{"id":2635,"date":"2002-12-03T12:51:52","date_gmt":"2002-12-03T19:51:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mossback.org\/archives\/2002\/12\/battling-editorials\/"},"modified":"2002-12-03T12:51:52","modified_gmt":"2002-12-03T19:51:52","slug":"battling-editorials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2002\/12\/03\/battling-editorials\/","title":{"rendered":"Battling editorials"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tThe Supreme Court’s consideration of racial preferences in college admissions has prompted battling editorials on the America’s most influential editorial pages. The New York Times<\/a> makes the traditional left-wing argument:<\/p>\n

\n

If the Supreme Court strikes down the program, it could undo affirmative action in higher education, sharply reducing the number of African-Americans in colleges and graduate schools.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the Wall St. Journal<\/a> counters with the relevant data:<\/p>\n

\n

The university is perfectly up front about its policy of discrimination and defends it as necessary for its “compelling interest” in having a diverse student body. But the experience of two other state university systems — Texas and California — shows that argument doesn’t hold water. Both institutions did away with affirmative action in 1996 — Texas under court order and California at the direction of the Board of Regents — amid prophesies of a “new segregation.”<\/p>\n

This turned out to be a “complete fiction,” says Terry Pell, executive director of the Center for Individual Rights, the public-interest law firm that brought the Michigan lawsuits. Today every public university in both states has a non-Asian minority student body of 10% or more. In California earlier this year, minority enrollment at UC’s eight undergraduate campuses topped 19%, up from 18% in 1997, the last year racial preferences were in effect.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In California, the passage of Prop 209, outlawing racial and gender preferences, increased minority enrollment in UC, mostly at the minor campuses. <\/p>\n

Of the two editorials, the WSJ’s is clearly the more honest. Affirmative Action continues to provide a crutch to those who don’t want to attack the real problems that disadvantage minorities, poor public schools and too many single-parent families. Understandably, every left-wing special interest group in the country has written a “friend of the court” brief supporting preferences.<\/p>\n

Court watchers say O’Connor has switched sides and will vote to strike preferences down.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court’s consideration of racial preferences in college admissions has prompted battling editorials on the America’s most influential editorial pages. The New York Times makes the traditional left-wing argument: If the Supreme Court strikes down the program, it could undo affirmative action in higher education, sharply reducing the number of African-Americans in colleges and … Continue reading “Battling editorials”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-Gv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2635\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}