I've devoted most of my life to civil rights and champion affirmative action in very concrete ways. It is fair to point out what Bakke so highlighted. If society were not racist, those black applicants would have had equal or superior credentials to white applicants. Race does not make them less qualified. They probably had access to less elite schools, science and math aren't readily picked up on your own. I graduated from a mostly black urban high school. Three-quarters of my class failed a fifth grade arithemtic test. Those students were bright. No one had bothered to teach us. Despite As in math, I had to teach myself percentages after law school and pay for a tutor to take the law boards. People don't have equal opportunities. The most striking thing about "all men are created equal" is its basic untruth. I could qoutes Les Miserables by Victor Hugo about the poor having equal opporutnity with the rich to sleep out of doors and starve.
Bakee almost unhinged the civil rights movement which was funded by Jewish people for the most part. Jews were held back by express quotas. They could compete on merit based programs and did extraordinarily well. Bakee almost shattered this alliance permanently. My personal belief is that college should be affirmative action, even based on race. Four years should be enough time to learn the skills necessary. Black colleges have been underfunded historically, though. I believe a lawyer can get by without a rigorous four year college experience. Medicine requires hard science and math, however. Without affirmative action, all people assumed a black doctor was equal to whites in preparation. Indeed, my hometown had a big blowup when black students only failed a neutral medical test. They demanded a test they could pass. This outraged people. We are not talking all black people. Middle class blacks more than hold their own.
There is an effect that seems to continue. Part of school and profession is culture. Law school was strictly merit for membership in law review which selects the very top students to edit and write scholarly articles relating to law. No black students were making law review after five years of competitive study. Harvard and some other law schools, including my own, decided past discrimination was not so easy to remedy and developed special slots for blacks. I submit this the dillemna. Sometimes people must compete solely on merit. Defining when that time occurs is problematic.
I am not racist. Yes, I am an ethnic white. But I have thousands and thousands of hour in this field to prove my statement. Racism is wrong. Is reverse racism correct? Maybe for a limited duration. Many black middle class students decline affirmative action preference. I would certainly claim it if I could. They want to compete evenly. Saying that an African-American baby will not have straight hair forever is not sensitive but it is not incompetence or malpractice. White people are reaping what they sowed. The Bible says God visits calamity down generations.
Affirmative action crudely applied can result in a separate but equal system. Minorities can quickly become professionals but not perceived as full professionals. The Supreme Court's stance on proven past discrimination feels right. This is social engineering. It is ugly and certainly not the American norm. The American norm, though, never existed. There are ugly consequences to slavery and Jim Crow.
I look forward to a time when affirmative action is not needed. Unlike others, I have no magical solution. President Obama addressed this during the campaign. Not all whites were slave owners or profited from slavery. I attended a program at the National constitution Center about present family members of the largest slave traders. Northern whites were even more complicit than white slave owners. Ethnic whites could use affirmative action, too. The system is very unfair to us, too. Restrictive covenants included blacks and Jews, but also Irish, German and Slavic citizens in their prohibition. Why should whites who arrived here long after slavery was abolished pay for slavery?
The solution would be to never have slavery. I don't know whether Obama personally benefited from Affirmative Action programs. It is abundantly clear he would have made his way without them. I suspect if he had, it would have been used against him. Obama tackled several issues with clarity. I was riveted when he addressed the Democratic Convention asking why we were ceding religion to the Republicans when the black church fostered the civil rights movement. I believe that being biracial gave him the courage to acknowledge the tensions in this area. Race is such a hot issue. Mere acknowledgmetn is courageous.
