has to become a major factor for our party and a major center for the party to attack.”
One thing to remember as you’re reading about all of this is that all of the President’s proposals regarding diversity through economic tests rather than racial criteria rely strongly on keeping segregated high schools in order to maintain racial diversity at the college level. Another is that the University of Michigan case involves the law school, and the administration has no proposals for dealing with diversity for graduate or professional schools.
And don’t even get me started asking who died in Viet Nam so that Bush wouldn’t. Now that’s affirmative action.
