What Exactly Does Affirmative Action Affirm?

The New York Slimes... er, Times, that bastion of incoherent ramblings disguised as news, is bemoaning the fall-out from several states banning racial preferences in college admissions to their public universities. Go here to gaze at your navel.

--With Michigan’s new ban on affirmative action going into effect, and similar ballot initiatives looming in other states, many public universities are scrambling to find race-blind ways to attract more blacks and Hispanics.

At Wayne State University Law School in Detroit, a new admissions policy, without mentioning race, allows officials to consider factors like living on an Indian reservation or in mostly black Detroit, or overcoming discrimination or prejudice.

Others are using many different approaches, like working with mostly minority high schools, using minority students as recruiters, and offering summer prep programs for promising students from struggling high schools. Ohio State University, for example, has started a magnet high school with a focus on math and science, to help prepare potential applicants, and sends educators into poor and low-performing middle and elementary schools to encourage children, and their parents, to start planning for college.

Officials across the country have a sense of urgency about the issue in part because Ward Connerly, the black California businessman behind such initiatives in California and Michigan, is planning a kind of Super Tuesday next fall, with ballot initiatives against racial preferences in several states. He is researching possible campaigns in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming, and expects to announce next month which states he has chosen.--

You humans confuse the shit outta me. You say society should try to be color-blind, then you pick and choose wo to admit to your public universities based on the amount of melanin they have in their skin.

Weird, weird, weird.

But, I'll play along. There's obviously some true believers out there who think it's a good idea to value "diversity" over academics or other criteria, so let's talk about that for a minute.

First off, I need someone to explain to me why asians, in spite of their funny-colored skin and funny-shaped eyes, don't appear to need special treatment. They seem to manage to get into good colleges just fine, even when their families haven't been here long at all.

I don't suppose that's because asian families value - and demand - good grades from their kids in school or anything, right?

Anyhow, here we have colleges that are partially government-funded bemoaning the fact that they can't discriminate based on skin color anymore, and trying to find clever ways to go back to business as usual. Because, ya know, diversity is good.

Okay. Why is it good? Who does it benefit? Will a white college kid do better out in the cold, cruel world because he sat next to a black kid that was dumber than him rather than an asian kid who was smarter than him?

Nope, didn't think so.

Back to the question... What does affirmative action affirm? That a level playing field is bad, and preferential treatment is good? That skin color is more important than grades and SAT scores? That it doesn't matter if minorities flunk out in droves as long as y'all gave them a chance to attend an elite school?

Oh, and hey, do-gooders. Don't be surprised when a certain segment of the population declares that it affirms that blacks and hispanics just don't/can't measure up.

My free moose advice for the day is, fix your fucked-up public school system, and you'll have plenty of qualified minorities ready and able to enroll in your colleges. But you won't be able to fix your K-12 schools until you admit that they are broken, and why they are broken.

Hint: It's not a lack of money, but rather the totally retarded way that money is spent.

I'm going to whisper a phrase here, and I know it will cause all the misguided do-gooders to fall into a dead faint. But listen carefully anyway, because my penis tells me it's the right answer.

You ready?

School choice.

Eh, I knew it. I heard the thud of dropping bodies from here.

.