Discriminations

I have had, and taken, many opportunities to highlight, and usually to ridicule, University of California Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s often-repeated calls for the repeal of Prop. 209 and for re-instituting racial preferences (see here, here, here, here, and here, for starters).

These are worth looking at ... if you’d like to see an extreme preferentialist claiming such things as (in this one) that because Jennifer Gratz believes the state should treat everyone without regard to race that she must herself park in parking places reserved for the handicapped, implying, among other absurdities, that all minorities are handicapped. Or (this one) arguing that California’s most selective universities have an obligation not to mirror the exact demographics of the California population — any run of the mill preferentialist can, and does, argue that — but that they should mirror now the demographics of what the population will be in the future. Or (this one) that racial preferences should be brought back because eliminating them, and treating everyone without regard to race, “created an environment that many students of color view as discriminatory.”

Now Birgeneau’s back, arguing in today’s Los Angeles Times that “undocumented” students in California colleges should be allowed to receive financial aid and scholarships.

He argues that it is unfair to penalize these students because of the immigration violations of their parents and that it is unfair to treat them worse than other graduates of California high schools. Since his appeal is grounded in an appeal to equity and fairness (as well as to arguments that our society would be better off by encouraging their talents), I found what he chose not to say here to be especially interesting.

The dog that did not bark in this article is that it contains no mention of the fact that Birgeneau obviously does not believe these “undocumented” students should be treated just like everyone else. Because he believes in preferential treatment of the “underrepresented,” he believes they deserve to be treated better than native, “documented” Americans (though not better, I assume, than Native Americans).

No wonder he didn’t mention that fact. Unless the pot containing money for financial aid and scholarships is unlimited, for every student receiving such aid another student will not. It would be controversial enough not to discriminate against the “undocumented” in the distribution of these funds, but it is even more controversial — or would be if that position were honestly revealed — to discriminate in favor of them.