Selected
Article:
Affirmative
action is outdated
BY DONALD V. ADDERTON
Once
upon a time in my America, there was the good old-fashioned
achievement ethic of a just reward for effort extended.
Certainly there was a badly skewed performance field, especially
if one's skin reflected a darker hue. Nevertheless, some
determined people of color managed to traverse its subjugated
obstacles.
But for those who found themselves hopelessly trapped in
mediocrity by bigotry and institutional racism, the federal
government, through executive order, created affirmative
action in 1965 as an industrial and academic enhancement.
Let's not get the idea that affirmative action was created
solely to level the performance field-because there was
a lot of white guilt at play. The nation was facing growing
racial angst fueled by a growing unrest in urban centers.
As those urban hot spots exploded, media found themselves
hamstrung in covering the breaking story, because few mainstream
print and broadcast outlets had black journalists on their
editorial staffs.
So 38 years ago, affirmative action made perfect sense from
a business standpoint, because commerce was cutting itself
out of a sizable market since the workforce did not reflect
the human mosaic of those communities.
Now affirmative action should be put out to pasture like
yesterday's stale headlines, because it has satisfied its
mission of diversity and inclusion. What was given now has
to be earned.
Affirmative action was never intended to be another government
entitlement for blacks, yet that is exactly what the liberals
and civil rights organization have made it out to be.
The battleground-not the one in Iraq-has been staked around
a dual admissions policy at the University of Michigan and
its law school.
At the law school, so-called special preferences have been
afforded to minority students since 1992. Then two white
female students-one rejected at the law school and the other
at the university's undergraduate college-sued, alleging
that their exclusion was unconstitutional. The Bush administration
agreed and joined the lawsuit.
The Michigan admissions policy gives 20 points-out of 180
points-for ethnicity. While diversity is beneficial to any
social landscape, in college it comes down to satisfying
individual performance. I don't see being a specific hue
as a necessary performance variable.
On April 1, when much of the nation was preoccupied with
"Iraqi Freedom," the nine justices of the U.S.
Supreme Court heard two hours of oral arguments, which is
going a long way in determining whether people stand on
their own academic merit or be forever wedded to artificial-and
racially unfair-government-supported entitlements.
In listening to the taped replay on C-SPAN over the weekend,
I found the spirited judicial repartee between the justices
and the litigants absolutely invigorating.
From my vantage point, the affirmative-action scheme that
we know is going to undergo a radical change, if not outrightly
ruled unconstitutional.
In 1978 in the landmark Bakke case, a divided high court
ruled that racial quotas were unconstitutional, but waffled
on the issue of race as being one of many "plus"
factors in college admissions.
Now in the Michigan case, Justice Antonin Scalia cut right
to the heart of the matter when he noted that the University
of Michigan had a created "an elite law school"
and now wanted to advance the diversity quotient in disguising
its admissions policy.
"Now, having created this situation by making that
decision," Scalia said, "it then turns around
and says, 'oh, we have a compelling state interest in eliminating
this racial imbalance that we ourselves have created.'"
Scalia had a simple solution to the issue, and he offered
from the bench: "If Michigan really cares enough about
that racial imbalance, why doesn't it do as many other state
law schools do? Lower the standards, and not have a flagship
elite law school."
And that is exactly what time it is, and the University
of Michigan wants the Supreme Court to bail it out by ruling
that it is constitutionally acceptable to discriminate if
diversity is the ultimate goal, which is nothing but legal
subterfuge.
Lost in the liberal distortions is the objective of earning
one's way, because what affirmative action has been remanufactured
into is reversing bias to the detriment of those it was
created to help. DBJ
(Donald
V. Adderton is the editor of the Delta Democrat Times in
Greenville.)
