Kelvin Scott, a member of the Michigan Civil Rights Commission (which has been vigorously opposing MCRI, which would bar racial preferences in Michigan), had a letter in the Detroit Free Press on Friday. It’s so pathetic I almost feel sorry for him.
He feebly tries to refute columnist Dawson Bell’s comparison of MCRI to California’s Proposition 209, which I discussed here. Note, however, what he lists as the biggest difference between the two:
Foremost is that MCRI is asking Michigan voters to overturn a landmark U.S. Supreme Court civil rights decision upholding the use of affirmative action as a tool for integration and diversity in our state — arguably the most rigidly segregated state in America. Californians were not asked to overturn a historic Supreme Court decision, and it is by far the most diverse state in the nation.
So, a member of the Michigan Civil Rights Commission is blissfully unaware (unless he’s just plain lying) that nothing in the proposed Michigan Civil Rights Initiative would “overturn” anything the Supreme Court has held. Gratz threw out Michgan’s heavy-handed thumb on the scale of giving all black and a few other minority applicants a 20 point bonus (out of 150) on their application, and Grutter, lamentably, allowed narrowly tailored racial preferences in certain circumstances. Allowed, but did not require.
Obviously the qualifications for membership on the Michigan Civil Rights Commission are embarrassingly low.
Finally, and almost humorously, Scott says California didn’t really need preferences anyway since the whole state is so “diverse.” Michigan, however, with what he says is an 80% white population, does:
… unlike Michigan, where whites comprise more than 80% of the population, in California, no one ethnic group or race constitutes any clear majority of the population. So the impact of the ban on affirmative action in California is mitigated by the mere fact of its exploding minority population whose sheer numbers guarantee at minimum a respectable level of representation in the public sphere.
….
That is not the case in our state, where former University of Michigan President Lee Bollinger warned there could be more than a 75% drop in African-American, Latino and Native American student admissions at U-M if affirmative action is banned.
I’m continually surprised that advocates of racial preference think assertions like Bollinger’s help their cause, for it is an admission that 75% of the admitted minorities would not have been admitted if they had been evaluated by the same standards as all other students.
Mr Rosenberg,
You make some very valid yet very controversial points throughout your posts. After reading through your “More Michigan ‘Civil Rights’ Incompetence” post I became a bit disturbed when you commented on 75% of minority applicants not being as “qualified” as their white counterparts. As a Stanford grad student, I am sure you are aware of the 300 years blacks were oppressed in the United States. If whites had a 300 year head-start in the education realm, how could you judge blacks by the same standards as whites? In addition, I am sure you are aware of several historical cases highlighting the disparities between inner-city minority and suburban white education. If you are not please feel free to look into Serrano v. Priest, Williams v. California, or even Brown v. Board of Education. I am sure Stanford professors at the world-renowned School of Education are very familiar with them. Given the institutional discrimination and socio-economic limitations many black, Latino, and Native American minorities face, they should be granted spots in institutions of higher education based on different standards. If you look at the data, most failing inner-city schools are attended by poor black and Latino students. Seventy-five percent of the “under-qualified” students you speak of are being admitted to schools like Michigan after receiving a poor education prior to entering college and still competing with their white counterparts. Racial preference is necessary for eradicating the unfair historical advantages whites have over blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans.
Best,
An “under-qualified” Trojan
How many decades of “catching up to the white man” does it take a student to learn to write a coherent sentence, master simple arithmetic and algebra, and show up to class? If you’d rather spend energy wallowing in victimhood than studying, you get what you deserve.
Mr. Bahamondes – Not everyone who appears white has a 300 year head start, and not everyone who appears non-white is at a 300 year (or any year) disadvantage, a fact which doesn’t prevent them from receiving racial or ethnic privileges at Michigan and other institutions that judge them by the color of their skin.
By the way, I said nothing about any minorities being “unqualified.” What I did was quote former Michigan president Bollinger’s statement that if racial preferences were dropped “there could be more than a 75% drop in African-American, Latino and Native American student admissions.” This is simply another way of saying that 75% of the minorities at Michigan would not have been admitted if they had been judged by the same standards as everyone else.
For what it’s worth, I think Bollinger was vastly overstating his case. The study that I discussed in this recent post noted that in their “public university” category (the University of Virginia, which is very selective, and Penn State, which is less so), the 12% of black students there now would be 5% today under neutral, colorblind standards, projected to rise to 9% by 2025. In my view, Michigan, like Virginia, is probably closer in selectivity to the group the authors classified as moderately selective. In that group, blacks make up 9% now, would have been 5% under neutral, colorblind standard, and are projected to rise back to 9% by 2025.
Nevertheless, although I disagree with you, I appreciate your honesty and frankness in arguing that minorities should not be judged by the same standards as everyone else. I wonder if you believe that same double standard should be applied in class (to grades), to graduation requirements, to requirements for admission to graduate and professional schools, to professional employment, etc., etc. What about to the children of those who have received preferences based on their race? Grandchildren? Should the government give out racial identity cards so that fair-skinned minorities would not be deprived of the special treatment to which their race, in your view, entitles them?
Finally, let me say that I was very much impressed by your “favorite quote.” I Googled your name at http://www.usc.edu; found a reference to you in the Latino Resource Book as a staff member of “El Centro Chicano Staff” (p. 15 of 50 pdf pages); and there saw your favorite quote:
I must say that I find it odd that someone who appears to object to judging people as they “appear to be” is nevertheless willing to assume that admissions officers and others should conclude on the basis of skin appearance alone that whole categories of people are incapable of meeting the standards applied to their peers.
UQ Trojan,
I suggest that ou actually read the cited references before you used them to justify racial discriminaiton.
All three of them start with the principle that all students deserve an equal education. How do you reconcile that with the idea that after the courts mandating that the public universities should have separate and unequal admission and/or performance standards.
I suggest you look up Bakke, the Banneker Scholarships at the University of Maryland, and the Gratz cases. Arguing that a generic white student should be held to a higher standrd to punish whites of slavery has not been successfully argued in the courts in over 25 years.
If whites had a 300 year head-start in the education realm, how could you judge blacks by the same standards as whites?
What’s puzzling about statements like this is the way they treat education as genetic. After all, no white person with which I’m familiar has been alive for “300 years.” Nor has any black person. Someone could have a 30 year head start — but a 300 year one?
(And what kind of education does Mr. Bahamondes think white people were getting 300 years ago, anyway? There was a tiny elite that was going to college — a very tiny elite, because there were only a handful of colleges — and most people, whites included, weren’t going past the eighth grade.)
What’s disturbing about statements like this is the way they treat people of similar skin colors as fungible. To Mr. Bahamondes, it’s not what the individual applicant has had, it’s what “whites” or “blacks” have had.
As if the fact that some other white guy got a good deal 300 years ago benefits me now merely because I have a similar skin color to the one he had 300 years ago.
Among the more appalling aspects of Kelvin Scott’s letter is his utter ignorance of what the Supreme Court opinion in Grutter really says. (That, or Mr. Scott is simply trying to mislead Free Press readers.)
The Supreme Court opinion in Grutter actually ENDORSES the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative:
“[U]niversities in California, Florida, and Washington State, where racial preferences in admissions are prohibited by state law, are currently engaged in experimenting with a wide variety of alternative approaches. Universities in other States can and should draw on the most promising aspects of these race-neutral alternatives as they develop…”
That is precisely what the MCRI would have Michigan do — join California and Washington as being one of the experimenters in race-neutrality.
After reading this over 2 years later I’d like to retract my statement. Racial preference is not an indication of unequal access to education and should not be the premise for different standard setting. As a result, racial preference is not the best way to fix access to education and “socio-economic” disparities in the U.S.
Although Blacks and Latinos are the majority demographic in low-performing, under-resourced schools, I think it is more important to look at socio-economic background when selecting students at top-ranked universities. Too many “privileged” Black and “Latino-4th-generation-box-checking” students are admitted to top-ranked schools because of their racial identity. Several of these students received excellent schooling and come from middle to upper-middle class families. Once these “box-checkers” are admitted into top-ranked universities they do not identify with and do very little advocacy for these “under-represented” communities.
Therefore, socio-economic background is a much better factor to consider in order to help fix this “civil rights” issue.
And the quote CTD used was completely taken out of context…I never said all people of color are under-qualified and should be held to lower standards. However, there is a very strong correlation between race and class. People of color tend to be less economically privileged which usually translates to less educational preparation.
Less educational preparation doesn’t mean they are incapable of meeting the same standards as their peers; what this usually translates to however is less AP, honors or SAT preparation. Given this lack of preparation the playing field is going to be unequal so judging by the same “standards” is unfair.
It all boils down to educational access, resources and socio-economic background.
Cheers.