Race columnist Leonard Pitts’ column today (linked here to his home base at the Miami Herald, but for me it was more road kill in the Philadelphia Inquirer) begins as follows:
Happy Martin Luther King Day.
Over at the White House, they’re marking the day by the festive ritual of extending the middle finger to the civil rights community. Last week, President Bush came out against a University of Michigan affirmative action program designed to foster racial diversity on campus. He’s concerned that the policy, which is now before the Supreme Court, discriminates against white kids.
That was the good part. He also says:
… Like many foes of affirmative action, the president tacitly equates the decades of institutionalized exclusion the practice seeks to address with the relatively minor hurdle it represents to prospective white students.
That’s an affront to history itself. But it is not a surprise.
Hmm, “history itself”? Would that be a history of “institutionalized exclusion” from the University of Michigan? Funny they didn’t mention that in all their briefs, since it would have given them a good argument for racial preferences now. Must have been an oversight.
