<p>
[quote]
Justice Kennedy may be “just one jurist,” but his opinion in Parents Involved and Meredith is the holding one. He concurred with the opinion of the Court, but he felt that a diverse student body is a legitimate compelling interest. (He qualified the word “diversity” by adding that its meaning and definition matter.) Instead of getting mad, you should thank him for not overturning Grutter.
[/quote]
His comments do not matter unless they are approved law. In this case, they are not, and that means they are nothing to which anyone might hold confidently.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I remind you that Justice Kennedy was nominated by President Reagan and confirmed by the Senate. I’m sorry that you have no faith in our judiciary.
[/quote]
Merely having a single jurist speculate about a potential program, with no structure or description of how that program would work, whether it would help blacks, and whether it could withstand a legal assault, is obviously nothing in which to have faith.</p>
<p>
[quote]
If you’re unwilling to proclaim that you support Mr. Connerly’s goal of ridding states of both positive and negative discrimination based on race, sex, and ethnicity, then I request reasons as to why.
[/quote]
It should be quite clear to you. I simply do not trust people like Connerly, and I certainly do not trust those who back him. As you’ve demonstrated here, the terms “Affirmative Action” as held by Affirmative Action opponents can literally be twisted into meaning programs that are NOT designed to help blacks, women, and other minorities. My idea of “preferential treatment”, where admissions officers are able to have complete information about what makes their candidates who they are, including race, but where no particular race is preferred above others, is “preferential treatment” to you. I do not trust the integrity of AA opponents. I do not trust the integrity of those who claim a wish to help blacks, but who wish to destroy programs that help blacks.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The phrase “affirmative action” isn’t mentioned once in Proposition 209. Adding the restriction, “or grant preferential treatment to,” does not “[worsen] the employment or educational opportunities of members of minority groups or women.” You claim not to support preferential treatment, but you are against amending state constitutions to ban it. This is the recurring paradox among racial preference defenders.
[/quote]
Complete nonsense. If the term is defined as you define it, then banning preferential treatment is a thing that is ridiculous. If it is defined as I define it, then I am very eager to ban it. You only see a paradox because you wish to see one.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I don’t question that many of the blacks who graduated from Berkeley before 1996 were talented young Americans. I don’t know whether or not they came from poor backgrounds. I do know, however, that after 1996, black admissions dropped at Berkeley but increased elsewhere.
[/quote]
And that is precisely what would happen across the entire nation were AA opponents to get their way. Blacks already lack traction in America, and as they are pushed into the educational ghetto by policies hostile to them, the same thing would happen to colleges that now has happened to public schools. The best and most resources would flow generally to whites, and blacks would starve.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I also know that after 1996, black four-year graduation rates increased throughout the entire system. These talented young Americans simply redistributed themselves. As Justice Thomas wrote in Parents Involved, “Racial imbalance is not segregation.”
[/quote]
Thomas is just one jurist who himself likely benefited from Affirmative Action, especially since the man was not exactly a stellar scholar at any time. There is just nothing significant here, and Thomas is quite wrong about racial imbalance when the best resources flow away from one school so swiftly that only those who lack cultural traction attend them. </p>
<p>
[quote]
My “ilk” did not kill any diversity. Today at Berkeley, there are more minorities than whites. Whether you like it or not, Asians are minorities. There are fewer Asians in America than blacks. That your group has a lower representation at Berkeley does not negate our being minorities.
[/quote]
So are Italians, and Greeks, and Croats, and Serbs. They are all minorities, and here again is yet another demonstration of how AA opponents twist meaning to avoid the truth. Blacks are among the few groups who originally established the country. They scarcely exist at Berkeley where previously they were significantly represented.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Your dismissal of Berkeley as being “just this school for Asians… and whites” is rude to the black, Hispanic, and Native American students currently enrolled there.
[/quote]
It is no more rude than your implication that the blacks who were formerly at Berkeley were not talented.</p>
<p>
[quote]
You criticize Berkeley for not having the “black experience” or “what it means in this day to be a descendant of this history.” As I previously mentioned, the research of Dr. Massey shows that at the elite universities which you consider “example[s] of great American communit[ies] of higher learning,” a rather large number of black students don’t share the “experience” you speak of. So much for Berkeley being unique in this regard.
[/quote]
I have visited each of these schools myself, talked to the black students myself. There is more development of black thought happening at these schools than at Berkeley, more transmission and development of the meaning of being American and black at these places than there. We need places like them because it is here that the rest of us learn how to move beyond the past. It just ain’t happening at Berkeley and yet it is a critical aspect of American culture.</p>
<p>
[quote]
First, I don’t believe anybody’s entitled to anything other than life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
[/quote]
Great, then take these and enjoy. Affirmative Action doesn’t remove these from you. They were never denied you or your ancestors so that you are now attached to a lack of these rights. All of them were denied my ancestors. I wish to have this fixed, and think AA can help.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Second, though many of these young black students are more entitled to admission than their development case peers when judged by “strictly quantitative concepts of merit,” given what happened in the UC system after 1996, I doubt this would be sufficient for admission as these students still have to compete against their non-black peers.
[/quote]
Which is one reason why a strict quantitative concept of merit ought not be used. It overlooks other forms of merit that are just as important in revealing potential. Should we move to a strict system, where the truth about people will be lost, blacks are going to be pushed around and out just as they are now being pushed out in California.</p>
<p>
[quote]
You make the comically common mistake of assuming that the complement of race-based admissions is a “numbers driven Chinese system.” That is like saying that at universities, there are either boys or literature majors, which is obviously wrong. Holistic admissions can still be holistic without an explicit consideration of race. See UCLA for an example.
[/quote]
If it purposefully excludes something so important as an applicant’s race, it is not holistic. It is just intentionally false – deliberately hiding what affects everything about the applicant. California does not have a holistic system. It has a false system, and Berkeley demonstrates that.</p>