President to Oppose Race-Based Admissions
President Bush plans to declare his opposition to University of Michigan admissions policies that give preference to black and Hispanic students, injecting the White House into the Supreme Court’s most far-reaching affirmative action case in a generation, administration officials said yesterday.
The officials said Bush, who faces a deadline Thursday for registering opposition with the high court, plans to pay tribute to the value of racial diversity in higher education. But he plans to argue that Michigan’s approach is flawed.
The issue is politically sensitive and legally complex, and top administration aides last night were unable to provide crucial details about the brief’s legal arguments, which are still the subject of discussion by top presidential advisers. For example, it was unclear whether the brief’s praise of diversity would go so far as to assert that achieving racial diversity is so important that it justifies college admissions officials to consider race, in some fashion.
“Not all the decisions have been made,” an official said. The decision could come as early as today, the official said.
The aides said Bush plans to point to an “affirmative access” program he championed as governor of Texas. It guaranteed state-college admission to the top 10 percent of each high school graduating class, regardless of race.
The Michigan case presents Bush with one of the thorniest political questions of his administration. The administration is eager to placate its conservative base, which generally opposes racial preferences, while also continuing to woo Hispanic voters, a growing percentage of the electorate.
Meanwhile, administration officials said they were aware of the sensitivities of African American voters after the furor over remarks by Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) last month, when he praised a 1948 segregationist presidential campaign. The comments cost Lott his job as Senate Republican leader.
Conservatives said they worry that a compromise brief from the administration will send an equivocal signal to the justice generally considered to hold the swing vote in the case, Sandra Day O’Connor. Generally inclined to take modest steps on the most controversial issues before the court, she could take a fudge by the administration as a cue to issue a middle-of-the-road opinion of her own, conservative activists said.
See the full story at the Washington Post.
January 17th, 2003 at 12:02 pm
Hooray for the Bush Administration which has come out *against* racism - as it is practiced by Michigan in favor of blacks.
January 17th, 2003 at 8:09 pm
Hooray for the Bush Administration which has come out *against* racism - as it is practiced by Michigan in favor of blacks.
The Bush Administration isn’t really coming out against racism here. They still support programs based on “life experiences” which, although ostensibly race-neutral, are designed to discriminate against whites in favor of blacks and Hispanics. Bush is just trying to fool dumb whites into thinking that he’s on their side - which he obviously isn’t.
January 25th, 2003 at 8:46 pm
Tom Dascle (spelling) commented that admittance based on ethnicity is no different than admittance based on athletic ability or admittance because a parent which he said Bush would agree) attended the school.
“It has been determined by many demographic studies that the ethnicity of the U.S. workforce is changing dramatically. White males constituted only about 15% of the increase in workers during the last decade. In addition, the growth in the number of citizens seeking advanced degrees in engineering and the sciences is leveling off. In order to remain competitive in these fields, the nation must now turn more to traditionally underrepresented groups - African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans, for example - to reinforce the talent pool.”
Look folks, with the Hispanic population growing the way it is, it is vital that we have acurate representation of different ethnic groups attending college, because if we dont, reguardless of ethnicity, if you are poor or rich, employed or unemployed, legal or illegal resident, we will all be up the creek without a paddle.