Samhita Mukhopadhyay

Racial preference in schools

It was a sad day last month when the Supreme Court decided that segregation in schools was OK and when the ignorant Justice Roberts declared that “if we want to stop discrimination based on race, than we should stop discrimination by race.” As though schools are equitable today. As though children all have access to the same kind of schooling, no matter what their race or socio-economic background. Clearly, an unpersuasive excuse on behalf of Roberts to justify a legal setback for schools some 60 years.

So I guess I wasn’t surprised when I read that the Project on Fair Representation is filing a complaint with the Department of Education because the University of Texas is using race in its admissions policies.

In a letter to the university, POFR has written that the law has been violated because UT-Austin, during undergraduate admissions, has reintroduced race and ethnicity as criteria for admissions. This reintroduction is considered illegal and unfair by the director of POFR, Edward Blum, and he, in his letter, has demanded a stop to this system before the next applications are taken in. He has requested the U.S. Department of education to step in and stop it immediately.

Because you know, years of segregation and lack of access to education is completely and totally fair. I really wonder about these groups that go around looking for people that are using race and ethnicity in school entry practices and seek to defeat them. It is not like if historically disenfranchised people get some access to education, the people that have always had access to it are going to lose anything. Talk about paranoia.

I wonder how many more cases like this are going to pop up around the country since the SCOTUS decision. Scale-backs on racial preference in school acceptance had already become a trend in the last decade as seen in California and Michigan.

via AP and AC.

Posted at 8:53 PM, Aug 01, 2007 in Affirmative Action | Education | Permalink | View Comments