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If you had to include a photo you could cloak yourself in a veil and claim some sort of muslim modesty prevents you from having your photo taken. That's the best way to throw a monkey wrench into the system, start filling it with bogus info. The diversity lobby lives another day --actually another quarter century-- and the smugness on the left is hard to handle. First, the unhappiest people of all are Democratic presidential candidates denied a base-energizing decisive turn in the law. Since everyone on the left is proclaiming victory today, it will be hard to proclaim a threat to racial progress as we know it in a year. They will try, of course, but yesterday's statement from the White House on the value of diversity mixed with the hope of eventual color-blindness is the perfect response and reflects the center of American opinion on affirmative action in higher education. As with the race-in-redistricting cases, these decisions begin the narrowing, not the widening of the use of race in a specific context. And as Eugene also handily noted, footnote 23 in the undergraduate opinion puts private universities on notice that the use of systems like the one struck down yesterday would violate Title VI. This will come as a shock to many cloistered admissions offices with ivy-covered walls. It is possible that there will be significantly less discrimination next year than last year as a result of the rulings. Incrementalism is never rewarding, especially when the court is on a long road back from a destructive dance with widespread race consciousness. But it seems the Court is still on the right road, though perhaps moving at a pace designed less to win it friends than to keep all Americans committed to the process of case-by-case understanding of the imperatives of the Constitution. Forty-five percent of Berkeley's freshman class, but only 12 percent of California's populace, consists of Asian Americans. By a 5-4 decision, it affirmed the race-based policy of the University's law school. By a 6-3 decision, it struck down a similar policy for undergraduate admissions. Bollinger) the Court issued six different opinions among the nine Justices. Bollinger), it issued perhaps its all-time record, seven opinions in one case. Despite that large number of opinions, some of which are remarkably hostile toward one another, the bottom line conclusion of these two cases is clear - affirmative action is dead in American universities in no more than 25 years. The Admissions Office there awarded 20 points automatically to any applicant who was a member of a "disadvantaged minority," which meant African-Americans, Hispanics, or Native Americans. Admission to the university generally required 100 points out of a possible 150. By contrast, the rare student who achieved a perfect score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test received only 5 points for that. One racial group, Asian Americans, received no points, because historically students from that group outperform Caucasian students in academics and in qualifications for admission. It also meant that applicants not from those racial groups, but far better qualified academically, were refused admission. Led by Chief Justice Rehnquist, six Justices had no difficulty concluding that this amounted to a quota system, which the Court had condemned in the Bakke decision a quarter century ago, and agreed that the undergraduate admission system - and anything like it in any other public college or university - was unconstitutional. In the Grutter case, the Admissions Office looked at every one of the 3,500 or so applicants for a freshman class of about 350 students. Justice O'Connor wrote the Opinion of the Court approving this system, joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer. In both cases, the University of Michigan asserted that it had a legitimate educational purpose of "diversity" in the student body. It said that students learn not only from their professors but from one another, and diversity is essential to that purpose. The University never defined how many students made up a "critical mass," because that would appear to be a quota, which was clearly illegal. Chief Justice Rehnquist, in a particularly cutting dissent, used the University's own admissions figures to demonstrate that the "critical mass" for African American students was more than twice the critical mass for Hispanics and four times the critical mass for Native Americans. And all of the plaintiffs in both of these cases were denied admission though they had credentials which would have gotten them in for certain, had they been members of a disadvantaged minority. This factual finding was not questioned by any of the Justices in either of the cases. Has the Supreme Court turned schizophrenic, approving racial discrimination in one case but rejecting it in the other? For undergraduates, the advantage for certain students was absolute and solely race-based. Every member of the target race got the advantage, without any consideration of whether it was appropriate. However, for law school applicants the advantage was individually considered. For example, a child of Cliff and Clair Huxtable (the Cosby family on TV), would get no advantage - that child of a doctor and a lawyer, attending good schools in good neighborhoods, would be expected to perform at the same level as any Caucasian or Asian American student. Some readers might ask at this point whether this means less racial discrimination, but not an end to discrimination. Some might agree with the dissent in the law school case, that this is still a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The opinions are relatively short and written in plain English. There is a critical point in the law school case not mentioned in any of the press reports this writer has seen and heard. That leads to the ultimate conclusion that affirmative action, even in the limited form accepted in one case today, will be abolished as unconstitutional. I actually do have a black ancestor, a Revolutionary War soldier from Rhode Island who was the illegitimate son of a slave trader and one of his female slaves. He married a white woman and since then his descendants have always been white by culture and appearance. I wonder if they are ready for an influx of blue eyed African-Americans. For that matter, can descendants of the Boers claim African-American status? After all, ALL people are supposed to come from Africa originally (maybe 2 million or more years ago) Ask Dr. Jack 86 11 posted on 06/24/2003 9:55:18 PM PDT by 87 btcusn 88 Post Reply | 89 Private Reply | 90 To 3 | 91 View Replies To: SickOfItAll An open minded reading of all the opinons in the U. Mich Law School case reveals the Supremes begging somebody to bring a lawsuit based on intra-minority discrimination. Is there no Filipina that was refused admission somewhere to make room for a Latina that would be willing to go to court? In 25 years, we suspect that denying habeas corpus will no longer be required. In 25 years, we expect that the First Amendment will apply to everyone. Next month, we feel that anti-trust laws can be fully enforced. On Wednesdays, the Constitution does not bar cruel and unusual punishment. Every third Friday during the summer months, it will be OK to yell fire in a crowded movie theater. But, in 25 years, presumably, the Constitution will revert to something more reminiscent of the actual text. In 25 years, my daughter will be just about the right age to go to law school. If she applies 24 years from now, according to the Supreme Court, it will be OK for the University of Michigan to hold my daughter to higher academic standards than it applies to upper-class Hispanics, blacks and Native Americans (assuming that list doesn't grow), but in 26 years O'Connor "expects" that somehow the Constitution will be clear: no more racial discrimination. Doesn't anybody see what a pernicious and horrendous argument that is? If you haven't guessed, my daughter is a half Korean Honor Student. Her personal Purpose in Life: to destroy the grade curve. Half of her teachers despise her as she cuts them no slack and publicly calls them out for stupidi...
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