How Affirmative Action Helped George W.

Daily Kos
by owendebanks
Sat Jul 18, 2009 at 11:25:42 AM PDT

George W. Bush was all for diversity but he didn't care for the way they did it at the University of Michigan. The Administration had asked the Supreme Court to rule the Michigan system unconstitutional because of the scoring method it used for rating applicants.

"At the undergraduate level," said Bush, "African-American students and some Hispanic students and Native American students receive 20 points out of a maximum of 150, not because of any academic achievement or life experience, but solely because they are African American, Hispanic or Native American."

If he had the slightest sense of irony, he might have paused to ask himself, "Wait a minute. How did I get into Yale?" It wasn't because of any academic achievement: his high school record was ordinary. It wasn't because of his life experience — prosperous family, fancy prep school — which was all too familiar at Yale. It wasn't his SAT scores: 566 verbal and 640 math.

They may not have had an explicit point system at Yale in 1964, but Bush clearly got in because of affirmative action. Affirmative action for the son and grandson of alumni. Affirmative action for a member of a politically influential family. Affirmative action for a boy from a fancy prep school. These forms of affirmative action still go on. The Wall Street Journal at the time reported that Harvard accepted 40% of applicants who were children of alumni but only 11% of applicants generally. And this kind of affirmative action made the student body less diverse, not more so.

George W. Bush, in fact, may be the most spectacular affirmative-action success story of all time. Until 1994, when he was 48 years old and got elected Governor of Texas, his life was almost empty of accomplishments. Yet bloodlines and connections had put him into Andover, Yale and Harvard Business School, and even finally provided him with a fortune after years of business disappointments. Intelligence, hard work and the other qualities associated with the concept of merit had almost nothing to do with Bush's life and success up to that point. And yet seven years later he was President of the U.S.

Full Opinion: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/18/754831/-How-Affirmative-Action-Helped-George-W.-