response 39 of 217:

Jan 23 17:12 UTC 2003

klg.
You're a mutton head!

response 41 of 217:

Jan 23 17:56 UTC 2003

That's right Jamie, none of us living out here in the suburbs of Detroit have
any experience with black people.  Nothing but corn fields and corn fed white
boys around.  Uh huh.

response 43 of 217:

Jan 23 22:32 UTC 2003

Re #30:  Being an athlete of a certain caliber is a point of merit.
Having a certain skin color is an accident of birth.

All this talk about race as a proxy for disadvantage begs the question:
why the hell doesn't the university use direct measures of disadvantage,
so that equally-disadvantaged people of whatever race get the same leg
up?

response 45 of 217:

Jan 23 23:24 UTC 2003

(nah.  it's obviously easier to institutionalize racism that to consider
an individual's merits.)

[while the above is intended as ironic, I should note that one of the
reasons the U-M came up with its admissions policy was because it lacks
the resources that a Harvard or Yale can devote purely to admissions
screening.]

(any word on how the bake sale went?  today's the day.)

response 47 of 217:

Jan 24 01:44 UTC 2003

re:  "#42 (rcurl):  Re #38: Powell probably makes more than you do, but 
I bet he has encountered racism more than you have."

If my kid and CP's kid both applied to the same college, who'd you 
suppose they'd prefer to accept?

response 49 of 217:

Jan 24 03:05 UTC 2003

(what an incredible idea!  prove one's financial status by providing
actual income figures!  I wonder why no one ever thought of that!)

(...probably because they did.  it's called the FAFSA.  aside from that,
I largely agree that expediency<>right.  I also hold that using race
to decide whether to admit someone to a public university is not only
"not right," but also not acceptable.)

(so, how was the bake sale?)

response 51 of 217:

Jan 24 06:05 UTC 2003

Re#47: I have no idea - I know nothing about either your or Powell's kids,
nor what colleges you have in mind, much less their admission policies.

response 53 of 217:

Jan 24 06:48 UTC 2003

Re: 29 -

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30624
==
"If colleges wanted to admit only legacies, or only tuba players, or only
 people who got astonishingly low SAT scores -- to ensure some of their
 graduates would be U.S. senators one day -- the Constitution wouldn't stop
 them.

 What the states, including state colleges, cannot do under the Constitution
 is discriminate on the basis of race. What even private colleges cannot do
 under federal law -- if they accept federal funds -- is discriminate on the
 basis of race. Neither the Constitution nor federal law says anything about
 discrimination on the basis of SAT scores, legacies or athletic ability. We've
 had a civil war, a constitutional amendment, a Supreme Court ruling, a
 National Guard mobilization and a federal civil rights law to try to get the
 Democrats to stop with the race discrimination."
==

response 55 of 217:

Jan 24 14:43 UTC 2003

Re #43: There are plenty of people who don't have the physical qualities
to be exceptional athletes.  That's as genetic as race is.

response 57 of 217:

Jan 24 17:53 UTC 2003

No, you're missing the point--the article was no doubt referring to race 
discrimination against the oppressed white folk.

response 59 of 217:

Jan 24 18:51 UTC 2003

I knew what klg was driving at. He wants to completely overlook the continuing
discrimination against minorities and wave a big flag for some minor
inconveniences "suffered" by the majority in the course of trying to redress
some of the effects of discrimination. 

response 61 of 217:

Jan 24 19:50 UTC 2003

Might also want to consider the staunch opposition to the civil rights
movement that came from the Democrat party.  Democrat leaders were responsible
for the filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which involved former KKK
leader Robert Byrd, Bill Clinton's political mentor J. William Fulbright, Sam
Ervin of North Carolina, former vice-president Gore's father, Albert Gore Sr,
and 16 other Democrat senators.

Orval Faubus, Lester Maddox, and George Wallace, the most outspoken opponents
of school integration, were all Democrats.  It took the intervention of
Republican president Dwight Eisenhower to force the integration of schools.

As for why so many Black people vote for Democrats?  You got me.

response 63 of 217:

Jan 24 20:25 UTC 2003

As I think polygon pointed out recently in another item, with lots of
historical data to go along with it, the current positioning of the parties
with the Democrats as liberal and the Republicans as conservative only goes
back 40 or 50 years.  The Republican Party, which now dominates conservative
Southern politics, didn't exist in the South way back then.

The Southern Democratic politicians who din't change their views on
segregation as this was happening generally became Republicans.  To be fair,
there are also Republicans who do oppose segregation, and there are no doubt
some segregationists who for whatever reason have remained Democrats, since
neither party is fond of kicking people out.

For those for whom moving towards racial equality was the most important
political issue, 140 years ago it would have made a lot of sense to be a
Republican.  50 years ago, my impression is that those who felt strongly on
both sides of the issue were Democrats -- I'm not sure if the Republicans had
much of a position on it.  Now the issue again seems to have become Partisan,
with the segregationists being a faction of the Republican Party, and those
strongly pro Affirmitive Action and the like being a faction of the Democratic
Party.  My impression is that Trent Lott, for example, probably isn't all that
proud of his current party's Civil War history.

It's also worth noting that many of those opponants of racial integration
switched sides to some extent or another as they got older, and it does those
they now agree with little good to turn down their help now.  The big
objection to Trent Lott, as far as I can tell, was not so much that he had
his views way back when (although that certainly doesn't reflect well on him),
but that he apparrently continues to have those views now.