Kevin Fobbs
Will U.S. Supreme Court affirmative action case end reverse discrimination
By Kevin Fobbs
Race based affirmative action may come to a screeching halt and finally put an end to decades of reverse discriminatory policies utilized in higher educational institutions. This week, the U.S. Supreme Court took up arguments concerning a case brought by Abigail Fisher, a white applicant who was denied admission to the University of Texas (UT) at Austin in 2008. Fisher is challenging UT-Austin's decision to use a race-conscious admission plan which considers race as a factor in admitting students to its incoming freshman class.
Instead of using a fairer race-neutral plan, which Texas law already guarantees the top 10 percent of high school students in their graduating class admission to the university, UT-Austin, went a step further. It used an unnecessary and highly unfair reverse discrimination practice of considering race as a factor for admittance, thus making the purpose for the race neutral Texas law meaningless.
The problem which Miss Fisher and any other high school applicant in Texas and in any other community in America has to consider, is will they be admitted based upon their academic ability, content of their character or any other measurable qualities?
Or, will their years of academic pursuit and hard work be rendered fruitless, because the student was denied access based upon their race? In a nation where there is a black president, and where diversity is clearly present in major industries, in academics, and other professions, is reverse discriminatory denial of educational access to white Americans, fair, right, just or even legal?
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., gave America his take on this nearly fifty years ago, and his words have the answer which must guide the U.S. Supreme Court's legal and moral determination of this case. Rev. King stated with moral clarity and conciseness in his 1963 "I have a Dream" speech, "I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!"
When is the time to make real the promises of Democracy? When does America finally become one nation and not an America divided by a two-tier system? Where is the end?
In 2003, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote the majority court opinion in the University of Michigan Law School Grutter v. Bollinger decision. She concluded that universities would need 25 years until they ended their race-conscious admissions policies.
Justice O'Connor was wrong in 2003 and her discriminatory decision and conclusions muse be reversed now. Here is why her conclusions are in error and unnecessarily deprives honorable achieving students like Miss Fisher her rightful seat at the TU-Austin.
O'Connor stipulated in the Grutter v. Bollinger decision, that race-conscious admissions policies were constitutional because they serve a "compelling state interest of promoting diversity and its associated educational benefits."
The question has to be, racial diversity of whom and associated educational benefits for whom. Certainly Justice O'Connor and the NAACP, and the liberals who backed the University of Michigan could not have been talking about the poor and low income black students, who never made the affirmative action cut. Surely, Justice O'Connor could not have been referring to providing an educational seat at the table to the black students whose parents see their kids stripped of their self worth by an educational system run by blacks, led by blacks, and run to ruin by blacks.
No, no and no again.
Justice "O'Connor's decision in 2003 left intact a discriminatory system that only largely benefited students from well connected or very affluent black families. In fact, William Joyce Wilson, a noted black social research scientist, at the Kennedy School and the Department of Sociology at Harvard University, has concluded that affirmative action has actually been a very ineffective tool for the truly disadvantaged, and marginally beneficial for the minority working class.
So again, why is affirmative action still used to discriminate against white students? It is a matter of politics.
If a lie is said often enough, it will become the truth when left unchallenged. Affirmative action is the new slavery. It is the new second-tier of citizenship, where fear, smear and misrepresentation is used in the black community to convince followers of democrat machine promises that affirmative action will help poor and low income blacks up the ladder of success.
Yet black mothers and fathers should seriously consider this. When was the last time you saw a white person stand in front of your child in school to keep him from learning? When was the last time you saw a white person stand in front of your child and told him to commit a crime? When was the last time that you saw a white person stand in front of your child and told him not to study, not to get good grades, not to try harder, not to do better, not to be better and not to succeed?
Abigail Fisher, in Texas does not keep your child from excelling in school. Abigail Fisher's parents and parents like them in Michigan, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Wisconsin, South Carolina, or any other state is not keeping your child from learning, from achieving from realizing the American Dream. So why are you letting Affirmative Action and its discriminatory use block Abigail Fisher's opportunity at the American Dream?
Unions, and democrat machines in Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, and many other major cities, have hoodwinked blacks and minorities into believing that whites are maintaining discriminatory practices that keep their families, their children, and their educational systems and children shackled to poverty, high school dropout rates, crime and sky rocketing illegitimate births.
These insidious notions must end.
Affirmative Action is and to a large part will always be a tool that is used to create a divide between whites, blacks and other minorities. Democrats, poverty pimps, and so called civil rights activists and organizations use affirmative action to skim millions of dollars from guilt-ridden white liberals who want to "do the right thing" because the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons of America have raised the "slavery" boogieman.
Well, Al and Jesse that tired old slavery boogieman won't hunt any longer. No matter how many sad sack stories and anecdotes that you drum up, white people and black people and Americans period, will reject this emotion driven discrimination.
The U.S. Supreme Court must come to the only conclusion that makes moral, logical and principled sense and bring about a game change to Supreme Court Justice O'Connor's decision 2003. When will Affirmative Action end? It cannot be put off 14 more years, 4 more years or even one more year.
It must end here with this court and it must ends now, so that the legacy of slavery and white guilt can die together and America can become one United States, and one nation under God.
Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy, so that America will let true colorblind freedom ring and the nation can become truly and completely free at last.
© Kevin Fobbs
October 11, 2012
Race based affirmative action may come to a screeching halt and finally put an end to decades of reverse discriminatory policies utilized in higher educational institutions. This week, the U.S. Supreme Court took up arguments concerning a case brought by Abigail Fisher, a white applicant who was denied admission to the University of Texas (UT) at Austin in 2008. Fisher is challenging UT-Austin's decision to use a race-conscious admission plan which considers race as a factor in admitting students to its incoming freshman class.
Instead of using a fairer race-neutral plan, which Texas law already guarantees the top 10 percent of high school students in their graduating class admission to the university, UT-Austin, went a step further. It used an unnecessary and highly unfair reverse discrimination practice of considering race as a factor for admittance, thus making the purpose for the race neutral Texas law meaningless.
The problem which Miss Fisher and any other high school applicant in Texas and in any other community in America has to consider, is will they be admitted based upon their academic ability, content of their character or any other measurable qualities?
Or, will their years of academic pursuit and hard work be rendered fruitless, because the student was denied access based upon their race? In a nation where there is a black president, and where diversity is clearly present in major industries, in academics, and other professions, is reverse discriminatory denial of educational access to white Americans, fair, right, just or even legal?
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., gave America his take on this nearly fifty years ago, and his words have the answer which must guide the U.S. Supreme Court's legal and moral determination of this case. Rev. King stated with moral clarity and conciseness in his 1963 "I have a Dream" speech, "I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!"
When is the time to make real the promises of Democracy? When does America finally become one nation and not an America divided by a two-tier system? Where is the end?
In 2003, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote the majority court opinion in the University of Michigan Law School Grutter v. Bollinger decision. She concluded that universities would need 25 years until they ended their race-conscious admissions policies.
Justice O'Connor was wrong in 2003 and her discriminatory decision and conclusions muse be reversed now. Here is why her conclusions are in error and unnecessarily deprives honorable achieving students like Miss Fisher her rightful seat at the TU-Austin.
O'Connor stipulated in the Grutter v. Bollinger decision, that race-conscious admissions policies were constitutional because they serve a "compelling state interest of promoting diversity and its associated educational benefits."
The question has to be, racial diversity of whom and associated educational benefits for whom. Certainly Justice O'Connor and the NAACP, and the liberals who backed the University of Michigan could not have been talking about the poor and low income black students, who never made the affirmative action cut. Surely, Justice O'Connor could not have been referring to providing an educational seat at the table to the black students whose parents see their kids stripped of their self worth by an educational system run by blacks, led by blacks, and run to ruin by blacks.
No, no and no again.
Justice "O'Connor's decision in 2003 left intact a discriminatory system that only largely benefited students from well connected or very affluent black families. In fact, William Joyce Wilson, a noted black social research scientist, at the Kennedy School and the Department of Sociology at Harvard University, has concluded that affirmative action has actually been a very ineffective tool for the truly disadvantaged, and marginally beneficial for the minority working class.
So again, why is affirmative action still used to discriminate against white students? It is a matter of politics.
If a lie is said often enough, it will become the truth when left unchallenged. Affirmative action is the new slavery. It is the new second-tier of citizenship, where fear, smear and misrepresentation is used in the black community to convince followers of democrat machine promises that affirmative action will help poor and low income blacks up the ladder of success.
Yet black mothers and fathers should seriously consider this. When was the last time you saw a white person stand in front of your child in school to keep him from learning? When was the last time you saw a white person stand in front of your child and told him to commit a crime? When was the last time that you saw a white person stand in front of your child and told him not to study, not to get good grades, not to try harder, not to do better, not to be better and not to succeed?
Abigail Fisher, in Texas does not keep your child from excelling in school. Abigail Fisher's parents and parents like them in Michigan, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Wisconsin, South Carolina, or any other state is not keeping your child from learning, from achieving from realizing the American Dream. So why are you letting Affirmative Action and its discriminatory use block Abigail Fisher's opportunity at the American Dream?
Unions, and democrat machines in Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, and many other major cities, have hoodwinked blacks and minorities into believing that whites are maintaining discriminatory practices that keep their families, their children, and their educational systems and children shackled to poverty, high school dropout rates, crime and sky rocketing illegitimate births.
These insidious notions must end.
Affirmative Action is and to a large part will always be a tool that is used to create a divide between whites, blacks and other minorities. Democrats, poverty pimps, and so called civil rights activists and organizations use affirmative action to skim millions of dollars from guilt-ridden white liberals who want to "do the right thing" because the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons of America have raised the "slavery" boogieman.
Well, Al and Jesse that tired old slavery boogieman won't hunt any longer. No matter how many sad sack stories and anecdotes that you drum up, white people and black people and Americans period, will reject this emotion driven discrimination.
The U.S. Supreme Court must come to the only conclusion that makes moral, logical and principled sense and bring about a game change to Supreme Court Justice O'Connor's decision 2003. When will Affirmative Action end? It cannot be put off 14 more years, 4 more years or even one more year.
It must end here with this court and it must ends now, so that the legacy of slavery and white guilt can die together and America can become one United States, and one nation under God.
Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy, so that America will let true colorblind freedom ring and the nation can become truly and completely free at last.
© Kevin Fobbs
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)