On Wednesday January 16th 2003, George W. Bush paid the ultimate tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. by filing a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the aggrieved applicants to the University of Michigan and against the U of M’s racially segregated admissions standards. Bush’s stand is completely in keeping with King’s own principled stand that all Americans should be judged by the content of their character (grades and achievements), not the color of their skin.
At issue is the U of M’s policy of giving black and Hispanic students 20 points on their admissions standards, more than the points a student is awarded for his high school and for law school applicants, more than their undergraduate grades!
In stating, "Discrimination is wrong" - even if it is in an attempt to remedy discrimination,” Bush noted that Michigan's policies gave greater consideration to the color of an applicant's skin than that person's SAT scores.
On principle, racial preferences should be declared unconstitutional, based on any reasonable reading of the Constitution’s equal-protection clause.
When asked if they believed in giving preferences based on race, an overwhelming majority of Americans (more than two thirds) opposed the practice. Proponents of race and gender preferences claim that question is too general, because it didn’t specify which races and it didn’t link such preferences to either past discrimination or contemporary diversity concerns. That objection is absurd, for ANY “preference” toward one race is discrimination to any other race not given that preference. Further, attempting to justify or rationalize any form of discrimination or segregation justifies ALL segregation and discrimination based on race.
In the late eighties, then New York City Mayor Ed Koch proposed replacing race and gender based preferences with needs based preferences. The Koch proposal had the advantage of being color blind, while redressing some of the grievances of the economically disadvantaged. One of the biggest complaints against the current system is that the sons and daughters of well-off blacks and Hispanics are given preferences, while the sons and daughters of white coal miners, poverty stricken Appalachians and poor Asian immigrants are denied consideration for their far more underprivileged backgrounds.
In truth, neither needs based nor race/gender based preferences are legitimate, neither are the geographical, alumni and donor preferences that some of the pseudo-elites both benefit from and use to rationalize the current, monstrous racial spoils system.
Why are racial set-asides and preferences so persistent?
Perhaps because without them, there wouldn’t be much racial diversity, especially in higher education, where studies showed that even well-off blacks, who’d attended private schools tended to perform worse on standardized exams (like SATs) even when compared to poor Asians and whites (see “Bias in Mental Testing” by Arthur Jensen). Sadly, that dynamic hasn’t changed much at all as both Thomas Sowell (“Race & Culture” and “Preferential Policies”) and Walter E. Williams (“The State Against Blacks”) attest.
Still, this unfortunate and troubling dynamic is never promulgated by advocates of preferential policies, as it implies the stigma of genetic inferiority to its recipients. Instead, the politics of preferences and segregated standards are predicated on redress and restitution for past injustices.
None of this counting by race and giving preferences to individulas based on group identity jibes with Martin Luther King Jr.'s call for a color-blind society.
So in the grand scheme of things, George W. Bush did Martin Luther King Jr. proud.
~E