AFFIRMATIVE ACTION Raises its ugly head AGAIN...

There are a lot of stories in the paper today that really irk me.

One big issue that we thought we were done with is AFFIRMATIVE ACTION.

If you remember some years back (2006), we here in Michigan passed and therefore it was VOTER APPROVED, a ban on affirmative action in all cases which also included university admissions.

BUT people and organizations (Civil Liberties Union) could not allow the will of the people to stand and have kept appealing the vote ever since.

Yesterday, the U.S. 6^th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati voted 8-7 to overthrow the ban we, as Michigan voters, approved as violating the “Equal Protection Clause” of the U.S. Constitution thus making it unconstitutional…really?

I tried to explain it some time back but no matter how I try, it sounds like total bullshit.

Here goes…It is more difficult for a minority student to get a university to adopt a race-conscious admission policy than for a white student to get a university to adopt an admissions policy that considers family alumni connections…got it?

One of the lawyers pushing this case said that now thousands of black kids will get a chance to go to college they never would have had…and that is utter nonsense!  Minority kids can go to any college they want to; the doors are wide open but in certain elite schools where applicants far outnumber available openings, the school has to choose who gets in and who does not.

Let me say it a different way…I went to Wayne State University in Detroit and when I applied (1965) there were so many applicants (baby boomers) that you had to take an admissions test and only people that had the highest test scores were allowed in, the rest had to try at another school. I had a buddy from high school that did not make the cut and was pissed at me because he though of himself as smarter than I was but he went to another college and now is a pharmacist…so there!

Now Wayne State does not have as many applicants and anybody and everybody that applies gets in and that includes minorities, etc. BUT at the University of Michigan they have to go through an admissions process which does not just take the smartest kids but looks at many factors including race and we, the voters of Michigan, told them that they cannot use race as an admission factor because that would not be fair to non-black applicants whose whiteness was a point AGAINST admission.

So it is NOT about getting a chance to go to college, it is about getting into the University of Michigan.

We want to be a color-blind society but we will never be a color-blind society when race keeps being an issue. Here in Michigan, we have banned the use of race or gender as a factor in college admissions as well as in all other considerations. Discrimination using race, gender and age has been banned so why are we inserting race into our business again?

The argument that disadvantaged minorities should have a leg up in the admission process at the University of Michigan would be more palatable if the argument was that ALL DISADVANTAGED KIDS should have a better chance BUT all disadvantaged kids do have a chance to go to college but it may not always be to an “elite” college like the University of Michigan which has too many applicants.

My parents were poor as dirt but I managed to finish college…I got a scholarship and then I received help from the GI Bill to attend college…and anyone can do the same…so quit whining you can’t get in to the University of Michigan and go to one of the scores of other good schools with wide open doors…

The Supreme Court will get this case but they already have a Texas case with a similar issue. In the University of Texas case, the university admits the top 8% of ALL Texas high school students but reserves some spots for students with race being a factor.

A white student challenging the policy says she is in the 8% of high school students from Texas but was denied admission based on race. The argument is that the 8% rule is without stipulations as to race or gender and therefore affirmative action is not needed.

Stay tuned………………………………….