The Supreme Court to make decision on racist policy

[Tony]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,82753,00.html

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court heard arguments for and against affirmative action in school admissions on Tuesday, but the final decision could boil down to just one of the nine justices.





Justices Sandra Day O'Connor is the court's perennial swing voter. Her decision could determine the first changes to affirmative action in a generation, changing how race is used in schools, the government and other sectors for the foreseeable future.

"It is very likely that it will be 5-4," UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh said of the court's eventual vote. "The question is, 5-4 which way?"

O'Connor's thinking may or may not reveal that answer. At Tuesday's arguments, she asked whether law schools could not consider race since they use so many variables to determine an applicant's status.

Tuesday's case involves whether the University of Michigan and its law school can offer an edge to black, Hispanic or Native Americans students by granting them extra points in their rating system over white students with equal credentials. The University of Michigan gives minorities 20 points on a 150-point scale. Most accepted applicants must earn 100 points to get in.

Admissions officers at the law school use a looser formula that tries to ensure each class has a "critical mass" of about 10 percent or 12 percent minority enrollment.

The college's attorney, Maureen Mahoney, told the court Tuesday that a diverse student body is a worthy goal.

"The education of all students will be enriched. That is not a quota," she said in response to a question from Justice Antonin Scalia.

Scalia said the university, in creating such hard-access to the school -- admitting only 350 of the some 4,000 applicants each year -- set itself up for a situation that would result in racial imbalance.



Affirmative action is the last bastion of institutionalized racism in america. It has to go.

[Brown]

This may sound like a joke, but it isn't. From the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/01/politics/01CND-SCOTUS.html) (registration required):Instead, the justices consumed much of the time allotted to Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson in firing questions about a brief filed in support of Michigan by a group of retired senior military officers and former military academy superintendents. The brief argued that an integrated officer corps was essential to national security and could be achieved only through affirmative action at the nation's military academies. (emphasis is mine)Strange bedfellows, eh?

[subgenius]

Gerald Ford for one is in favor of the U of M policy. Is he a racist?
Labeling it racist is an insult to reasonable people who may differ on the subject, and is a cheap poor substitute for an intelligent position on the subject.

[Tony]

Originally posted by subgenius
Gerald Ford for one is in favor of the U of M policy. Is he a racist?
Labeling it racist is an insult to reasonable people who may differ on the subject, and is a cheap poor substitute for an intelligent position on the subject.

Affirmative action is a policy that judges and awards points to individuals on the basis of race. If that isnt racist, nothing is.


Reverse the roles, if a black guy was refused admission into a college because he was black, and thus wasn’t able to achieve the required points needed to be admitted into the college, the outcry from the bedwetting leftists would be deafening. But since white people are being discriminated against in these circumstances, it is ok.

[specious_reasons]

Originally posted by Tony

Affirmative action is a policy that judges and awards points to individuals on the basis of race. If that isnt racist, nothing is.

Reverse the roles, if a black guy was refused admission into a college because he was black, and thus wasn’t able to achieve the required points needed to be admitted into the college, the outcry from the bedwetting leftists would be deafening. But since white people are being discriminated against in these circumstances, it is ok.

The word "racist" has deeply negative connotations that you're pretending to ignore, and then you follow it up with "bedwetting leftists". Can you demonize your ideological opposites more? How does this promote critical thinking?

[subgenius]

Yeah Gerald Ford, the last honorable Republican is a bedwetting leftist. You're a creep.

edited to remove the word ******* and replace it with creep.

[fishbob]

Tony sez:
Affirmative action is a policy that judges and awards points to individuals on the basis of race. If that isnt racist, nothing is.

Reverse the roles, if a black guy was refused admission into a college because he was black, and thus wasn’t able to achieve the required points needed to be admitted . . .The purpose of affirmative action is to provide opportunities to certain groups of people that have historically been denied opportunities. The problem is that the opportunity is given to certain individuals at the expense of other, not guilty of anything, individuals. In the long run, the group goals may be achieved, but the cost of that achievement is borne by those who lost the opportunity. That said, those white guys have other opportunities, whereas the minority folks may not.

Affirmative action is the last bastion of institutionalized racism in america. I hate bigots. Institutionalized or otherwise. The goals of affirmative action have merit - this country does not need multiple generations of second class citizens. The implementation causes hardships and it is definitely not perfect. We can do away with it when the non-institutionalized racists die off and we don't need it anymore. Get over it. And try not to be such a bedwetting er creephole.

[Tmy]

Let people get into schoool based on merit. Merits like who you know, nepotism, legacys, political connections, family name etc....

NOW THATS FAIR!

[Lurker]

Originally posted by subgenius
Yeah Gerald Ford, the last honorable Republican is a bedwetting leftist. You're a creep.

edited to remove the word ******* and replace it with creep.

If it were a true replacement then it should have read "...You're an creep."
-----------
What is up with Tony? Yes, Affirmitive Action is racist. But until a minority group which has been historically disciminated against catches up to the mainstream I am willing to pay the price. Further, whilst the black applicant gets 20 points, academic achievement counts for 80 points so they still need a good record to get in.

Lurker

[Lurker]

Ooops, let me rephrase...80 points for GPA, another 30 possible for other academics. so 110 points of the 150 are based on academics.

Let's take a looksie at what good old Bush instituted in Texas while he was Gov.

The top ten percent from every Texas high school would automatically get in at Univ of TX. Graduates from low-achieving minority schools would get automatic berths at UT. These kids couldn’t get in on a normal basis, because their grades and test scores were relatively low. But now, these kids would get automatic spots under this “race-neutral” plan. This, of course, is exactly what happens under affirmative action.

Not much different, is it? but bush is supposedly opposed to affirmative action. Yeah, right.

Lurker (with some help from dailyhowler)

[Occasional Chemist]

Originally posted by fishbob
The purpose of affirmative action is to provide opportunities to certain groups of people that have historically been denied opportunities. The problem is that the opportunity is given to certain individuals at the expense of other, not guilty of anything, individuals. In the long run, the group goals may be achieved, but the cost of that achievement is borne by those who lost the opportunity. That said, those white guys have other opportunities, whereas the minority folks may not.

I've not seen this addressed in this thread yet, but does the University of Michigan also grant points based on other criteria like:

* Income / family income (perference for poor people, regardless of race)

* Number of college graduates in the family (preference for those who are not children of college graduates)

? Or is it just race?

[pgwenthold]

Originally posted by Tmy
Let people get into schoool based on merit. Merits like who you know, nepotism, legacys, political connections, family name etc....

NOW THATS FAIR!

Yeah. For example, we can say that George W. Bush got into Yale based on _merit_, and didn't need no stinking frivolous policy.

[Brown]

I heard excerpts from the actual oral arguments on NPR. This was interesting, and I wish radio would do it more often. (If I recall correctly, no television cameras are allowed in the Supreme Court during argument, so television news organizations would have no incentive to broadcast anything more than a few seconds of oral argument.)

I found it interesting that Chief Justice Rehnquist repeatedly referred to the Michigan system as a "quota" system, even though counsel repeatedly tried to explain that it was not a "quota" system at all.

I also found interesting Justice Scalia's questions about "critical mass," a standard about as nebulous in this context as any standard I've ever heard.

Also, one of the advocates (I can't remember which) sounded to me an awful lot like Donald Sutherland.

[pgwenthold]

Originally posted by Brown
I heard excerpts from the actual oral arguments on NPR. This was interesting, and I wish radio would do it more often.

In select cases, the SC will release the audio tapes. In this case, they released it right after the session.

[WMT1]

Originally posted by subgenius
Gerald Ford for one is in favor of the U of M policy. Is he a racist?

It would certainly seem reasonable to characterize support for this policy as racist. Among the definitions I found on dictionary.com was "discriminatory especially on the basis of race or religion". Does that make things a little clearer?


Labeling it racist is an insult to reasonable people who may differ on the subject,

Who cares if it's an "insult"? Does it accurately describe the policy or not?


and is a cheap poor substitute for an intelligent position on the subject.

Nonsense. Identifying as racist something that actually is racist is an intelligent position on the subject. In fact, there's probably a certain irony in simply referring to someone's position as "a cheap poor substitute for an intelligent position" without explaining what's wrong with that position.

[WMT1]

Originally posted by specious_reasons
The word "racist" has deeply negative connotations that you're pretending to ignore,

Those negative connotations are often used to demonize the motives of an adversary when there is no clear foundation for such conclusions. In this case, it's clearly spelled out in a policy.


Can you demonize your ideological opposites more?

Does it qualify as demonizing someone if you accurately describe their position on a particular issue?


How does this promote critical thinking?

Just curious, do you think it promotes critical thinking to be dismissive of the racist nature of this policy?

[WMT1]

Originally posted by Tony
Affirmative action is a policy that judges and awards points to individuals on the basis of race. If that isnt racist, nothing is.

Originally posted by fishbob
The purpose of affirmative action is to provide opportunities to certain groups of people that have historically been denied opportunities.

And would race play a part in defining who "certain groups of people" are?

[Tmy]

There is no more racisim in America. Minorities are well represented. Just look at the frontlines in the war!

[WMT1]

Originally posted by Tmy
There is no more racisim in America. Minorities are well represented. Just look at the frontlines in the war!

You don't seem to be responding to anything in particular. Are you suggesting that someone else has expressed these conclusions?

[Tmy]

Im just being a sarcastic pain in the ass.

We've just had these Af-action threads sooooooo many times that i get bored of posting "af action is a swell thing cause of bla bla bla..." then comes "there isn't racism anymore" and " people should be judged on merit" and so on.

Maybe I can hijack this thread with a well placed race card.
Heregoes.........

This forum is filled with highbrow quasi-racist white fowlks who love affirmative action threads cause they get to spill their closet racist guts.

[WMT1]

Originally posted by Tmy
Im just being a sarcastic pain in the ass.

We've just had these Af-action threads sooooooo many times that i get bored of posting "af action is a swell thing cause of bla bla bla..."

Maybe I can hijack this thread with a well placed race card.
Heregoes.........

This forum is filled with highbrow quasi-racist white fowlks who love affirmative action threads cause they get to spill their closet racist guts.

My apologies. I mistook you for someone who wanted to be taken seriously.

[Tmy]

Apology accepted!

[Tony]

Originally posted by Tmy
Let people get into schoool based on merit. Merits like who you know, nepotism, legacys, political connections, family name etc....

NOW THATS FAIR!

Do you assume that all white kids have those "merits"?