NYT Lies about Bush Affirmative Action Brief ("The Greenhouse Effect")

Last Wednesday President Bush made a tough speech arguing against racial preferences and announcing that his administration would weigh in on behalf of plaintiffs challenging the University of Michigan's admissions policies in a pair of Supreme Court cases. On Thursday Solicitor General Theodore Olson filed the briefs in the cases of Gratz v. Bollinger (undergraduate) and Grutter v. Bollinger (law school). On Friday the New York Times published a "news analysis" in which Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse claimed that "the reality of [the brief's] legal argument diverged substantially from the rhetoric of the president's prime-time statement." The administration, Greenhouse suggests, pulled a fast one on its conservative supporters.

"Diversity" was a late starter in the Affirmative Action follies. Initially, when Blacks were given preferences in school admissions, the obvious reason was to help those particular students. Assuming a finite number of available spots, giving a less-qualified but racially desirable applicant the place that would belong to a more-qualified but racially undesirable applicant raised some serious Constitutional issues, particularly with the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

So, the University of Michigan, among other entities, decided to attempt a backdoor access. By claiming that "diversity," i.e., having a "critical mass" of students of various ethnicities was vital to the educational process, they could then argue that the preferential treatment was not only for the benefit of the minority students who were favorably affected, but was really necessary and thus beneficial to the welfare of all the students, of all ethnicities.

This "diversity" argument has been offered without a serious study on the matter, appealing to the feel-good areas of our brain. Nearly all of the Blacks admitted to the more elite colleges and law schools under Affirmative Action are middle to upper class. It is the very, very rare poor African American who can learn enough in the horrible inner-city schools to gain admission to these schools even with Affirmative Action. It is one thing to take a kid with 1150 SAT scores and move him into a school where 1400 is the average. It is quite another to attempt this with a kid who has 850 and who labored under a poor curriculum, poorly taught by weak teachers.

So, given the fact that it is middle class or higher Blacks being admitted, and given the fact that Blacks vote at over 9 to 1 for democrats, what, exactly, is the different aspect of life these students will bring to the table, that will help "diversify" the school? To my mind, they will have pretty much the same world view as most of their fellow students. The big difference is the amount of melanin they have. Does this justify denying more qualified, but paler applicants their Constitutional rights?

It was as if the administration had filed a brief denouncing abortion without asking the court to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Nothing inconsistent about that, nor would there be anything inconsistent about asking the court to uphold the Second Amendment without overturning Miller.

Roe v. Wade ruled that states had near-blanket authority to restrict abortions in the "third trimester". In practice, however, state bans on "partial-birth abortion" have been routinely struck down. Allowing states to ban partial birth abortion would be entirely consistent with Roe v. Wade, and yet is not current judicial policy.

Likewise, the Court in U.S. v. Miller merely ruled that an indictment for possessing a forbidden weapon couldn't be quashed without showing that the weapon was of a type suitable for use in a well-functioning militia; for the court to rule against most firearm bans would be entirely consistent with the Miller ruling.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.