Liberals love demonstrating their perverse idea of tolerance by shouting down or attacking conservatives on campuses and in the public square.
Yesterday, a “diverse” group of protestors at the DoubleTree Hotel in Madison, Wisconsin, shut down a press conference about a study exposing the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s (UW-Madison) race-based admissions scheme.
Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO), was answering questions about “Racial and Ethnic Preferences in Undergraduate Admissions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (PDF),” when opponents of racial neutrality in government rushed into the conference room, surrounded Clegg, and shouted “Power to the people!” and “More than our scores!” until he left the room. (See this AP story for more information)
Funny thing about facts: no matter how sad or infuriating they are, they’re still facts. Unrighteous indignation doesn’t alter them. For example, it is a fact that schools lower admissions standards for certain minorities (East Asians not included) to increase “diversity.” According to a CEO study released this week, the odds of admission (based on SAT score and class rank) in 2007 and 2008 for black and Hispanics over whites at UW-Madison were 576-to-1 and 504-to-1, respectively.
The median SAT score for blacks was 150 points lower than for whites and Asians, and 100 points lower for Hispanics. Based on ACT scores, the odds were 1330-to-1 for blacks and 1494-to-1 for Hispanics. CEO also found “severe” discrimination in law school admissions. In fact, the color of the student’s skin was given much greater weight than Wisconsin residency.
“[A]n out-of-state black applicant with grades and LSAT scores at the median for that group would have had a 7 out 10 chance of admission and an out-of-state Hispanic a 1 out of 3 chance—but an in-state Asian with those grades and scores had a 1 out of 6 chance and an in-state white only a 1 out of 10 chance.”
How did such an obviously unfair and patently demeaning practice get started? In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued an executive order that directed federal contractors to take “affirmative action” to ensure that applicants were treated equally “without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” They were encouraged to cast a wider recruitment net to include in the hiring pool qualified minorities who’d been historically excluded. In 1971, President Richard M. Nixon authorized the Department of Labor to set specific goals and timetables to correct the “underutilization” of blacks by federal contractors.
The same year, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. that an employer’s use of a high school diploma requirement and aptitude tests violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Black applicants disproportionately lacked diplomas and/or scored low on the tests, and the requirements had a disparate impact on this group. The court held that even if an employment practice is “facially neutral,” it’s suspect if it has an adverse impact on members of a protected class. To avoid liability, businesses would have to demonstrate that such tests are a business necessity or related to job performance.
Fast forward 40 years, and “affirmative action” has reached embarrassing proportions. Not only are prospective college students given points and other special considerations for the color of their skin, but blacks themselves publicly announce to the world that they can’t nor should be expected to compete with whites on pencil-and-paper civil service exams.
Even more bizarre, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit struck down a voter-approved law in Michigan that barred the government from considering race in employment, contracting, and education. In other words, the panel contended that outlawing racial discrimination discriminated against minorities. Fortunately, the full court has agreed to reconsider the case.
That blacks are adversely impacted by a grades-and-scores system doesn’t mean blacks are the targets of racial discrimination. It means as a group, they are adversely impacted by a grades-and-scores system. It does not follow that the government should add points to an individual’s application based on race and reject another applicant for having the “wrong” skin color.
It is illogical to demand equal treatment and special treatment at the same time. Equality before the law is supposed to protect the rights of individuals, regardless of skin color or grades or SAT scores. “Tolerant” liberals can shout down the messengers until their faces turn blue. Suppression is futile, and facts are relentless. Taxpayers have a right to know they’re supporting local, state, and federal governments that treat individuals differently based on the color of their skin.
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