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Ever since California voters banned the use of racial preferences in government and education in 1996, the University of California has tried to engineer admissions systems that would replicate the effect of explicit racial quotas while appearing color-blind. To some observers, the legality of those efforts has long been suspect, but proof of wrongdoing has been hard to come by. Now a professor who sat on UCLA's committee on undergraduate admissions is charging that the school is deliberately taking race into account when deciding which students to admit. The university has refused to give him access to the data to...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday it was "unacceptable" that there were so few black people like herself in the US diplomatic corps. "I want to see a Foreign Service that looks as if black Americans are part of this great country," Rice told a gathering of black colleges and universities in Washington. "I have lamented that I can go into a meeting at the Department of State," said Rice, the second black person to become secretary of state after her predecessor Colin Powell. "And, as a matter of fact, I can go into a whole day of meetings...

In these times I am rarely surprised by most notions put forth by political pundits. But I must admit to being taken aback by the suppositions of Terry Michael in "Obama as the End of Identity Politics as We've Known Them" (Reason magazine, 6/10/08). Michael appears to believe that under an Obama presidency, we soon will be on "the beginnings of a journey away from the Great Society mind-set of the Democratic Party" and on a course that will put "the Jesse Jacksons, the Al Sharptons, and the white identity politics liberals out of business." Michael envisions the end of...

ABC News' Teddy Davis and Kevin Kilbane Report: During a "This Week" interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos John McCain reversed himself on affirmative action and endorsed for the first time a proposed state ballot measure which would end race and gender-based affirmative action in his home state of Arizona. "I support it," McCain declared when asked about the referendum. "I do not believe in quotas... I have not seen the details of some of these proposals. But I’ve always opposed quotas."

Standards aren’t about generating revenue. Motorcycle officers in Colorado Springs should each be writing a minimum of 11 tickets a day, and their counterparts in patrol cars should issue at least one... But these aren't quotas, Police Chief Richard Myers said. During an impromptu media briefing Friday, Myers described them as guidelines that help supervisors keep track of their officers' job performance ... Ticket quotas - feared and despised by drivers everywhere - demand that officers meet goals or face mandatory discipline, Myers told reporters. That's not the case here, he said. "Police officers are paid for by taxpayers, and...

For decades, critics of affirmative action have contended elite colleges, in their zeal to form racially diverse student bodies, have discriminated against top white applicants. In a twist on that long-running feud, federal authorities are investigating an allegation that Princeton University discriminates against Asian-American applicants by accepting black and Hispanic students with lower entrance scores. At the heart of both arguments lies the question of whether and how colleges should consider race when choosing a class. The Supreme Court has ruled race can be a factor in the process, though racial quotas have long been declared unconstitutional. Critics say admission...

IT'S WELL KNOWN that innovation is the lifeblood of the Massachusetts economy. At every period of stagnation or decline over the past 400 years, someone's bright ideas have turned the tide. Too little valued, however, is the central role played by minorities and women in helping Massachusetts thrive. This morning, the state's political, business, and civic leaders will spotlight the contribution of a diverse workforce to the region's success, and challenge each other to do more. Much more. A 2006 report by the Boston History and Innovation Collaborative found that of 64 game-changing innovations in Massachusetts - from wiping out...

He sympathizes -- but says capitalists are the real culprits The current president, George W. Bush, is not a gifted orator. Oratory seems to be one of those things no one thinks matters much in a president -- until it goes missing. Those who dislike the current president may cite any of a dozen policy issues. But they rarely fail to mention how they cringe when that marble-mouth begins to speak. Freshman Sen. Barack Obama is campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president on a platform of "change." One big change under an Obama presidency, make no mistake, would be...

The racial dimension of Barack Obama's electability problem is now apparent, but no prominent Democrat dares discuss it openly. Similarly expect no discussion of the subject in the major media. The white working class vote I am not referring to the ongoing and intense discussion of The Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Wright is a separate problem for Obama. Whether Obama has been, or will be, permanently weakened by his long and close association with Wright, or has soared above it with his Philadelphia speech, is not the subject of these thoughts. Something much simpler than the answer to that question has...

Dr. F. Javier Cevallos, president of Kutztown University, a publicly funded college located in Pennsylvania, is facing new pressure to step down from his post amid criticism from the university’s faculty union. The union’s leadership — which is comprised of a 10-member executive board — is planning to call for a vote of no-confidence in Cevallos later this week, claiming that he has mismanaged the day-to-day operations of the university, leading to an increase in class size, cramped office space and poor building conditions across campus. In addition, they charge that the morale among faculty is at an all-time low....

(Political Animal) MITT AND THE MUSLIMS....Via Democracy Arsenal, here's what Mitt Romney told Mansoor Ijaz recently about the possibility of appointing a Muslim to his cabinet: "I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that "jihadism" is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today. He answered, '...based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at...

A prominent affirmative-action critic is targeting Nebraska as one of five states where he hopes to get voters to decide in November 2008 to end the use of racial, ethnic and gender preferences by public colleges and state and local agencies. Ward Connerly, founder of the American Civil Rights Institute, has begun an effort to put an initiative on the Nov. 4, 2008, ballot in Nebraska that would ban the state from granting preferential treatment to people based on race, gender, color, ethnicity or national origin. The initiative would affect the areas of public employment, public education and public contracting....

The problem of the ELCA, and of all mainline Protestant denominations, is the problem of any large, wealthy, traditional organization that has lost track of its mission. The ELCA is like Phillip Morris, which now calls itself Altria. It was built on a product of which it is now heartily ashamed. For Altria, of course, the product was tobacco. For the ELCA, it's the Cross of Christ.

In an article headlined, "White Police Chief Could Upset a Balance in Newark," The New York Times reports that Newark Mayor Cory A. Booker "removed the word ‘acting’ from the title of his police chief, Anthony Campos, a Portuguese-American who, along with Police Director Garry F. McCarthy, leads the city’s 1,300-member police force."The Times worries that, "In a city like Newark, where the majority of the population is black and race issues bubble just below the surface, the decision to place two white men at the helm of the city’s Police Department could threaten the good will and unity that...

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer shook his head. He rolled his eyes. He even grimaced once or twice as he listened to Chief Justice John Roberts read the majority opinion in the school diversity case on Thursday. As the high court ended its term, Breyer showed obvious disappointment with the opinion. For liberal members of the court, it was not the only time this year their emotions surfaced during normally placid readings of the court's opinions.

June 25, 2007 -- A Brooklyn mother and father got the shock of their lives when school officials informed them their brilliant 11-year-old girl was denied admission to an elite public school - solely because she's of Indian descent. "I feel bad because I would have gotten in if I was white," Nikita Rau lamented over her failed bid to attend the Mark Twain School, IS 239, in Coney Island, a magnet school for gifted students. It turns out Mark Twain - unlike all but one other city public school - admits students according to racial quotas established in 1974...

Bill Carr, acting deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel policy, expressed hope today during a telephone conference with veterans’ group representatives that a provision in the stalled immigration bill that would have allowed some undocumented aliens to join the military won’t stall as well. The Army recruited 5,101 active-duty soldiers in May, 399 short of its 5,500-soldier goal, the Defense Department recently announced. The Navy and Air Force, however, both met their May goals, with 2,709 and 2,451 recruits, respectively. The Marine Corps exceeded its May goal by 34 percent, signing on 2,225 new Marines. The provision at stake...

The state has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit by requiring Boston, Brookline, and 18 other cities and towns to offer police and firefighter jobs to minority applicants who took civil service exams that a judge later found were discriminatory. The state would also pay a total of up to $1.45 million in back pay. The agreement, which will be presented to a federal judge for approval Wednesday, calls for the hiring of 66 minority candidates statewide, including 26 in Boston, who scored high on police or fire exams between 2002 and 2005, but lost out to higher-scoring white candidates....

As the Senate is mulling the details of a compromise immigration bill hammered together by the odd couple of Sens. Edward Kennedy and Jon Kyl, and as members of Congress hear from their constituents over the Memorial Day recess, it may be worthwhile to put the issue in historical context. For most of our history, the United States had no restrictions on immigration at all. I am told that my Canadian-born grandfather was a "nickel immigrant": He took the five-cent ferry from Windsor, Ontario, north to Detroit roundabout 1896. This situation resulted from America's strong demand for labor, coupled with...

Something in the crowd made Shirley Wilcher wonder. As a college graduate in the early 1970s, her black classmates were like herself — born in the United States, to American parents. But at an alumni reunion at Mount Holyoke College last year, she saw something different and asked for admissions data to prove it. "My suspicions were confirmed," said Wilcher, now the executive director of the American Association for Affirmative Action. She found a rise in the number of black students from Africa and the Caribbean, and a downturn in admissions of native blacks like her. A study released this...

When she was hired as general manager of KPFK (90.7 FM), Eva Georgia appeared to be a walking trophy of progressive brownie points: a black lesbian with an almost cinematic personal story of facing persecution as a leftist radio activist in South Africa. In the summer of 2002, after highly charged internal struggles at KPFK’s parent network, Pacifica — firings, lawsuits, listener rebellions — Georgia told the Los Angeles Times she would run the station by respecting the “process of democracy and transparency.” But by the fall of 2002, Georgia’s staffers were in open revolt, claiming that democracy and transparency...

A town is being stripped of scores of public sector jobs because its residents are "too white and British". The Prison Service is relocating the posts to a nearby city where there are more ethnic minorities. The incredible decision, which could lead to an investigation by the Commission for Racial Equality, was disclosed yesterday in a leaked official letter. It is the first known case of its kind, but MPs warned similar moves could secretly be taking place across the country as civil servants are under enormous pressure from ministers to boost the number of ethnic minorities working in the...

US-style quotas needed to recruit black police By John Steele, Crime Correspondent Last Updated: 4:54pm GMT 27/02/2007 Imposing US-style race recruitment quotas on police forces - which are currently illegal in British law - may be the only way to meet Government targets for the number of black and ethnic minority officers in the service, one of Britain’s most senior police officers warned yesterday. Black officers still represent a very small number of police Peter Fahy, the chief of Cheshire and spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) on race and diversity, said that at the current rate...

A poll of almost 10,000 Americans conducted in January shows there is no consensus on the topic of Black History Month. The survey, conducted by MSN and Zogby International, found that 43 percent of Americans believe setting one month of the year to focus on a racially defined observance is a token gesture, while 39 percent say that is an opportunity to raise awareness of African-American history and accomplishments (18 percent are not sure). Is it, as one scholar wrote in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, "simply a guilt-driven public relations scam to pacify blacks who otherwise receive...

The Congressional Black Caucus has asked Democratic leaders to hire more minorities to work for House committees and on lawmakers' staffs, saying the dearth of diversity on Capitol Hill is a problem. In a letter to House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi and the leaders of the Democratic Steering Committee, the CBC said the party must increase the number of minorities working for committees and subcommittees, which will be controlled by Democrats. The hiring of black, Hispanic, Asian and other minority staffers has "been a major problem" for years, said outgoing CBC Chairman Melvin Watt, North Carolina Democrat. "All you have to...

On Nov. 7, voters in Michigan passed Proposition 2, which prohibits state and local government from discriminating against or giving preferential treatment to--in the language of the ballot--"groups or individuals based on their race, gender, ethnicity or national origin for public employment, education or contracting purposes." The new law is supposed to take effect on Dec. 22. But it seems that affirmative action is not over yet. University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman apparently believes that the democratic process is valid only when the voters agree with her. On Nov. 8, Ms. Coleman vowed that she would "immediately begin...

Should there be quotas to help ensure women more fully participate in politics? Yes No

He cites the defense of affirmative action in the NY Times magazine which deified Patrick Chavis, who had been admitted to the University of California medical school under its racial quota system. An OB/GYN in inner-city Los Angeles, Chavis was hailed as living proof that affirmative action was good policy. ...Chavis had his medical license revoked for gross malpractice. He had endangered the lives of his patients... and the NY Times magazine was completely silent about the story, and the LA Times covered it...in the most ambiguous terms.

The Supreme Court is considering oral arguments in two cases that pit school choice against school desegregation. The high court’s ruling, expected in Spring 2007, will determine whether a public school system can use a race-based formula to promote diversity at individual schools at the expense of individual students. Or to put the issue in stark, black-and-white terms: Is the state’s interest in improving the quality of the education minority kids receive compelling enough to justify destroying the quality of life of white kids – and the quality of the education they receive? On one side, are white parents in...

When Crystal Meredith moved to Louisville, Ky., and tried to enroll her 5-year-old son in kindergarten a couple blocks from their house, officials pointed her elsewhere, to a school that was a 90-minute bus ride away. A school that was closer to their home, officials told her, couldn't accept another white student like Joshua that year. Meredith, a single mother, wasn't looking for a fight. After driving Joshua across town to school every day, she decided she'd bypassed the closer school long enough. She sued and is now at the center of the most significant legal battle over race to...

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court is diving into a debate over school diversity that is as old as Reconstruction-era efforts to integrate blacks into the mainstream and as new as the 5:35 a.m. start time on some buses carrying students across town in Louisville, Ky. At a time of rising de facto segregation in public schools, the high court is to hear arguments Monday on lawsuits by parents in Louisville and Seattle who are challenging policies that use race to help determine where children go to school. The school policies are designed to keep schools from segregating along the same...

After the votes were counted on election night, there were lots of gracious concession statements by losing candidates thanking their supporters, offering to work with the winners and paying tribute to the virtues of democracy. Then there was Mary Sue Coleman, who was having none of this. The day after Michigan's citizens voted to ban the use of racial and gender preferences by public institutions, the president of the University of Michigan gave an embittered speech telling them to take a long walk off a short pier. Her message was that the school would do "whatever it takes" to delay,...

State police brass are pressuring troopers to dole out speeding tickets instead of warnings in a cash-grabbing mandate cops say is the closest the department has ever come to setting quotas. The pilot program, designed to monitor troopers’ daily activities, lays out a new system that rewards troopers if they give out a ticket as opposed to a verbal or written warning. Under the program, troopers get no extra pay but are credited with 1.5 hours on their daily time sheet for writing a ticket, one hour for a written warning and just a half-hour for a verbal warning. All...

Just as California voters did a decade ago, Michigan voters on Tuesday approved a controversial measure to ban affirmative action programs in public employment and university admissions. The Michigan measure, called Proposal 2, was backed by Ward Connerly, the former University of California regent who also backed California's law, Proposition 209, approved in 1996. Unofficial final election results today said 58.1 percent voted "yes" on Proposal 2, with 41.9 percent against. University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman said she would investigate an immediate legal challenge to the proposal, which officials said would severely hamper efforts to ensure a diverse...

As one activist described it, the reaction was disbelief when the African American community learned that this year's freshman class at UCLA included only 96 blacks. Akili, who goes by one name, told an audience at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church how he tried to fathom the news — 96 out of about 4,800 freshmen. "What? That can't be," he recalled saying to himself. Heads throughout the meeting room nodded, as if recalling their own similar responses. Disbelief, along with anger and disappointment, were the dominant themes voiced when about 250 people gathered recently for a town hall meeting...

Spurred partly by campus and community concern over dwindling numbers of African American students, UCLA is moving toward a major shift in its admissions process, perhaps as early as this fall. The changes in admissions, pushed by acting Chancellor Norman Abrams and several faculty leaders, would be the most dramatic at UCLA in at least five years. They would move the Westwood campus toward a more "holistic" admissions model — much like UC Berkeley's — in which students' achievements are viewed in the context of their personal experiences.

Christians are Jews' best friends Toronto Sun Sat, August 12, 2006 By MICHAEL COREN One of the most difficult things about spending time in Israel is returning home, as I did two weeks ago. As dangerous as life might be in the Jewish state at the moment, daily existence is layered in significance. Then it's back to North America, where the trivial is made to seem profound. I refer to Mel Gibson's drunken stupidity when he made various repugnant comments about Jewish people. As a Roman Catholic with three Jewish grandparents, and someone who worries every day about the...

The New York City Fire Department (FDNY) has changed its hiring requirements to boost the number of people of color and women. During a press conference at a city firehouse on Monday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the new hiring guidelines. The first step is to reduce the number of college credits it requires of potential recruits from 30 to 15, or six months of work experience. The FDNY for many years has been criticized for its lack of racial, ethnic and gender diversity in training classes and on the force itself. Critics say this stems from its...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Charlotte-Mecklenburg police supervisors offered prizes to officers who wrote the most traffic tickets during an eight-day period over the July Fourth holiday. Five officers from the department's North Division earned $10 gift certificates to Dick's Sporting Goods, although officials Wednesday couldn't say how many tickets were issued between July 1-8. Police Chief Darrel Stephens and Maj. John Diggs, who oversees the division, said they were not aware of the contest until they were contacted Wednesday by The Charlotte Observer. "I don't think there is anything inherently evil or bad about rewarding officers for putting in extra effort...

Not at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Of nearly 10,000 black students who graduated from Los Angeles County high schools this past June, just 1 percent will attend UCLA, according to NPR's Morning Edition. Why? For many, the culprit is Proposition 209, the 1996 anti-affirmative-action bill backed by former UC Regent Ward Connerly, which made it illegal to use race-based preferences in admissions, employment and contracting throughout the state. When Connerly's term ended in January 2005, his message was clear: Don't bring back affirmative action, according to Black Issues in Higher Education. UC may not be able to...

St. Paul's chief says the directive is to provide a standard to measure performance — not fill city coffers. But the union and drivers aren't happy. Let the meter expire, even for a minute or two, and there's a parking officer issuing a ticket. Park too close to a driveway or ignore a permit-only sign and again it's ticket time. If it seems like St. Paul aggressively enforces parking meters and rules, this might help explain why: To make sure the city's enforcement officers are working hard, police want each agent to write tickets for 55 violations a day. Parking...

<p>When Crystal Meredith of Louisville tried to enroll her young son in Bloom Elementary School, she was told he couldn't transfer out of Young Elementary, the school where he was already assigned.</p> <p>Why? Not because of his grades or interests. It was because he is white. As a federal district court later recounted the facts, he "was denied admittance because his transfer to Bloom would have had an adverse effect on Young's racial composition."</p>

survey asking Halifax teachers their sexual orientation drew fierce criticism yesterday, just weeks after the Halifax Regional School Board was singled out in a human rights case against a gay teacher. The “employee identification survey” is being handed out this week to all 8,000 employees of the school board, most of whom are teachers. They are being asked to list their names and employee numbers, and answer questions on their race and sexual orientation. The survey, the school board maintains, will help it to better understand the diversity of its work force and therefore allow the board to foster a...

SACRAMENTO -- A state agency won't use race anymore when awarding contracts. The California Department of Transportation made the decision because it could not show minorities suffered discrimination in contracting, Caltrans said. The department said it took the step early this week after a recent ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals set out that standard. Caltrans has had a goal of giving 10.5 percent of its federal contracting dollars to disadvantaged businesses. ...At stake is $5.1 billion for 1,400 transportation projects throughout California over the next five years. "Caltrans funds so many different projects around the state...

If the University of Wisconsin's diversity challenges were a pass-fail course, then "we failed," said Vicki Washington, UW System assistant vice president for multicultural affairs. "We have not yet achieved the goals of Plan 2008," she said in a presentation this morning, pointing to small successes over the last decade, but showing vast lingering gaps between the graduation rates of minorities and white students.UW System President Kevin Reilly said pre-college programs appear to be successful, but require more money that UW doesn't currently have. The Board of Regents this morning discussed the UW System's 10-year plan put into effect in...

What we have right now is unbridled open enrollment where anybody gets to go anywhere, anytime. So we've learned some hard lessons from 15 years of wide-open enrollment, and we're now putting some controls around open enrollment . . . because we're not comfortable with effects that unbridled open enrollment has created." - Boulder Deputy Superintendent Christopher King This honest yet extraordinary statement appeared in a News story this week about the latest attempt in Colorado at social engineering in pursuit of a "better" ethnic mix in schools. "Unbridled open enrollment." "Wide-open enrollment." What does King think he's describing, some...

YOU'RE a star, and you're unhappy with what's happening in the industry. So what do you do? Take to the streets and stage a protest! Celebrities in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea have been doing that as a means of bringing attention to various issues. Naturally, they get the desired publicity and the authorities are more inclined to be pressured into dealing with the matter. The latest protest staged in the region was by South Korean movie stars such as Jang Dong-gun earlier this year. The celebrities were incensed with the government's plans to reduce the annual screen quota of...

Just this week, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer paid a visit to his high school alma mater, Lowell High School in San Francisco. He took a tour of the school’s campus, which moved in 1962 from downtown San Francisco to its present Sunset District location, and then spent an hour taking questions from the school’s junior and senior classes. According to AP, Justice Breyer (Class of 1955) was treated like a “rock star” during his visit to the highly-selective school’s campus. Besides the change in location, Lowell High School has in recent years undergone an immense transformation of its student...

AUSTRALIA has been asked by a United Nations committee why it has not implemented quotas to increase the number of women in public and political positions. The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women was particularly concerned about women "who may be or are subject to multiple forms of discrimination, such (as) women belonging to ethnic minorities and immigrant women". In 2004 the committee reiterated its policy in favour of affirmative action. In its answer, Australia's submission firmly rejected the idea. It said that "using the merit principle to encourage skilled and talented women to contribute to this country's...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. President Bush on Friday turned down pleas to impose a quota on Chinese steel pipe imports despite concerns that steel- industry jobs in several states could be lost without new restrictions. Major U.S. manufacturers of standard pipe, which is used in sprinkler systems, air conditioning and fencing, said workers in eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania could lose their jobs if Bush did not accept a quota. Bush said in a statement released by the White House that a quota would hurt the economy because it would increase costs for consumers. He...