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September 25, 2003

Young Conservatives of Texas (YCT) = Racists

By Byron LaMasters

I'm sorry, but this just isn't funny. It's racist. There are ways to make political points. I'm all for a open and honest debate on affirmative action. I support affirmative action, but I can understand and respect a conservative arguement against it. But I'm sorry, I won't accept a blatantly racist ploy like this. The Dallas Morning News reports:

The sign said white males had to pay $1 for a cookie. White women: 75 cents. Hispanics: 50 cents. Blacks: a quarter.

The event Tuesday at Southern Methodist University was no PTA bake sale.

It was a conservative student group's attempt at making a political statement, and it caused such a stir that SMU shut it down after 45 minutes.

The Young Conservatives of Texas chapter ran its so-called affirmative action bake sale to protest the use of race or gender as a factor in college admissions. Conservative groups have held similar sales at colleges around the country since February.


The bake sale didn't raise much money, in case anyone cared:


For the record, the SMU sale was a flop, at least financially. The group ended up selling just three cookies, raising $1.50.


Excuse me while I laugh in their face.

Racists.

Posted by Byron LaMasters at September 25, 2003 01:17 AM | TrackBack


Comments

God damn Republicans. Always trying to take my cookies away.

Posted by: Jim D at September 25, 2003 01:31 AM

Gawd, Byron, your completely irrational response to their affirmative action analogy as being "racist" certainly makes their point.

Posted by: Mark Harden at September 25, 2003 07:14 AM

Back at UT the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance had a "feminist bake sale".

We charged $1 for guys to buy a cupcake and $0.71, accounting for the gender gap in wages.

Some passersby got really angry with it and said it was sexist. Most people thought it was funny and made a good point.

The YCT bake sale isn't so much racist as it is stupid. They fundamentally misrepresent Affirmative action.

Affirmative action isn't so much about lowering standards to give unqualified people a leg up (i.e. lowering the price of cookies for certain groups). Instead, it is about making sure everyone has opportunity to purchase cookies on a level playing field.

A more apt affirmative action bake sale would charge everyone a dollar for cookies, but make an effort to insure that the people who purchased cookies were a diverse group and representative of America's melting pot society.

Posted by: johnzep at September 25, 2003 09:38 AM

A more apt affirmative action bake sale would charge everyone a dollar for cookies, but make an effort to insure that the people who purchased cookies were a diverse group and representative of America's melting pot society.

But it would have to refuse a certain percentage of whites and Asians the right to buy a cookie...in order to ensure a "diversity" of customers.

Would that the "melting pot" was still a goal of our society...don't let any multiculti zealots catch you using that phrase.

Posted by: Mark Harden at September 25, 2003 10:24 AM

I stand by my position. This bake sale was racist. I understand what they were trying to point out, but the sale served to suggest that ALL minorities were recipients of affirmative action. It perpetuates negative attituides towards racial minorities and is inappropriate and racist.

Posted by: ByronUT at September 25, 2003 12:09 PM

Perhaps not all minorities benefit from Affirmative Action, a great many do, irrespective of whether or not they need a lift up to level the playing field. At U of M -- Ann Arbor, approved minorities (not Asians) recieved 20 points more towards admission, simply on the basis of their skin color. By contrast, a perfect SAT score got you 12 points. Why do middle class minorities who haven't faced discrimination need such blanket preferences? How is it not racist to grant such massive preferences on the basis of skin color alone? Pointing out the absurdity of the logic behind Affirmative Action as it is practiced now is in now way "racist." And, yes, I know, the SCOTUS struck down the U of M system for not being subtle enought, but so what. They are still allowed to use race as a key admissions criterion, so long as they make it less blatantly obvious.

Posted by: Sherk at September 25, 2003 12:26 PM

It perpetuates negative attituides towards racial minorities

This statement applies less to the bake sale than it does to Affirmative Action itself.

Posted by: Mark Harden at September 25, 2003 02:09 PM

I tried commenting with the trackback system, but it apparently didn't work. My comments can be found here: http://www.retrogrouch.net/mt/archives/000013.html

Libertarian wit, PBT, summed up the strategy well when he said: Accordingly, if one desires to rally a group that is not oppressed, one needs to carefully weave the threads of privilege into a cardigan of oppression...a nice cashmere cardigan to wear out to Augusta.

Posted by: retrogrouch at September 25, 2003 04:09 PM

Byron,

I stand by my position. This bake sale was racist. I understand what they were trying to point out, but the sale served to suggest that ALL minorities were recipients of affirmative action.

The bake sale didn't suggest that all minorities are beneficiaries of affirmative action, just those who seek to attend college and have certain basic qualifications. By way of analogy, a minority who didn't want baked goods, or couldn't afford even the reduced price, would not get a cookie. It fits quite well.

The point is that of those who attend college, only minorities receive a boost based upon their race. They don't need the same qualifications to get into certain schools, just as they didn't need the same amount of money to get a cookie from the YTC bake sale.

It isn't racist any more than affirmative action itself.

Posted by: Owen Courrèges at September 25, 2003 05:29 PM

My objection to the cookie sale is that it (like virtually all critiques of affirmative action) is totally ahistorical. Our lack of diversity on college campuses today stems from a history over roughly the first 200 years of our country's existence of slavery, segregation, and official discrimination against blacks and other groups.

Many American colleges, including Rice, the jewel of Texas higher eduation, were officially all-white until as recently as the mid-1960s.

I firmly believe that the way to counter what I consider offensive speech is with more speech, not by shutting down the offensive speech. Had I been at SMU, I would have put up a sign nearby that said something like the following:

IF BLACKS AND OTHER HISTORICALLY DISENFRANCHISED GROUPS HAD BEEN OFFICIALLY LOCKED OUT OF BUYING FOODS AT BAKERIES FOR 200 YEARS (AS WELL AS BEING LOCKED OUT OF UNIVERSITIES AND OTHER BENEFITS OF SOCIETY), DAMN RIGHT THEY DESERVE A DISCOUNT TODAY!

Posted by: Alan at September 26, 2003 10:34 AM

I also want to address the issue of the 20 points given for underrepresented minority status under the (now overturned) University of Michigan undergraduate admissions policy versus the maximum of 12 points for the SAT.

As illustrated in nice tabular form in the
January 27, 2003 issue of Newsweek magazine (p. 34), points were awarded for high school grade point average (GPA), standardized test scores (ACT or SAT I), high school quality, difficulty of curriculum, geography (i.e., where student is from), alumni/legacy status, essay quality, personal achievement, leadership and service, and various miscellaneous criteria of which students could receive credit only for one (socioeconomic disadvantage, underrepresented minority, men in nursing, scholarship athlete, and provost's discretion). A total score of 100 would gain a student admission.

What indeed got a lot of people "up in arms" was that a perfect SAT (12 points) was worth less than underrepresented-minority status (20 points).

I see things differently. I believe each applicant's academic portfolio should be looked at IN TOTO. By my count, this would yield a maximum of 110 points (80 for GPA, 12 for test scores, 10 for high school quality, and 8 for difficulty of curriculum). The value of 110 for academic factors obviously towers over the 20 points for underrepresented minority status.

To me, weighting standardized test scores to a maximum of 12 points within the overall academic portfolio (i.e., relative to high school GPA) is a pure policy decision on the university's part. It is well-established that high school GPA is the single best predictor of college GPA (David Owen, 1999, "None of the Above: The Truth Behind the SATs").

Further, a study published a few years ago in the journal Psychological Science showed that African-American students experience a spurt in cognitive-ability scores upon exposure to college instruction (much larger than that of whites). Thus, traditional standardized test scores (ACT or SAT), normally taken toward the latter part of one's high school education, appear to have great potential to underpredict African-Americans' skills once in college. The study's authors suggest that this may be attributable in part to the relatively poor quality of many minority students' high school educations. A web-based story on the research article is available at:

http://wupa.wustl.edu/record/archive/1997/11-06-97/7682.html

Everything I've said above is moot, as the U.S. Supreme Court overturned UM's undergraduate admissions policy. I still think it is an important point, however, that there are sound, scientifically based, reasons for giving the SAT a small weight in the admissions process.

Posted by: Alan at September 26, 2003 01:12 PM

Alan,

IF BLACKS AND OTHER HISTORICALLY DISENFRANCHISED GROUPS HAD BEEN OFFICIALLY LOCKED OUT OF BUYING FOODS AT BAKERIES FOR 200 YEARS (AS WELL AS BEING LOCKED OUT OF UNIVERSITIES AND OTHER BENEFITS OF SOCIETY), DAMN RIGHT THEY DESERVE A DISCOUNT TODAY!

Simply by virtue of being black? That's generalizing based upon race, and it's wrong.

I am an individual. I do not bear the ultimate responsibility for what other people do, especially if such things were done before I was even born. I deal with the present; it's physically impossible to live in the past.

So if a black person is born wealthy, or middle class, or poor, he cannot simply blame that on his race. He certainly can't blame it on the whites around him -- they had nothing to do with it. If a black person grows up in a poor family, one can always point out that there are, in fact, wealthy black families. And there are also poor white families. Clearly, race is not a determining factor in individual success.

But if you isolate race as a general factor and begin generalizing based upon it to right old wrongs for which nobody living is responsible, you're going to create a whole host of new wrongs. It also establishes a bad principle. Can poor Irish people now blame their plight on the British? Can everyone claim that their ethic background resulted in their economic situation?

And what about a person who simply had a drunk for a father, and that's the reason they grew up poor? Do they suddenly deserve no remediation? Should we favor certain types of disadvantage over others? Does efficiency even matter anymore, or should our only concern be economic equality?

This is the nightmare you create when you attempt to 'blame' historical conditions for the status of individuals. You can speak in generalities, but that's all, and generalities concerning other people aren't enough to judge individuals.

This is why we wouldn't want to allow statistics of crimes by race in trials. It wouldn't be fair for an attorney to wave a document in front of a jury saying 'My client is guilty, as statistics show that members of his ethic category commit crimes at higher rates.' I don't think either of us would tolerate that, which is why it is utterly incongruous that you would seek to defend affirmative action.

Posted by: Owen Courrèges at September 26, 2003 03:06 PM

From my perspective, it is difficult to see how one can characterize the mock bake sale as racist unless one considers all conservative opposition to affirmative action to be racist, because the cookie pricing scheme does provide a pretty good approximation of why conservatives (and some libertarians) object to the policy. I'm not convinced that protest events of any sort ever make sense given that they seldom produce a rationale or coherent objection to the protested policy/object. But setting aside such considerations, SMU's response was pathetic and unworthy of a university for reasons that I elaborate at length here and here

Posted by: The Curmudgeonly Clerk at September 26, 2003 03:07 PM

Byron, "laughing in their faces" was indeed the reaction that the organizers of the bake sale intended you to have. Picking a silly way to raise money that's closely identified with elementary-school fundraisers was intentional for its humorous effect. Obviously, they were trying to make a point, not to raise money.

That your laughter is bitter and hateful, rather than merry, is a comment about your own values, rather than theirs, I'm afraid.

When class sizes are capped, it is an unarguable fact that the process of choosing college or graduate school admittees is the classic zero-sum game. If you give one person a preference, you disadvantage someone else to exactly the same extent. So the preferences you choose to give must be rigorously defensible.

Giving some students a preference based on their race is racial discrimination, by definition. This is equally true if you're giving them an artificial boost in a college admissions score or a discount on cookie prices.

So yes, you got the point, Byron: The cookie sale was racist! The question is, can you extend that lesson to broader contexts in which racial discrimination is being practiced?

Posted by: Beldar at September 26, 2003 04:43 PM


My point-by-point responses to Owen's message:

>>>[That the remedy should be implemented] simply by virtue of being black? That's generalizing based upon race, and it's wrong.>>>

I vigorously dispute that affirmative action is practiced "simply by virtue of [people] being black." It is about being black (or in some other historically disenfranchised group) AND THE HISTORY OF HOW THAT GROUP WAS TREATED.

>>>I am an individual. I do not bear the ultimate responsibility for what other people do, especially if such things were done before I was even born. I deal with the present; it's physically impossible to live in the past.>>>

That's exactly the point I made earlier about the ahistorical nature of the critique of affirmative action. People are asked to make sacrifices all the time, even for things they had nothing to do with. Every American has some portion of his or her federal tax dollars go to disaster relief when there are floods in various parts of the country, even though the taxpayer had nothing to do with bringing on the flood. Compared to the kinds of sacrifices some Americans are asked to make (e.g., giving one's life in battle), affirmative action actually requires a very small sacrifice, as I note below.

As described in the book "The Shape of the River" (by William Bowen & Derek Bok), the average white applicant's probability of admission to UC Berkeley could be compared both with and without affirmative action, due to the ban on affirmative action in California that was implemented a few years ago. With affirmative action, a white applicant had a 29.9% chance of getting in. Once affirmative action was gone, a white applicant's chances became 30.3%. In other words, the existence of affirmative action harmed an average white person's chances of getting in by LESS THAN HALF OF ONE PERCENT. It must be remembered that, by definition, minority group members comprise a small percentage of applicants, and thus do not affect majority group members' odds of admissions that much. I would hope people could live with a sacrifice this small in the interest of making higher education (and all that follows from it) more accessible to people from historically disenfranchised groups.

>>>So if a black person is born wealthy, or middle class, or poor, he cannot simply blame that on his race. He certainly can't blame it on the whites around him -- they had nothing to do with it. If a black person grows up in a poor family, one can always point out that there are, in fact, wealthy black families.>>>

I personally am more favorable to implementing affirmative action with minority group members from economically modest backgrounds than with those from wealthy backgrounds. That said, there is much more to the disparagement faced by African-Americans than mere economics, according to a superb book by Glenn Loury entitled "The Anatomy of Racial Inequality."

>>>And there are also poor white families. Clearly, race is not a determining factor in individual success.>>>

If you mean that people can be poor without being black, that's correct. In any event, the University of Michigan's admissions policy also awarded points for socioeconomic disadvantage, regardless of race.

>>>But if you isolate race as a general factor and begin generalizing based upon it to right old wrongs for which nobody living is responsible, you're going to create a whole host of new wrongs. It also establishes a bad principle. Can poor Irish people now blame their plight on the British? Can everyone claim that their ethic background resulted in their economic situation?>>>

You're absolutely correct that many different groups have suffered from poor treatment. I would suggest two criteria for including a group within affirmative action:

(1) Is the group underrepresented compared to some measure of the available pool?

(2) Is there a plausible mechanism one could articulate linking discrimination in the past to underrepresentation today?

I would argue that there is such a mechanism. Let's say that a young black person in the 1950s was by all accounts a top high school student. In certain states, blacks could not get into the top state university (e.g., University of Georgia) until the 1960s. Our hypothetical 1950s student, assuming he/she had to stay in state, thus could not go to the top public university for which he/she should have been eligible. This would potentially lower the quality of the education the person received, which in turn might harm the person's career attainment.

Residual effects could well take their toll on the children and grandchildren of the person turned away from the state university in the 1950s (e.g., not having the material resources they otherwise might have had if their parent or grandparent been allowed to go to the best college for which he/she was qualified).

As I noted in one of my earlier posts, research has shown that once African-American students get exposed to college instruction, they can rebound quickly from the poor-quality high school education many of them receive. Affirmative action would thus be an effective remedy to any lingering effects of discrimination against earlier generations of one's family.

>>>And what about a person who simply had a drunk for a father, and that's the reason they grew up poor? Do they suddenly deserve no remediation? Should we favor certain types of disadvantage over others? Does efficiency even matter anymore, or should our only concern be economic equality?>>>

Many universities are indeed starting to factor in personal adversity when making their admissions decisions.

>>>This is the nightmare you create when you attempt to 'blame' historical conditions for the status of individuals. You can speak in generalities, but that's all, and generalities concerning other people aren't enough to judge individuals.>>>

Affirmative action has allowed thousands (perhaps millions) of people access to higher education that they may not have otherwise had. And, contrary to many people's impressions, minority students have performed quite well at elite universities (see "The Shape of the River"). I would not call this a "nightmare." I think it's been a rousing success.

>>>This is why we wouldn't want to allow statistics of crimes by race in trials. It wouldn't be fair for an attorney to wave a document in front of a jury saying 'My client is guilty, as statistics show that members of his ethic category commit crimes at higher rates.' I don't think either of us would tolerate that, which is why it is utterly incongruous that you would seek to defend affirmative action.>>>

I'm not sure I see the connection between the criminal justice system and affirmative action. But if you're suggesting that people could use evidence of prior oppression of their group to get more lenient sentences, I don't think it follows.

The purpose of affirmative action, as I see it, is to take people who for whatever reason don't score highly on traditional selection criteria but are nonetheless highly talented, and give them a chance. This is exactly the scenario under which Colin Powell was promoted to general (he was omitted from an initial list of people to be promoted, but then got promoted under affirmative action).

Affirmative action is all about opportunity and giving people a chance to participate who would not have had one in earlier generations. The criminal justice system raises different issues, namely incapacitating violent criminals once they've been convicted. I would use statistical analyses for one specfic purpose in the criminal justice system -- namely making sure that African-Americans did not receive harsher sentences than whites who had committed similar crimes -- but other than that I wouldn't use statistics.


Posted by: Alan at September 26, 2003 05:46 PM

Beldar exhibits the following line of argument:

>>>Giving some students a preference based on their race is racial discrimination, by definition. This is equally true if you're giving them an artificial boost in a college admissions score or a discount on cookie prices.>>>

This is the customary "color-blindness" or "discrimination-is-discrimination" line of argument.

In the 1960s, such prominent conservatives as Ronald Reagan, the elder George Bush, Robert Bork, and William Rehnquist opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and similar local ordinances. When blacks could not eat at a restaurant or stay at a hotel, color-blindness didn't seem to matter to these conservatives.

Today, when color-blindness would have the effect of undoing affirmative action -- an imperfect, yet effective method of expanding minorities' access to higher education -- these (and other) conservatives love color-blindness. (I'm not saying that affirmative action opponents necessarily WANT to reduce minority enrollment in major U.S. universities, but at many schools where affirmative action has been banned, that has been the EFFECT).

If one wants to talk about intellectually indefensible positions, espousing color-blindness today while opposing the 1964 Civil Rights Act would seem to qualify.


Posted by: Alan at September 26, 2003 06:05 PM

Excuse me? Do you see in my post any opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

I condemn discrimination based on race. Period. I condemn it in every form, including the form taken by modern-day "affirmative action." I believe in, and believe we as a nation should strive for, a color-blind society.

Alan, your assumptions about cause and effect are glib and probably wrong, but in any event simplistic. And your attempt to paint me with positions taken by other persons when I was seven years old is just stupid and offensive.

Posted by: Beldar at September 26, 2003 06:51 PM

I would obviously have no idea of the age of any posters at this site, nor their positions on the 1964 Civil Rights Act (if they were even alive at the time). The only people I specifically said were opposed to 1960s era civil rights legislation were Reagan, the elder Bush, Bork, and Rehnquist.

I did not intend to attribute positions on the 1964 Civil Rights Act to any current poster on this site, although I see how some could interpret it that way. I simply meant to inform people that the intellectual forebears of contemporary conservativism were NOT supportive of color-blindness in the 1960s. (In fact, Rehnquist is of course still in public life, where he now supports color-blindness from the Supreme Court bench, but did not in the 1960s civil rights context.)

My point -- which I evidently didn't make clearly enough in my earliest post -- is that mainstream conservatives of the early 1960s (as embodied by the aforementioned four figures plus Barry Goldwater) did not support color-blindness when blacks were trying to obtain equal access to restaurants and hotels. Today, however, as part of opposition to affirmative action, mainstream conservatives cite color-blindness as a reason.

Again, I make no reference to the people who post to this site. I'm saying that conservatism, as a national movement, has exhibited a major inconsistency between the 1960s and today in how it has handled color-blindness.

If today's opponents of affirmative action are willing to condemn the anti-civil rights stances in the 1960s of Reagan, (elder) Bush, Bork, Rehnquist, and Goldwater, I welcome that.

Posted by: Alan at September 26, 2003 08:50 PM

Over and over again on this post, supporters of Affirmative Action argue that without it, blacks couldn't get into quality universities. Do any of you seriously believe that any universities with affirmative action programs in effect today would actually discriminate against minorities if they were repealed? Of course not. It would be unthinkable in America today, and even if a university wanted to do so, public pressure would force it to back down.

While there are some sad exceptions, the overwhelming majority of Americans today, unlike forty years ago, are not racist, and would not discriminate against minorities. It just isn't much of a barrier at all today. The real problem is that many minorities, who are disproportionately poor, are being handicapped by a poor education prior to their application for admission to college. This is why, without the artificial boost, so many would be rejected. Rather than Affirmative Action programs, a more effective solution would be to reform inner-city schools so that poor children, black and white alike, can recieve an education that will allow them to succeed without an artifical boost. Vouchers, anyone?

Sherk

Posted by: Sherk at September 27, 2003 07:20 PM

Alan,

[Affirmative action] ... is about being black AND THE HISTORY OF HOW THAT GROUP WAS TREATED.

And that's not fair. It isn't fair to treat somebody as a member of an arbitrary group rather than as an individual. You fail to realize that racial groups do not have rights; individuals do.

People are asked to make sacrifices all the time, even for things they had nothing to do with. Every American has some portion of his or her federal tax dollars go to disaster relief when there are floods in various parts of the country, even though the taxpayer had nothing to do with bringing on the flood.

This is an absurd analogy. First of all, all Americans are protected by disaster relief. If there is disaster relief anywhere, those people are protected simply by virtue of living in the United States. Secondly, disaster relief is based upon direct and verifiable harm. It isn't a matter of my great-grandfather's house being taken down by a tornado -- it's MY house. I shoudn't have to expalin why that makes a difference.

We are commonly asked to pay for social insurance programs with regards to conditions we aren't responsible for, yes. I won't debate the wisdom of such programs here, but I will note most fervently that affirmative action is not a social insurance program. It is not based upon whether or not a person is born disadvantaged; it is based purely upon race and gender. A rich black person can benefit from affirmative action while a poor white person cannot.

[T]he existence of affirmative action harmed an average white person's chances of getting in by LESS THAN HALF OF ONE PERCENT.

But all white applicants are not the same, so using the 'average white applicant' as your baseline is highly dubious. Some white applicants are more than qualified enough to get into a given school, but are rejected in favor of a less-qualified minority. Every time affirmative action is employed, somebody is favored because of their race. Somebody who should have gotten in based upon their qualifications did not.

For those white students who don't have the 4.0's and 1600 SATs, but are still qualified enough to get in on merit, affirmative action is very, very harmful. And it doesn't matter exactly how many of these people there are, either -- they don't deserve to wronged by racial discrimination.

[T]here is much more to the disparagement faced by African-Americans than mere economics, according to a superb book by Glenn Loury entitled "The Anatomy of Racial Inequality."

Irrelevant. This isn't a matter of what many or most black people experience. It's a matter of what the individual applicant has experienced. If you hold that racial generalizations are justified in this instance, however, you lose your ability to complain about racism generally. After all, what is racism but a set of poorly-constructed generalizations used to justify discrimination?

I would suggest two criteria for including a group within affirmative action:

(1) Is the group underrepresented compared to some measure of the available pool?

(2) Is there a plausible mechanism one could articulate linking discrimination in the past to underrepresentation today?

This rationale turns my stomach. You are claiming that a person's race -- something beyond their control -- should be considered beyond and above how they have been disadvantaged by the circumstances of their birth. Accordingly, you are refusing to treat them as an individual, and rather holding that what happened to their ancestors should determine how we treat them today. The white kid whose father was a drunk and was picked on in school doesn't get the same boost the black kid gets who grew up in a poor but stable family. All that matters is race.

Affirmative action would thus be an effective remedy to any lingering effects of discrimination against earlier generations of one's family.

That's not permitted under our legal system. Because racial groups themselves have no rights, an individual's rights to equal treatment under the law cannot be violated by an appeal to what a given minority group allegedly deserves. The law is correct on this point for the reasons I have already described -- race is not a valid proxy for disadvantaged status because it generalizes individual experience.

Affirmative action has allowed thousands (perhaps millions) of people access to higher education that they may not have otherwise had.

And for every one person it advantages, another person is disadvantaged. You can't give a slot to somebody who doesn't possess the proper qualifications without hurting somebody who does.

I'm not sure I see the connection between the criminal justice system and affirmative action.

I'm saying that you'd be hard set to justify your racial generalizations with regards to affirmative action while at the same time condemning racial generalizations when it comes to racial profiling. In both cases people are using racial statistics to justify treating members of different races differently. You assume too much based on skin color.

I would use statistical analyses for one specfic purpose in the criminal justice system -- namely making sure that African-Americans did not receive harsher sentences than whites who had committed similar crimes -- but other than that I wouldn't use statistics.

Blacks who commit murder are far less likely to receive the death penalty than whites. Does you think that this automatically shows that the courts treat whites unfairly with regards to capital punishment, or does this rationale apply only to black defendants?

Posted by: Owen Courrèges at September 28, 2003 03:13 PM

Alan,

My point -- which I evidently didn't make clearly enough in my earliest post -- is that mainstream conservatives of the early 1960s (as embodied by the aforementioned four figures plus Barry Goldwater) did not support color-blindness when blacks were trying to obtain equal access to restaurants and hotels.

That doesn't follow. One could have refused to support civil rights legislation not because they didn't support 'color-blindness,' but rather because they felt that private property rights were more important, even if they involve the practice of racial discrimination. To cite a relevant analogy, it does not follow that because one does not support laws against flag burning that one in any way condones flag burning. One can simply hold that free speech rights are more important than one's moral disgust for flag burning.

If you want to hold that support for 'color-blindness' demands that one support laws prohibiting private discrimination, you're perpertrating a non sequitur.

If today's opponents of affirmative action are willing to condemn the anti-civil rights stances in the 1960s of Reagan, (elder) Bush, Bork, Rehnquist, and Goldwater, I welcome that.

I disagree with them. I support civil rights legislation, which is part of why I find affirmative action so repulsive. I think it is inconsistent, actually, to support civil rights laws which prohibit government-mandated racial discrimination, while at the same time supporting government-mandated racial discrimination in the form of affirmative action.

Posted by: Owen Courrèges at September 28, 2003 03:24 PM

The bake sale was an excellent representation of what is going on in America today. One young man's commented that," The back sale was offensive". Well then obviously he is offended by Affirmative action. Any one who doesn't see this for what it is is blind or just ignorant. I hope their will be a time in America when we are all truly equal. This means everyone paying their fare share. Untile affirmative action is abolished, We will never be.

Posted by: bob at September 28, 2003 04:23 PM


This has been a long and interesting exchange. I'd love to reach closure, but there are still some issues I'd like to address:

1.

All political issues involve a trade-off of values. Opposing civil rights legislation for the reason stated in the above passage reveals that property rights were the person's top value, and color-blindness at best a secondary value.

My point, again, is that there's a major inconsistency between the primacy today's conservative movement gives to color-blindness in arguing against affirmative action, and the lack of primacy given to color-blindness in the 1960s civil rights context by several prominent conservatives (Reagan, elder Bush, Bork, Rehnquist, and Goldwater).

Further, if one can reduce color-blindness to a secondary value beneath private property rights, then why can't someone else reduce color-blindness to a secondary value beneath promoting diversity in the context of a history of racial oppression and exclusion?

Especially when, as I noted in an earlier post, empirical evidence from UC Berkeley shows that affirmative action harmed an average white person's chances of getting in by LESS THAN HALF OF ONE PERCENT. That comes as close to a win-win situation as one is likely to get on a controversial issue: A school practicing affirmative action (at least as Berkeley had) can increase the racial/ethnic diversity of its student body while MINIMALLY burdening white applicants.

2. If someone opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, while it would be unfair to say they actively wanted blacks to be denied service at restaurants and hotels, you bet they were tolerant of it. Here is a dictionary definition of TOLERATE:

"To allow without prohibiting or opposing; permit"

If one were not supportive of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, one would be "allowing" denial of restaurant and hotel service to blacks, "without prohibiting or opposing" such denial of service. One would also be "permitting" such denial of service.

3. I have been accused of being too group-oriented in my remedies and not appreciative enough of each person's individual attributes. In one of my earlier posts, I discussed the University of Michigan's (now overturned) undergraduate admissions policy as follows:

"I believe each applicant's academic portfolio should be looked at IN TOTO. By my count, this would yield a maximum of 110 points (80 for GPA, 12 for test scores, 10 for high school quality, and 8 for difficulty of curriculum). The value of 110 for academic factors obviously towers over the 20 points for underrepresented minority status."

Of the 110 points for academic factors, at least 100 are INDIVIDUALLY BASED: 80 for GPA, 12 for test scores, and 8 for difficulty of curriculum taken (the 10 for high school quality might be seen as a group-based factor, as many people go to the same high school and the 10 points thus get "generalized" over everyone who went to the school).

Given that I've been a strong supporter of the University of Michigan's policies, I would say I support giving PLENTY of weight to individualistic factors!

In Justice Powell's Bakke opinion, reaffirmed most recently in the University of Michigan law school case (where the law school used a different admissions policy than the undergraduate college), race can be ONE FACTOR AMONG MANY. I thought both Michigan programs (undergrad and law school) were consistent with Bakke, but I'm happy to get the one (law school) victory, from which the undergrad program can craft its new admissions policy.

It must be kept in mind that even though the law school case (Grutter v. Bollinger) was decided 5-4, Justice Kennedy noted that although he felt Michigan's law school admissions program (as well as the undergraduate one) were improperly implemented, he still thought race could be taken into account:

"For these reasons, though I reiterate my approval of giving appropriate consideration to race in this one context, I must dissent in the present case."

Counting Kennedy, there are thus SIX votes on the present U.S. Supreme Court against the PURE color-blindness position. And seven of the nine Justices were appointed by Republican presidents!


Posted by: Alan at September 28, 2003 06:13 PM

In point number 1 in my message immmediately above, I referred to a passage that, for some reason, failed to copy. The passage in question is this:

"One could have refused to support civil rights legislation not because they didn't support 'color-blindness,' but rather because they felt that private property rights were more important..."

Posted by: Alan at September 28, 2003 06:17 PM

Alan,

All political issues involve a trade-off of values. Opposing civil rights legislation for the reason stated in the above passage reveals that property rights were the person's top value, and color-blindness at best a secondary value.

Not really. If I despise state-established religion, does this make me somehow less religious, or less supportive of religion? Of course not. I can feel that something is off-limits to government intervention, even while feeling all the more strongly in my support or opposition to a related action. I'm sure there are many people who feel that their patriotism and reverence for the flag is without equal, although they still quiver at the idea of laws designed to ban flag burning.

In short, I don't think you are justified in drawing any of the conclusions you have attempted to draw by the fact that some people opposed civil rights legislation. A person could have felt very strongly about color-blind policies while still feeling that individuals have a right to express bigoted views through their commercial interests. It's Voltaire -- 'I may not like what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.'

My point, again, is that there's a major inconsistency between the primacy today's conservative movement gives to color-blindness in arguing against affirmative action, and the lack of primacy given to color-blindness in the 1960s civil rights context by several prominent conservatives (Reagan, elder Bush, Bork, Rehnquist, and Goldwater).

1) That's guilt by association.

2) You're still perpetrating a non sequitur with regards to your argument.

Especially when, as I noted in an earlier post, empirical evidence from UC Berkeley shows that affirmative action harmed an average white person's chances of getting in by LESS THAN HALF OF ONE PERCENT.

Irrelevant. First of all, I've already addressed your claim that statistics regarding the 'average white applicant' are compelling. The fact is that all white applicants are not equal, and the white applicants most likely to suffer are those who are borderline, but still qualified to get in on their merits. These applicants have a much stronger chance of being rejected because of affirmative action.

Secondly, it doesn't matter how few people are harmed, because they are harmed as individuals. This isn't a matter of scoring points against whites versus blacks; it's irrelevant if 'whites' are generally hurt, because RACIAL GROUPS DON'T HAVE RIGHTS, INDIVIDUALS DO. It's a common legal principle that it would be wrong to execute a single innocent person, even if doing so would save numerous innocent lives. The same logic applies here. It doesn't matter how many people are aided and how many people are hurt; if somebody is facing racial discrimination, their rights are being violated.

Further, if one can reduce color-blindness to a secondary value beneath private property rights, then why can't someone else reduce color-blindness to a secondary value beneath promoting diversity in the context of a history of racial oppression and exclusion?

Because a person has a right to equal protection under the law, just as a person has a right to property. You can argue that it would be good public policy to subordinate these rights, but you wouldn't be dealing with a competing right as we understand it. People don't have a right to have historical wrongs committed by people long dead rectified. That's something impossible to do anyway.

If someone opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, while it would be unfair to say they actively wanted blacks to be denied service at restaurants and hotels, you bet they were tolerant of it.

So anyone who doesn't support laws against flag burning is tolerant of flag burning? Anybody who doesn't support state-established religion is intolerant of religion? This argument is ca-ca, Alan.

Here is a dictionary definition of TOLERATE:

"To allow without prohibiting or opposing; permit"

As I said before, a person can OPPOSE racial discrimination without wanting it outlawed. You can oppose MANY THINGS without being tolerant of them.

Given that I've been a strong supporter of the University of Michigan's policies, I would say I support giving PLENTY of weight to individualistic factors!

Race is not an individualistic favor. It's skin color. Your support of using it in admissions, then, shows that you are willing to support the strong use of a non-individualized factor in order to secure asthetic diversity and/or 'right historic wrongs.'

I say that all factors should be individualized. We should be treated as individuals, not as members of static racial categories for the purpose of 'getting more blacks' into a given schools. The fact that Michigan wasn't picking up any person with black skin off of the street doesn't make it much less offensive in my eye, since decisions still came down to race, and racial discrimination is wrong.

Counting Kennedy, there are thus SIX votes on the present U.S. Supreme Court against the PURE color-blindness position. And seven of the nine Justices were appointed by Republican presidents!

Uh-huh... And that means that they were conservative? It's a known fact that Supreme Court justices can go against the president who appointed them. If you don't know this, I suggest you read up a bit on Earl Warren. Citing the partisanship of appointing presidents tells you next to diddly-squat about their ideology.

Posted by: Owen Courrèges at September 28, 2003 07:16 PM


"If I despise state-established religion, does this make me somehow less religious, or less supportive of religion?"

It means that, despite one's strongly held religious values, one is still able to see that the Establishment Clause must take priority on a matter of state-established religion.

"So anyone who doesn't support laws against flag burning is tolerant of flag burning?"

Yes! I myself am an example. I vigorously oppose a constitutional amendment to allow the criminalization of flag-burning. I have never engaged in flag-burning nor would I encourage anyone to do it. But, if push comes to shove, I would say that, yes, I'm tolerant of flag-burning in the name of freedom of expression.

This will be my final posting on this matter. I don't think any opinions have been changed, but the exchange has still been useful in airing various facts and arguments. I feel the anti-affirmative action posts have largely reflected an absolutist position.

No matter how little of a burden (statistically) that is imposed upon white people, no matter how heavily individual-based academic factors outweigh the racial preference in the admissions policies, some people will never be satisfied. As I've noted, the absolutist color-blind position enjoys little support on the current U.S. Supreme Court. I'm aware of Earl Warren (and William Brennan and Felix Frankfurter and Byron White), thank you, and how Court appointees sometimes diverge from the president who appointed them. I was just trying to illustrate how the current Justices, largely appointed by GOP presidents, would probably not be considered flaming left-wingers.

And to equate denying someone admission to a university with executing an innocent person (under the rationale that both may harm a few for the greater good) seems especially absurd.

Posted by: Alan at September 29, 2003 10:14 AM

Hey, The AA Bake Sale at UT raised 55 dollars. Laugh at that.

However, the idea is that it won't make much money the way SMU had it done.

Ours at UT was different because it charged 75 cents for whites, 50 for minorites and a dollar if you didn't want to be judged by the color of your skin, which is where almost all our sales came from.

Posted by: Mark A. Hodgkin at September 30, 2003 12:26 AM

The thing you don't understand is that we too, YCT at UT, were disgusted by the bake sale. The bake sale was complete and utter discrimination, as is Affirmative Action.

Fighting discrimination with discrimination, what a conept!

Posted by: Nayeem N. Mohammed at October 9, 2003 02:12 AM

Please...please...please...tell me that this is not a part of the Republican campaign for restoring this nation to a segregated state...Any idiot knows THAT A COOKIE SALE is not symbolic of affirmative action. By the way, affirmative action was introduced during the Nixon Administration...It was a means of recruiting and retaining minority Republican interests, with strategies like those employed in Louisiana during the recent Governor's race where Republicans used an Indian American as a pawn...

Posted by: W. Lede at November 26, 2003 09:40 AM

I'm 16 years old and take quite a bit of heat from blacks at my school for my beliefs about racism and affirmative action.

Affirmative action is racist and wrong. I can take my SAT and score the same as some black kid and he will end up getting to go college before me simply because he's black. That's wrong. I'm sorry they were slaves, but that's in the past. My relatives didn't have any slaves, so why should I be punished?

I also feel that racism is begining to turn around. Whites are starting to be descriminated on by the growing numbers of minorities. Some of those minorites have even become majorities, or at least in Texas they have. If I go to school tomorrow and call some black kid a nigger, I'll be stuck in In School Suspension for over a week. Yet if some black kid calls me a honky or gringo or whatever, they get a slap on the wrist.

I give a big big thumbs up to those college students at SMU. I wish more people had the guts to stand up to the way the world thinks things should be.

Posted by: Richie Sinclair at March 31, 2005 11:48 PM

I didn't think it was racist at all. I think it was really cool and it speaks the truth. The people crying about it are the same people who demand handouts for their skin color and deep down hate whites. Well, it's a white world and the sooner you realize that and hit the books harder, the better off you'll be.

Posted by: private801 at June 7, 2005 03:47 PM
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