On Native Ground: WHY ARE WE STILL ARGUING ABOUT AFFIRMATIVE ACTION?

Vol. 15, No. 3,659 - The American Reporter - April 16, 2009
by Randolph T. Holhut
American Reporter Correspondent
Dummerston, Vt.

DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- I was surprised to see that President Bush would take time out from the "war on terror" to denounce affirmative action. I was even more surprised that President Bush and his handlers picked Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday to launch his attack.
This was either yet another example of unbridled arrogance by the Bush team or a stunning show of cluelessness. But given the Republican Party's long-standing hostility to anything that might cut into white privilege, it's safe to assume the Bush administration consciously chose Jan. 15 to offer its support to a lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the University of Michigan's affirmative action program.
Even more than arrogance or cluelessness, President Bush's pronouncement dripped with hypocrisy. Here's a man who was a mediocre student who got into Yale because he was the son of a wealthy and politically connected alumnus attacking a public institution's program that attempts to give a similar boost to minority applicants.
So, what's the fuss about?
The University of Michigan awards bonus points in the admission process to black, Native American and certain Latino students. Out of the 150 points required to gain admission, a student's grades are worth up to 80 points. The quality of the applicant's high school and the academic rigor of its courses are worth up to 18 points. And being a minority applicant is worth 20 points.
Those 20 points haven't made much of a difference in the number of minority students at the University of Michigan. The state's population is 14 percent black, but the undergraduate population at the university is only 8.4 percent black. The university's law school, the target of the lawsuit, fares even worse; only 6.7 percent of its students are black, and the law school has said that percentage would drop to 4 percent without affirmative action.
That so few students are being helped is not surprising. Even with programs like Michigan's, white students still comprise about 80 percent of the total student population at private and public four-year colleges and universities, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
President Bush trotted out the old Republican code word for affirmative action - "quotas" - in his attack on Michigan's program. But students aren't being selected or rejected solely on their ethnicity in Michigan or at any other college or university. To say otherwise is a lie.
Affirmative action has never been about quotas. It's not about offering opportunities to unqualified people. It's not reverse discrimination against whites. It's merely giving underrepresented groups of people greater access to academic institutions and the workplace.
Why is affirmative action needed? Because of the way the odds are stacked against blacks in general, and black men in particular, from the cradle to the grave.

Full Commentary: http://www.american-reporter.com/3,659/2031.html