Bush Wary of Race-Based Admissions

Jeff:

I'll trade you TJ for Timing...straight up...they sound exactly alike, just with opposite viewpoints.

 

Well Timing, seeing as the search function is disabled, I'll cut you some slack.....

....wait a second.....that's not why I'm cutting you slack.

I'M CUTTING YOU SOME SLACK BECAUSE YOU JUST ADMITTED TO THE LIBEL. WHAT YOU JUST SAID IS NOTHING LIKE WHAT YOU ACCUSED ME OF EARLIER.

That being said Timing, I do remember bringing up gang violence....which is a very relevant argument regarding the GAO study. Here's how relevant Timing:

Between 1976 and 1999, 94% of black murder victims were killed by other African-Americans. Nearly two-thirds of black homicides were drug related.

This quote is from an article....written by a black man.....and published in here:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/columnists/wickham/2001-12-04-wickham.htm

Furthermore, you can find those same statistics all over the web.

So you see Timing, my comments about gang slayings were not only justified, they sugar coated the situation. Of course, maybe more sugar coating needs to be done before my statements could be considered PC. Maybe we should just deny altogether that black on black murder even exists. Would that be okay with you? Would that help your cause?

The funniest thing about you rehashing this old subject? If you look at the fact that 94% of all murderers of blacks are black themselves, and you also look at the assertion that murderers of blacks get less harsh sentences.......what's the easiest conclusion you can get out of this?

That's right...

It appears that blacks are getting less harsh sentences for murder. Wow! Playing the race card and always playing the victim really does pay off. I always thought that affirmative action allowed certain minorities to "get away with murder." Now I'll always have a little secret smile when I think of that again.

The difference between you and a MIG is that a MIG can only go down in flames once. You really should think about trying your hand at something else.

 

Saw this on Salon and thought it might fit in here:
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Joe Conason's Journal
The president opposes affirmative action. So how does he defend the institutional favoritism that got him into Yale?

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Jan. 16, 2003 |

The Yale man's legacy
Our text for this morning after the President's denunciation of affirmative action at the University of Michigan can be found on pp. 21-22 of "A Charge to Keep," the George W. Bush autobiography (written by Karen Hughes):

"Andover taught me the power of high standards. I was surrounded by people who were very smart, and that encouraged me to rise to the occasion. I was a solid student but not a top student. I did well in the courses I liked, such as history, math, and Spanish, and not so well in others, such as English. When I met with the dean to discuss different college options, I told him I would like to go to Yale. Many in my family had gone there; they loved the school and their love was infectious. On several weekends I had visited Yale to watch football games, and I was impressed by the campus. The dean tactfully suggested that I might think of other universities as well. I told him that if I did not get into Yale, there was only one other option for me, the University of Texas. I was not sure what would happen. I looked forward to either alternative. It was chaos in the mailroom the day the college acceptance letters arrived. The fat envelopes brought good news, the skinny ones rejection letters. I received a fat envelope from Yale and so did thirty-eight of my Andover classmates."

Let's examine a couple of key phrases in that uplifting passage. "I was a solid student but not a top student…The dean tactfully suggested that I might think of other universities as well." It sounds as if Bush was pretty confident of attending Yale despite his so-so prep school transcript. He probably chose UT as his safety school because he surmised the state university wouldn't reject a prominent Texas politician's son. (That much he was easily smart enough to figure out.)

Why was the Andover dean so concerned about Bush's prospects at Yale? Perhaps he glanced at Bush's SAT score of 1206, above average but nowhere near the level needed for acceptance at an Ivy League school. (According to Cecil Adams, who write The Straight Dope column, Bush's score was almost 200 points lower than the average for Yale freshmen circa 1970.) Bush's middling SAT score, incidentally, is roughly the same as that for most of the black students admitted to selective schools in a major Mellon Foundation study that began in 1976.

Perhaps that Andover dean also looked at Bush's "solid" grades, which may or may not have exceeded the C average he later earned at Yale. In other words, despite Bush's status as a Yale "legacy" from a very prominent and wealthy family, the dean was sufficiently naïve to think he might not be admitted.

Back then, "affirmative action" for the sons and daughters of alumni was a major factor in admissions at Yale and other selective colleges – and continues to be an important factor today. The children of alumni are about twice as likely to be accepted by Yale as other applicants. Whether their qualifications are twice as good, nobody seems to know. In the class of 2004, according to this interesting essay in the Yale Herald, the largest identifiable group of matriculates is from "families with some kind of Yale affiliation."

Now there is no movement among conservatives to require that legacy applicants (or athletes) display the same level of merit as anyone else admitted to an elite school. To the right diversity isn't an important value -- but traditions of family privilege must be preserved.

 

You must be joking. I never curse at others and my arguments are well thought-out and detailed. They are *not* emotional rants. Surely you can see the difference between an intelligent viewpoint and mindless rambling.

 

I see nothing wrong with the top-10% rule in Texas. That means schools like Madison, Washington, Smiley, etc. could put 10% of their students into UT, A&M, Houston, etc. Because these schools are predominantly minority, it significantly increases the number of college bound minorities.

Unfortunately, during my tenure at UT, I didn't meet many people from these schools. One of my best friends, and roommate for 2 years, is black and graduated from MacArthur, in Humble. He said that only like 5-7 people attended UT from his high school class. I think that alot of that has to do with the relatively high cost compared to going to HCC, UH, etc.

 

That probably is a factor. The African-American enrollment at UH is a couple of hundred students higher than at UT even though UH is significantly smaller overall attendance-wise.

Another wrench to throw into the gumbo: it appears that hispanic women were not affected by the Hopwood decision, at least in terms of freshman addmittance at UT-Austin, while African-American women saw the highest drop in freshment enrollment immediately after the Hopwood change (1% drop for Hispanic women, 29% drop for African-American women. Even African-American males were not affected nearly as much as African-American women). I wonder what factors account for those differences.

 

I already did tell you. Seeing as 94% of all the people who murder blacks ARE BLACK THEMSELVES , why don't you tell us?

Who is this WE you speak of? YOU'RE speaking about rate here. Rather conveniently too, I might add....seeing as African Americans who represent only 12% of the population are committing more than 50% of the murders. This coming from the link you provided. That's some scary stuff you posted, Timing. I can't believe you were ballsy enough to provide that link.

Nice try with your post. You keep digging deeper and deeper; maybe you'll reach China by tomorrow.

 

BTW....I've made my points; someone else can have the last word.

 

With the help of RM95, I felt I made my point as well.
WORD!

 

I still wonder how all that money could be spent and how much really goes to every student. Do they have an audit to see where it all goes? Maybe it's another case of an overbloated bueracracy who has bad planning and execution....

Timing addressed the increased enrollment in Texas. It is happening to other campuses across the country as well. In the University of California system, they're facing a "tidal wave" because their state policy demands that any student who is ranked in the top 4 percentile in the state is required to be admitted to a UC campus. California is one of those states where Bush touts has attained "broad racial diversity", but despite that the Regents of California voted to bring back Affirmative Action in some form last year. Why?

http://aad.english.ucsb.edu/docs/admissions.html
Three years after race-based admission policies were abolished at the University of California, the number of black, Hispanic and American Indian freshmen who will enter next fall has rebounded to above what it was when affirmative action measures were in place. But a significant disparity can still be found at the university's flagship campuses here and at Berkeley, as well as at San Diego and Santa Barbara. And the percentage of those minorities admitted as freshmen will decrease to 17.6 percent in the fall of 2000 from 18.8 percent in 1997, the last year of affirmative action.

At the University of California at Berkeley, the number of black, Hispanic and American Indian freshmen will drop to 1,169 this fall from 1,778 in 1997. Still, that was an increase over the 717 admission in 1998 and 990 in 1999. The figures at the University of California at Los Angeles were much the same, with underrepresented minorities down 1,449 next fall from 2,010 in 1997. Over all, in the eight schools in the state university system, enrollment of minority freshmen will rise to 7,336 next fall, from 7,236 in 1997.

At the same time, the number of black, Hispanic and American Indian students on the Irvine, Riverside and Santa Cruz campuses will increase to 6,650 this fall, from 4,822 in 1997. The numbers seem to play out the theory that abolishing affirmative action in the selection process would lead to a two-tiered system in the university. "What you have is your two flagship campuses will be sort of reverse ghettos, with Asians and whites and a lack of color," said Bill Bagley, a regent who opposed the abolition of racial preference in admissions. "That's not good for those institutions."

To Ward Connerly, the regent who led the campaign to end race preference in university admissions, the shift is simply a redistribution of students to where they should be. "I think the numbers over all demonstrate that the absence of racial preferences, also known as affirmative action, does not mean that minority kids will not be educated at one of the best educational facilities in the country," Mr. Connerly said today. "They'll just be redistributed to less competitive campuses."


The "broad racial diversity" in California could be the disproportionate number of Asians who hold 40% or more of the student body in each of the UC campuses. Sometimes I wish class warfare would stick to that bounds instead of spilling over into a debate of race oppression and entitlement. It has always been the issue of haves and have-nots and who gets to have the money.

There was also a decrease in Black applications to the "flagship campuses" in California after AA was abolished.

Given the history of the institutionalized treatment of Blacks (i.e. Jim Crow Laws), it's my opinion that they'd be more succeptable to the idea that the system is tilted against them (which could be true in other cases). AA could be a crutch in that sense, but there's no denial to the social benefits a more diverse campus setting would bring.

 

"Experts" agree.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3607-2003Jan16.html

"Some selective state universities have achieved a significant level of racial diversity using the race-neutral admissions programs advocated by President Bush, but those approaches have proven far less effective at integrating graduate schools, experts said.

The race-neutral plans also probably would fall short of maintaining current levels of diversity at the nation's private colleges and universities, almost all of which could be affected if the Supreme Court adopts Bush's posture on affirmative action when it rules in two closely watched cases later this year, they said."
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"Race-neutral plans have also proven unsuccessful at restoring old levels of racial diversity at many graduate and professional schools. At the University of California at Los Angeles Law School, for example, the 2002 entering class was 13 percent black, Hispanic and Native American. In the last class admitted under a race-conscious policy, members of "underrepresented" minorities accounted for 22.5 percent of the student body.

Higher education officials said percentage plans -- and even class-based affirmative action programs -- would probably not be effective in maintaining current levels of racial diversity everywhere nationwide. Percentage plans rely on segregated high schools to produce racial diversity in colleges, and class-based affirmative action is likely to help mainly white students, because, numerically, whites make up the largest share of the nation's poor.

Almost by definition, percentage plans would not apply to selective private universities, the vast majority of which have race-conscious admissions plans. But private schools could be affected by the Supreme Court ruling because almost all receive federal funding."

 

Bush can afford to shove this part of his agenda down our throats. Black people won't vote for him anyway; I think he has mainly to tap-dance with Hispanic/Latino groups as far as pretending he cares about minorities/lower middle-class America.

 

I must admit I didnt read all the posts here. Personally, I am somewhat neutral on the issue of AA. I think some forms of reparation are needed for the good of the society as a whole. But America now is quite different from that 100 or even 50 years ago. We are much more ethnically and culturally diverse , remedies based on socioeconomic status is much more feasible and acceptable to most Americans.
Separately, a response to the issue on disparity in black on black crime comparing to that of white on white, blacks comprises of roughly 12% of the population. All things equal, that means statistically when a crime is committed, 12 % of the time the criminals will be blacks, and it doesnt matter if the victims are blacks or not. So if 94% of murderers on blacks are black, as quoted here somewhere, is true. We definitely have a problem. And I dont mean it is of black's own doing. The 84% of white on white crime is kind of expected based on statistical analysis. But there is still a problem, because I dont think "white" makes up 84% of the population, unless all non-whites are lumped together as white in the calculation. My explanation is the following. To a certain degree, housing segregation still exists in this country, of course not legally. But it is a fact, especially in inner cities. So when a crime is commited, it is more likely for a person of the same race of the victim to be the instigator. The real issue is not the 94% or 84%, but the crime rate in our inner cities are just totally unacceptable. Unfortunately that's where many poor black people live. Just my 2 cents.

 

Just a correction, I meant all non-blacks "are lumped together as white" in my comment above.

 

Thought I'd just add a related article.


<b>Rice Helped Shape Bush Decision on Admissions</b>

By Mike Allen and Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 17, 2003; Page A01

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice took a rare central role in a domestic debate within the White House and helped persuade President Bush to publicly condemn race-conscious admissions policies at the University of Michigan, administration officials said yesterday.

The officials said Rice, in a series of lengthy one-on-one meetings with Bush, drew on her experience as provost at Stanford University to help convince him that favoring minorities was not an effective way of improving diversity on college campuses.

Rice, the first female national security adviser, told Bush that she worked to increase the number of African American faculty members at Stanford but that she was "absolutely opposed to quotas," a senior administration official said. A Stanford official said that under Rice, who served from 1993 to 1999 and was the university's first nonwhite provost, the number of black faculty members increased from 36 to 44.

Officials described Rice as one of the prime movers behind Bush's announcement on Wednesday that he would urge the Supreme Court to strike down Michigan's affirmative action program.

Just before midnight last night, the administration filed two briefs totaling 70 pages -- one each for the cases involving the University of Michigan's undergraduate and law school admissions programs -- with the Supreme Court. The briefs, signed by Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, repeatedly characterize the programs, which essentially award extra consideration to black, Latino and Native American applicants to ensure a diverse student body, as tantamount to racial quotas and "plainly unconstitutional."

The administration said the case shows the "pernicious consequences" of "ignoring race-neutral alternatives and employing race-based policies that amount to racial quotas."

It argued that diversity "is an important and entirely legitimate government objective," and that "measures that ensure diversity, accessibility and opportunity are important components of government's responsibility to its citizens." But, the briefs said that since the university had alternative "race-neutral" means available to achieve the goal, its use of race-conscious means is unconstitutional. The briefs cited the reported ability of Texas, Florida and California, each of which has done away with race-conscious admissions in its public universities, to maintain a significant minority enrollment as proof that traditional race-conscious affirmative action is not necessary to achieve diversity.

However, the briefs sidestepped a crucial question presented in the cases, whether diversity could ever be an important enough government interest -- a "compelling interest" in the argot of Supreme Court precedent -- to justify taking race into account, if, for example, programs like the relatively new race-neutral ones in Texas, Florida and California do not continue to show good results over the long term. Universities maintain that the Supreme Court's 1978 decision in the Bakke case established diversity as a compelling interest, but opponents of race-conscious admissions dispute that and lower federal courts have reached differing conclusions on the issue, prompting the current Supreme Court cases.

On the critical point of "compelling interest," the administration, as expected, offered a compromise answer likely to please neither side in the debate, and to disappoint any justices who might have been expecting definitive guidance on the point from the government: "Regardless of how the University's interest in diversity is defined, [its] policy fails." As Justice Department officials reworked the administration's brief to meet a midnight deadline, White House aides described Bush's conversations with Rice and other advisers. It was an effort to portray the president's position as striking a moderate balance, encouraging racial diversity but arguing against the use of direct mechanisms for enforcing it.

Aides said Justice Department officials -- and specifically Olson, the federal government's chief lawyer in Supreme Court cases -- proposed that Bush file a brief arguing that the use of race in college admissions to achieve diversity, not just the University of Michigan's program, is unconstitutional.

"Several conservatives, including many in the administration, urged the president to file a broader brief," a senior official said. "The president made the determination that it was his role to issue the narrowly tailored brief to make it clear that the Michigan program was wrong, but not seek to define how to achieve diversity because he believes the best way to accomplish that is to let it evolve."

Many black conservative lawyers who are Bush appointees in the administration, including officials at the Education and Justice departments, lobbied vociferously for a broader argument against affirmative action.

An official said Bush's counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, presented the options in neutral terms, describing how each position could be argued. Officials said Bush only fleetingly considered his option to remain silent on the case, deciding that it was of sufficient national importance that he should describe his views. Aides researched past affirmative action and civil rights cases and found that the White House typically weighed in.

Winning over Hispanic and moderate suburban voters is one of the White House's chief political aims, and some Republicans feared that the decision could hurt Bush, especially after the controversy over racially charged remarks by Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), which forced him to step down as party leader.

Some aides felt Bush had been presented with a no-win situation, and said they felt besieged from the left and right yesterday. Democrats running for president attacked Bush's policy as retrogressive, while some conservative activists complained that Bush did not go far enough. However, Bush's position could bolster him with his base of conservative voters, and some aides said Bush's moderate rhetoric put him in the middle ground with most of the American public.

Bush's aides said the decision emerged from more than two dozen meetings over the past month, almost all of them with a small group of advisers consisting of Rice, Gonzales, Vice President Cheney, Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., senior adviser Karl Rove and Jay Lefkowitz, director of the White House's Domestic Policy Council.

"In these meetings, the president would pepper the group with questions: 'When can race be used? How do you achieve diversity?' " a senior official said. "He wanted to get at reality."

Bush's remarks, drafted by his speechwriting office, were heavily edited by a close adviser, Karen P. Hughes. Hughes and Lefkowitz were architects of Bush's decision last year to allow federal funding for a limited amount of research on stem cells from human embryos.

The affirmative action decision had much in common with Bush's stem cell announcement. Both followed heavy lobbying from conservatives. Both policies sound palatable to moderates but largely achieve the aim of conservatives without directly taking their side.

Though some conservatives said they had been pleasantly surprised by the president's strong rhetoric, particularly his denunciation of Michigan's plans as "quotas," others reserved judgment until they saw the legal reasoning. Many on the right view the White House as handling the issue as a political, rather than legal, one.

Meanwhile, the first friend-of-the-court briefs in opposition to the Michigan plan began trickling in to the court. Perhaps the most prominent opponent to weigh in was Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), the president's brother, who submitted a brief in his own name and in the name of his state.

The brief sought to provide the court with data from Florida's experience that show how a race-neutral approach to admissions can work better than a Michigan-style approach.

The Florida brief takes a stronger position against affirmative action than Bush's, arguing that diversity in higher education can never be an issue important enough to the government to justify using race in admissions.

 

I find the Bush's admin leadership on this is woefully inadequate--I think people on both sides should agree on his. He is a conservative politician, I expect him to be against AA and the Michigan policy. But he isn't going out and saying he is against all means using ethnicity/race or demographics in admissions criteria either, nor is he advocating solutions except in the most narrow, specific cases. Clearly the 10% rule or those like it only can apply for undergrad admissions--so what are these affirmative access plans for graduate schools, professional schools, what about ethnicity based scholarships, what areas outside of education entirely? It seems to be the compassionate conservative approach is still pick and choose a few more liberal strategies/examples and publicly come down hard on them, without offering other conservative strategies or ANY viable strategies at all. He/admin never outline at all what the policies should be, just what they shouldn’t be--that is strait lack of leadership.