"By any reckoning, this constitutes the use of hiring preferences," Justice Arthur G. Scotland wrote in the 3-0 opinion.

Gee, what an understatement.
This is good news

Great news, great post.
BUMP

The land of fruit and nuts coming back from the brink...

Sounds to me like it was Caslifornia voters who did the gutting. The judges just refused to interfere.

But of course one cannot expect today's "journalists" to understand the way the American government is supposed to work.

These are only a few of the programs that disciminate. The state - and local governments - still have a long way to go to clean up their acts.

Good news for we conservatives who, contrary to the lunatics of the left, are not the ones who are the bigots. We see people as individuals, judge them as individuals and hold them accountable as individuals.

Wouldn't it be nice if the Bush admin had as much commitment to equal rights as these California judges?

Where do I go to kick off a counter suit for (by now at least thrty years of) discrimination based on my lack of skin color and perhaps somewhat bland English derived diet?

Did I mention that I am not black, not brown, not yellow, not red, and not particuarly concerned about being white?

Did I mention the civil service guy who politely told me to stop trying?

Did I mention losing half the value of my (very first and to this day..) home durng the Rodney King festivities?

OK, so it's and old story, I'm an old guy and I'm glad the madness might soon be over ...
But I sure miss the bene's that I earned and someone else got.

We have this odd situation that the judiciary in California is conservative, and the elected officials solidly of the liberal orthodoxy. Sort of the reciprocal of what obtains in Florida. The American political scene is endlessly fascinating to study, in part because of our incredibly complex political system. The combinations and permutations to study are endless, a vertitable laboratory of democracy, and anti-democracy, in action.

Congratulations to Ward Connerly! That man is a leader for social justice. Imagine, he takes the Declaration and the Constitution seriously.

Yes it surely was the voters, but the institutions in this state (colleges and some socialist city governments) apparently have to be bitch slapped with a 2x4 to get them to stop trying to find a way around the will of the people, and start obeying the law!

This is good news It would be good news, except that we cannot trust the state government to follow the law. This case shouldn't have been necessary, nor should the one in San Jose. Both cases happened because instead of following the law, the government has been Clinton-parsing their programs so as to produce the same effects without seeming to violate the letter of the law. They will continue to do this. Three years from now, we will read what looks like same news story, about another judge striking down yet another cleverly-worded end run around this law. This crap will never stop.

And boy does it drive the liberals crazy, as short a journy as that may have been!

I object to your use of the term "Negroes."

I prefer "American," thank you.

"Nearly five years after California voters approved Proposition 209 banning affirmative action, a state appeals court Tuesday declared invalid a host of race- and gender-based government hiring programs."

Well now, welcome to the future.
Considering ,where this is ocurring, might this not be considered, "a sign"?

California has always been thought of as innovators, the "first" on such lofty matters; when in 2001?
They're in fact, the last.

An amazing juxtapostion in *just* my lifetime.

Victory!

Now, on to Washington D.C.!

Cheers,

Richard F.

by Armstrong Williams

April 4, 2001

The slippery slope of affirmative action

The U.S. Supreme Court ignited furious debate in op-ed sections across the country last week when they agreed to revisit a 1995 affirmative action case in which Adarand Constructors Inc. sued the U.S. Department of Transportation for awarding a lucrative contract to a minority-owned company, despite the fact that they were outbid.

The contract was awarded as part of a government program designed to offer minority-owned businesses special help. The rationale being that businesses with 51 percent minority ownership are inherently disadvantaged. Adarand charged that the policy amounted to reverse racism.

To some degree, the Supreme Court agreed. In a move that sent shock waves through the civil rights community, the justices set strict standards for race-based government action.

Or, as Justice Scalia put it: "government can never have a compelling interest in Page IV discriminating on the basis of race in order to make up for past racial discrimination in the opposite direction. Under the Constitution, there can be no such thing as either a creditor or a debtor race. We are just one race in the eyes of government."

Affirmative-action advocates, many of whom feared that the decision would foretell a new chilliness between the government and their cause, ferociously contested everything about this decision. The wagons were quickly circled and a chow line of racial prophets began toting a similar tune, best surmised by Justice Brennan's own famous invocations on race-based action: Affirmative action was "designed to break down old patterns of racial segregation and hierarchy ... to open employment opportunities for Negroes in occupations which have been traditionally closed to them. ... To break down old patterns of racial segregation and hierarchy."

For obvious reasons, the racial prophets neglected to mention that when Justice Brennan uttered these words in 1979, he never intended affirmative action to become a permanent plan.

Still, affirmative-action advocates continue to invoke Justice Brennan's eloquent words. But, in an odd way, their defense of affirmative action as an absolute truth may lead them down a slippery slope. Is affirmative action, in fact, an absolute right? Should perfectly competent adults be judged on the fact that their great-great-grandparents may have been slaves? Should full-grown, capable adults blame the missed opportunities of their lives on the slavery that transpired centuries ago? If affirmative action is an absolute and unwavering right, then the answer to these questions is yes.

In 1995, the Supreme Court asserted a different perspective: That while the government is not disqualified from issuing race-based action, it ought not presume victim status for all members of a fixed group. In the absence of any compelling evidence that minorities are actually earning less because their great-great-grandparents were slaves, race-based action ought to be subject to at least some scrutiny. After all, while the laws may be an instrument of civil rights, they are not an instrument of social retribution. (see Nazi Germany, Islamic fundamentalists experiments, Salem witch hunts).

As it turned out, the hubbub about how the 1995 Supreme Court decision would send minority businesses careening into a black hole proved a bit overstated. In fact, according to The U.S. Census Bureau, the number of minority-owned businesses rose 60 percent since the decision. It seems the presumption that minorities are inherently disadvantaged was widely exaggerated. Go figure.

As the Supreme Court prepares to revisit the 1995 case, those activists who are the most vigorous defenders of our civil rights, remain hamstrung by the unwavering belief that affirmative action is an absolute right. It would be nice if our racial prophets didn't typecast their followers as absolute victims of a centuries old institution. Instead, they have chosen a far more precarious position: That of passive destroyers of any hope we might have to move beyond those initial steps taken with the civil rights legislation of the '60s.