This is a good point; on the other hand, it doesn’t address the legacy complaint, which is a noneconomic race-based preference in favor of white people.
Daniel
Rhum:
I don’t think the stigma thing flies. I’ve seen lots of minorities interviewed who don’t give a sh*t what stigma is attached. It always sounds like something drummed up by a frustrated white guy who ran out of arguments. “We’re only trying to do what’s best for the minority guy.”
A better way to look at it is to examine the drop-out/failure rate of AA admittees vs non-AA admittees. If you can show that it is significanlty higher, then you ARE doing the minority a disservice. Chances are, they’d do better somewhere else. Unfortunately I’ve never seen a study (either way) that wasn’t rejected by the opposite side as being “biased”.
Bakke is a huge pain in the ass. Four judges say quotas are fine as a remedy for past discrimination, four say quotas aren’t fine, and one justice – Powell – says quotas aren’t fine, but race may be usedused as a “plus factor” between otherwise-equally qualified candidates to further diversity. This, of course, led to years of dishonesty as college admissions developed programs like the one at UT Law which claimed to only be using race as a “plus factor.”
Effectively, you’ve got one guy, Powell, determining the law of the land. To say that Bakke is of dubious precedential value is an understatement.
Curse you, december, for making me have to read over that damned tortured opinion again!
Legacies are a relatively small proportion of admitted students in comparison to those admitted under AA. Still, I’d be perfectly happy to see the legacy system disappear as well – it only persists for fund-raising reasons, I suspect. But so what? Are you seriously trying to raise a “two wrongs make a right” defense?
Let’s kick out the whole legacy thing right now. Is there anyone out there who believes it is OK at a PUBLIC institution?
Then let’s move on from there. Two wrongs don’t make a right, etc, etc, etc.
Dewey: I swear I didn’t see your post before I wrote my last one…
Depends on what you mean by that. I do think that when a system is unbalanced in one direction, if you’re not willing to remove the unbalance, the next best thing is to add an imbalance in the other direction. When the scales tip one way, yo’ve got a wrong; but adding something to the other side of the scales doesn’t constitute another wrong so much as it constitutes a balancing act.
However, if everyone’s willing to get rid of the legacy system, I’ll withdraw my objection. I’m still not entirely sure what i think about AA; without the legacy system, I’ve got no solid arguments in its favor, though.
Daniel
To me, it smacks of flagrant hypocrisy when Bush moans and groans about the injustice of AA. If he wants to dismantle preference policies, he needs to go whole-hog and stop pretending that he got to his own station in life by pulling himself by the bootstraps. That’s all.
Face:
Although you have a good pt about legacy, remember that we have laws against racial discrimination, but I’ don’t think there is an actual law you could cite about legacy. What would the basis be for someone to bring a lawsuit against legacy? Equal Protection clause? I’m not sure.
Bush could have scored some points by urging the university to end the legacy program as well.
Face:
I think you’re being a bit unfair to Bush. I’ve never seen him say he pulled himself up from his own boostraps. In fact, I’ve seen him specifically acknowledge that he had advantages growing up.
Do you have an example of what you are accusing Bush of?
by John:
I don’t know of one, either. Is nepotism or cronyism (with a pinch of bribery thrown in) legal? That’s what it amounts to in my eyes. But Bush’s appeal was not just about legality, anyway. Although he does make mention of constitutionality, he emphasized the “unfairness and divisiveness” of AA. Giving preference to a student because of an alumnus parent is not any more fair than giving points for being an ethnic minority, and the only reason why the issue isn’t as divisive as it is is because the recipients of such preferences tend to blend in well with the non-recipients.
To make his argument less eye-roll worthy, he should have just stuck to the constitutionality argument and left out the shit about fairness and what MLK would have wanted.
I agree with you, and as I said earlier, he could have scored some good points if he had attacked the legacy issue as well.
Does anyone know if there has been an attempt to challenge legacy in the courts? I’ve never heard of one.
So perpetuating injustice is fine, as long as you’re not hypocritical about it? Could Bush legitimately state that drinking and driving is bad, or should he keep quiet on that, too?
Jeff
Bush is giving his(and Rove’s) blessing to the continuing campaign to resegregate American education.
The message uncoded is “There is no place at the table for native Americans,Hispanics,and black Americans.” Instead of protecting the Flowers of white womanhood the code rallying cry will be protecting the little white children. A further insult is the smug co-opting of Dr. King’s words.
It’s been my experience that many people who put a lot of stock in the word “fair” during these kinds of discussions, often try to downplay the long-standing “unfairness” that is responsible for the way things are today. Not everyone, but a good many. Bush comes across as being one of them. But you know? I could be wrong.
BTW, I don’t think race-based preferences are the greatest thing in the world, and there are more sound arguments in favor of scraping it than keeping it. But I do believe the issue of racial disparity that exists in colleges today goes a lot deeper than simple economics.
And a lot of others downplay the tremendous progress that has been made over the past 150 years, the last 35 or so in particular.
Very true - there’s a significant cultural aspect to the performance gap between whites and non-whites. There’s a problem of illegitimacy, and a problem of a culture that considers success to be a betrayal of one’s roots. These are problems that must be addressed at the source, rather than masked with proverbial duct tape at the college level.
Jeff
Based on what I heard on the news this morning, being 1/8th minority is all it takes to qualify for their minority status. So if great granddaddy was black, hispanic or native american, you get extra credit.
I will tell you why I am opposed to these special admission standards: The best qualified should be admitted, period. If I want to hire a lawyer, don’t i deserve to get the best available? Why should I settle for one that was admitted based on qualifications other than ability? I should think that minorities should oppose these practices as it inevitibly will call into question whether they are qualified to perform as well as others who were admitted solely based on academics.
Right. Black culture equates success with being anti-black. Of course. Funny how I never came across that particular black indoctrination while I was growing up in da hood, but I’ll take your word for it.
One would hope, but I don’t think the real world works this way. People tend to support initiatives that favor them, fairness be damned. If you proposed a measure that all people named Bob should be exempt from taxes, you’d probably see a very vocal pro-Bob lobbying group pop up to support it.
Jeff
I assume Texican meant academic success was seen as anti-black. This is a widespread belief. E.g., from a review of John H. McWhorter’s book, *Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America
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