i'm not trying to say something as ignorant as racism doesn't exist and there isn't a complete need for something like this.....i'm just saying that i don't think it works the way it was intended.....like, welfare, it's something that gets abused. but for you to say something like, "white students do not want to be the minority" is a complete generalization of all whites as racist and i am highly offended by that b/c i am NOT a racist by any stretch of the imagination, and i am NOT about keeping anyone down. i'm about having the right person get rewarded with the job or the education or whatever. the sad fact of the matter is that racism does exist, and just b/c a few rules are put in about how you have to hire/accept so many so and so's doesn't mean it's gonna work right or that it's gonna erradicate racism, and it often doesn't mean that the most qualified person will indeed get the job. someone is gonna be kept from getting what they want/deserve.....male, female, black, white, chinese, mexican, etc....it's called LIFE. you don't always get what you want. but you still work hard, you still do WHAT IS RIGHT, and that's all you can do sometimes. sometimes, life SUCKS. you get the short end of the stick.......but that doesn't mean you lash out unfairly and attack an entire group of people (whatever race or gender you are). not saying that's what i think AA is b/c i don't......but again, i think some ppl choose to abuse the system. ppl choose to be unfair to others b/c someone was unfair to them. two wrongs don't make a right.

and i'm done with this lil rant b/c i don't want to ramble....hopefully i made some sort of valid point in there somewhere, and again....i don't mean to offend, i don't mean to state anything but my opinion and i guess to defend what i was saying earlier. yay for it not getting too heated in here. :)

I think a more valid question is not how the white man is shafted by all these "inferior" black students "stealing" their spots in admissions(which by the way is a very insulting and bullsh** assumption), but how well the students in those schools actually do in their time at those institutions, and after. In my experience at NYU, which definitely practices AA, this is what I noticed. There were many of the white students, quite often the ones who had been pampered, and ever so carefully reared by their indulgent, loving parents, that just slid by, or were drugged out, or just plainly not very smart(not all or most, however enough numbers to create a noticable trend). There were some minority students that were that way too, but overwhelmingly(again, a noticable trend), I found that most were very hard workers, very involved, and very intelligent. And they HAD to be, because there were less of them represented in the school, and if they didn't succeed, it could make a big difference in the opportunities offered to them and very possibly to their children. At graduation, I noticed that a huge portion of the honor students(designated by gold tassels), were in fact minorities. So it seems to me from my experiences at least, that when using AA, colleges are still picking students by their merit, and more importantly, their potential.

Also, to address the idea of parental support, I would think that as more students of color gain access to higher education and opportunities, they in turn become more supportive of the next generation.

We are at a time now of transition. In any society, significant change happens slowly. Unfortunately, although we(caucasians), did not "make the mess", it is still there, and we are still benefitting from privileges that were stolen from our fellow citizens. When you accept stolen property, you are still responsible even as a third party, and that is kind of the position we are in now. Many of us as members of GLOs often talk about overlooking selfish needs for the good of the group. This is a principle we must apply now. It may feel as if we are "paying" for the wrongs of others, but some way I feel that this is necessary to achieve that transition towards true equality - and that goes for people of color, women, immigrants, homosexuals, and all groups that fight conscious and unconscious discrimination. And sometimes the tide turns and a new group will need a boost. I think someone mentioned it already, but I've seen several articles reporting that white males are now significant recipents of AA benefits(due to a diminishing number of white males enrolling in certain colleges).

Sugar&Spice, can I just say, you are so smart, and so (refreshingly) socially conscious, it's wonderful. Props to you!!!

Lots of people keep making references to white males. Please provide these stats and studies.

-Rudey
--Thank you.

I'm confused here. If the survey was done in 1977, how can a comment about it still happening today as a part of that study be meaningful? Or, is there another survey/study that proves things haven't changed since the original?

Did I miss something? It has happened before.

Edited to add:

I just went back to find the original post and may have found the root of my confusion. There are no close quotation marks in the paragraph which talks about the 1977 study. So, it may be that it wasn't quoted, and that the assertion is that "It still happens today." But, now that I've gotten that far, assuming that I'm on the right track, is there new information to show that things have not changed? And is the lack of change a general thing, or is it true of a small(er) number of educators.

Not being argumentative here, just trying to clear up my misunderstanding.

Rose,

Sorry, I guess I lost track of this thread.

I don't know how it would be handled -- only how it was with me.

Well, if you're looking for a college acceptance affirmative action policy that accepts a 2.0/1000 minority when the rest of the students have 3.5/1300 stats, I bet you'd be hard-pressed to find one. In most affirmative action cases, the minorities' stats are only slightly below the whites' (a 3.3 as opposed to the 3.5 or so, not a point and a half) or even with them. Like (I think it was) Honeykiss said, it's ridiculous to assume that the majority of people who benefit from AA are stupid, or way behind their white peers. Usually the differences in their statistics are pretty minimal.

I don't think most, if any, affimative action policies admit unqualified individuals on a regular basis. When whites contest affirmative action decisions, it just becomes a debate of "qualified" and "more qualified."

Not a fan of it.

sugar and spice, I know...I was agreeing with you.

I agree 100%. Very well said.

Foes of Affirmative Action in Michigan Plan to Take Their Battle to the Ballot
 

Foes of Affirmative Action in Michigan Plan to Take Their Battle to the Ballot

http://chronicle.com/daily/2003/07/2003070901n.htm

By PETER SCHMIDT

Ward Connerly, who led successful campaigns to ban racial and ethnic preferences in California and Washington State in the 1990s, announced on Tuesday that he and other affirmative-action foes plan to embark on a similar campaign in Michigan, and may take the battle to other states.

Mr. Connerly made his announcement on the campus of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the target of two lawsuits that led, last month, to U.S. Supreme Court decisions upholding the limited use of race-conscious admissions policies by colleges.

Surrounded by the lead plaintiffs from the two Michigan cases and by prominent opponents of affirmative action from Michigan and other states, Mr. Connerly denounced the Supreme Court's decisions as contrary to the principles of equality enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and federal civil-rights law. He said that he and other foes of racial preferences would seek to place, on the November 2004 ballot, a proposed amendment to Michigan's state Constitution that would prohibit racial, ethnic, and gender preferences in public education, public employment, and public contracting.

"We will develop a cadre of supporters who can carry our message of equal treatment for all and preferences for none throughout the state of Michigan," said Mr. Connerly, chairman of the Sacramento-based American Civil Rights Institute and its companion political-action committee, the American Civil Rights Coalition.

"Our crusade will not end with the state of Michigan," Mr. Connerly said. "In the weeks and months ahead, we will be exploring the feasibility of undertaking initiatives in other states, cities, and counties across the land."

Edward J. Blum, director of legal affairs for the American Civil Rights Institute, said Mr. Connerly is considering similar campaigns in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Oregon, and Utah, with the goal of having the measures on ballots in the fall of 2004.

In Michigan, at least, Mr, Connerly and his allies are expected to have a fight on their hands.

Although opinion polls have consistently shown that a majority of Michigan voters oppose the use of racial and ethnic preferences in college admissions and elsewhere, several of the state's political leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, were quick on Tuesday to declare their opposition to the proposed ballot measure. Some even vowed to block the efforts by Mr. Connerly and his supporters to get the signatures needed to put the measure on the ballot.

Betsy DeVos, chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, criticized the measure as likely to "result in more division than unity."

"I fear that this proposed ballot initiative would only serve to further divide people along racial lines, which would be entirely counterproductive," Ms. DeVos said.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat, and Melvin Butch Hollowell, chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, also pledged to fight the proposed ballot measure.

"The Democratic Party will firmly take on Ward Connerly and his outside interests and his outside money as they attempt to tell Michigan what to do," Mr. Hollowell said. "We will be joining with a coalition of groups to not only scrutinize all of the signatures on this ballot proposal, but also to campaign vigorously to make sure it goes down in flames."

David Waymire, executive vice president of the Marketing Resource Group, a political-consulting firm based in Lansing, Mich., said that he was working to assemble a bipartisan group of business, labor, and government leaders to oppose the measure.

In a separate news conference on Tuesday, two organizations that had intervened in one of the Supreme Court cases, to help defend the Michigan law school's admissions policies, called for a boycott of any corporation or institution that lent financial support to Mr. Connerly's campaign.

"We can defeat Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action ballot proposition before it gets off the ground, but only if we act decisively now," said Shanta Driver, a spokeswoman for the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action & Integration and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary.

"Any business, institution, or individual that funds the attack on civil rights will face a consumer boycott and pickets," warned Ms. Driver, whose group, generally known as BAMN, played a prominent role in opposing the ban on affirmative action in California.

Tuesday's announcement by Mr. Connerly came just 15 days after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of affirmative action in college admissions in Grutter v. Bollinger, involving the University of Michigan Law School, and Gratz v. Bollinger, pertaining to the university's undergraduate College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. The court struck down the undergraduate admissions policy, but only because a majority of the justices felt that the college's point-based admissions system put too much weight on race and did not give applicants enough individual consideration.

Mr. Connerly, a Sacramento-based businessman, has long been a leader in the fight against affirmative action. As a member of the University of California's Board of Regents, he played a key role in persuading his fellow regents, in July 1995, to ban the university's use of racial, ethnic, and gender preferences in admissions, hiring, and contracting.

He subsequently led the successful campaigns for California's Proposition 209 and Washington's Initiative 200, both of which banned the use of such preferences by public colleges and other state institutions. Proposition 209 garnered the support of 54 percent of California voters in the November 1996 elections, and 58 percent of Washingtonians came out in favor of Initiative 200 in November 1998.

In an interview in March, Mr. Connerly made it clear that he intended to undertake new ballot campaigns against affirmative action if the Supreme Court upheld the use of race-conscious admissions policies in the Michigan cases. He said that, although 23 states allow such ballot initiatives, he would initially aim to get measures passed in only "three or four states, strategically located and selected on the basis of demographics and political affiliation."

"We are thinking of sort of like a package, like Super Tuesday," Mr. Connerly said, referring to the day on which several states traditionally hold their presidential primaries. The goal, he said, would be to "demonstrate to the nation and to Congress" that bans on affirmative action are politically viable.

Mr. Connerly and his supporters will need to gather about 318,000 signatures -- an amount equal to 10 percent of the votes cast in the 2002 gubernatorial election -- to get their proposed measure on the Michigan ballot.

Steve Mitchell, chairman of Mitchell Research & Communications, a political-consulting firm in East Lansing, estimated that collecting those signatures would cost $400,000 to $600,000, while the campaign for the measure is likely to cost $4-million or more.

William S. Ballenger, editor and publisher of the newsletter Inside Michigan Politics, said that gathering the signatures would be "no small mission," largely because "this thing is going to be challenged by everyone that you can think of in terms of its legality and wording."

Mr. Ballenger said the affirmative-action issue is dangerous for both the state's Democratic and Republican Parties. A substantial share of Michigan's Democrats fit the profile of "Reagan Democrats," who tend to have conservative social views and are likely to oppose affirmative action, he noted. The state's Republican Party, meanwhile, has to worry that the presence of the measure on the November 2004 ballot will motivate larger-than-normal numbers of black Democrats in Detroit and other major cities to head to the polls, spelling political trouble for President Bush and other Republican candidates.

Many of Michigan's business leaders submitted legal briefs to the Supreme Court in support of the University of Michigan. If they lend significant financial backing to the fight against the affirmative-action ban, the measure could be in trouble, Mr. Ballenger said.

But otherwise, Mr. Ballenger said, most polls show that the measure's chance of passing is fairly good.

A 1998 poll commissioned by The Detroit News found that 53 percent of voters opposed racial preferences in employment and other areas, while 40 percent supported them. That same year, a poll commissioned by the Detroit Free Press found that 66 percent of respondents opposed, and 23 percent supported, admissions policies that gave preferences to students based on race. (The remaining 11 percent were undecided.)

Last winter, EPIC/MRA, a research firm based in Lansing, asked 500 likely voters around the state about their views of the University of Michigan's race-conscious undergraduate admissions policy, noting in the question that the policy awarded black, Hispanic, and American Indian applicants a 20-point bonus on a 150-point scale. Sixty-three percent opposed the policy, while 27 percent supported it; 10 percent were undecided. (The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.) University of Michigan officials complained that the poll question was biased because it focused solely on the consideration of race and oversimplified the university's admissions system.

ALSO SEE:

THE RULINGS:
The full texts of the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in the Michigan cases, Grutter v. Bollinger (the law-school case) and Gratz v. Bollinger (the undergraduate case). Both files require Adobe Reader, available free.


RUgreek

Re: Foes of Affirmative Action in Michigan Plan to Take Their Battle to the Ballot
 

It just drives me crazy when interest groups use tactics like incorporating terms like "Civil Rights" in the names of groups who espouse ideas that would generally be the opposite of the movement(s) that made the term a household word.

Some people who don't read carefully, or don't have the savvy to understand the technique might vote for the issue because of the name of the organization. On the other hand, others might vote against it because of some lingering racism.

In any event, I hate the arrogance of people who use this kind of cynical propaganda technique.

I'd like to hope that our society was intelligent enough to understand how this attempts to "use" their emotions...but, alas, I'm not sure it is.

Isn't that the point that the plaintiff was trying to make in her case against the University of Michigan?

The plaintiff had a 3.8 gpa and scored 161 on the LSAT but she was denied admission while a "disadvantaged" minority with a lower GPA and a lower LSAT score was admitted to the law school. The flaw with the admission policy is the fact that some of the "disadvantaged" minorities are not disadvantaged.

Ward Connerly really needs to give it a rest

I haven't read all the posts here, so I don't know if anyone has posted this, but here in Texas we address diversity not by affirmative action, but through admission of the top 10% of high school graduates to public universities. Basically, this helps with diversity because a person can graduatew in the top 10 percent of a heavily minority school can be admitted to any state school in Texas automatically. They are, however, about to change this since some of the large schools like UT and Texas A&M have percentages of automatic admissions students larger than they should be.

The Texas system is going back to the pre-Hopwood admissions system, effective the 2004-2005 academic year.

http://www.utexas.edu/admin/opa/news...ion030623.html