Racial Preferences Equal Discrimination
By Brian Yates (01/19/03)
President Bush finally weighed in on the University of Michigan’s use of racial preferences and quotas on Wednesday and he rightly blasted it out of the water. Discrimination of any kind is unconstitutional, and giving preference to one group of people over another is discrimination. At Michigan, undergraduate applicants who are black, Hispanic or American Indian receive a 20-point bonus on a 150-point scale used to grade applications.
For example, a student getting a perfect score on the SAT would receive 12 points, a perfect 4.0 GPA would get 80 points, students from difficult high schools get 10 points, and three points are received for an excellent essay. And then, if you’re the right color, another 20 points can be had.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution very clearly states that, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property…nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Folks, the use of racial preferences and quotas anywhere, for any reason is wrong. Jesse Jackson and others of these so-called “civil rights” leaders act as if affirmative action is a debt America owes to minorities due to the years of slavery and segregation. But how does discriminating against a different group of people help to right past wrongs? It doesn’t.
How does giving preference to minority applicants help anyone? If the applicant does not have the grades and test scores, then they have no business gaining admission to the university in the first place. They would be better off going to a lesser college or university. If anything, affirmative action ought to be insulting to blacks and other minorities because it implies that they are not capable of being academically competitive with whites. Blacks are just as smart as anyone else, why are we attempting to hold them to lesser standards. And not to mention, wouldn’t a person who is a somewhat lesser student be better off attending a lesser college? Are you going to be better off getting C’s at University of Michigan or A’s at Eastern Kentucky University? You’re going to be better off at a place where you can be competitive with the students around you.
Should I attempt to sue the National Basketball Association because the majority of NBA players are black? Where are the calls for affirmative action in the NBA? Diversity is important, right? There are more blacks than whites in the NBA because they tend to be better basketball players. If the white applicants to University of Michigan law school have better test scores, shouldn’t they be taken over the less qualified? I can hear you now, “Come on Yates, many minorities come from poor inner-city backgrounds where they don’t receive a quality education. You can’t blame them for the system.” I’m not blaming them, maybe they can’t help that they did not receive the educational background of some of the other applicants. However, that doesn’t mean we need to admit them into more prestigious schools because of it. If Jesse Jackson and the other liberals that are seemingly so concerned really wanted to help then they’d go into the inner cities and fix those schools. They’d allow a system of vouchers so poor families with children in failing schools could send their kids to private schools. They would make school choice an option. But they would most certainly not simply give these kids a free pass into school based solely on the color of their skin.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Dr. King didn’t want a system that gave preference to anyone based on color, and yet what is affirmative action? People need to earn what they receive, not expect to have it given to them based only upon whether or not they are black or white.
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