U-M’s Admissions Policy Is Racist
As published in the Ann Arbor News, June 9, 2003
In a recent debate with Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University and the named defendant in the University of Michigan race cases before the Supreme Court this year, NBC’s Matt Lauer asked Mr. Bollinger: “Can you have diversity at our universities and schools without taking race into account?” Mr. Bollinger responded: “You really can’t.”
So much for the long march of civil rights that began by declaring all men were created equal; Abraham Lincoln’s belief that we could treat all humans equally because they are all part of “the whole great family of man;” Justice John Marshall Harlan’s dissenting opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson saying “The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color.;” and Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that his children would 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.” Color of skin, for Mr. Bollinger and those supporting U-M’s race-based admissions policies, is to be taken into account – now and, presumably, for the foreseeable future. This position demarks civil wrongs, not civil rights and, should it prevail in the Supreme Court, it will doom race relations and the notion of equality for a very long time to come.
The lead plaintiff in the U-M cases, Jennifer Gratz, was denied admission to the university despite a very admirable case for admission: She graduated near the top of her class, maintained a 3.8 GPA, and volunteered in her community. But there was one critical fact damning her case for admission: She had the wrong color of skin. That last sentence would have raised hackles if it were written about a minority student in the 1950s or 1960s – today it is met with a shrug of the shoulders because Ms. Gratz is white. But what happened to the notion so many of us fought for for so long – that race should be simply irrelevant, that we should strive toward a society that does not convey rights or benefits based on the color of one’s skin? It fell toward the wayside.
To see Ms. Gratz’s case – and so many others like hers – as simply coincidental is to ignore the race-based policies of U-M. Michigan’s policy actually rewards admissions points to applicants who are black and Hispanic. On a scale of 150, race counts for 20 points – more than personal achievement and SAT scores combined. In fact, a black student is 174 times more likely to be admitted to the Ann Arbor campus than a white student. That is disparate impact. But far worse, it is taking race into account to convey a right or privilege as well as to deny a right or privilege, and the word for that is, plainly and simply: racism.
This egregious form of providing points by color exists in a vacuum where no historical discrimination against blacks or Hispanics has ever been alleged at the University of Michigan. Because it is racist, the Michigan policy will foster more racism, not reduce it: The policy will cause resentment among the races, it will stamp minority applicants with a “stigma of questionable competence” (to borrow from Shelby Steele) and it will make us more color conscious as a society, not less.
Lined up behind U-M are a vast array of elite institutions that have filed almost 50 amicus briefs – from Fortune 500 corporations to members of the House and Senate, to a variety of universities and so-called civil rights organizations. Standing athwart this tide of political correctness and racialism is President George W. Bush who instructed his Department of Justice to do what good departments of justice do: support the 14th Amendment and support equal rights.
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year, President Bush announced his decision to file a brief on behalf of Ms. Gratz saying, “Our Constitution makes it clear that people of all races must be treated equally under the law.” While this statement is commonsensical on its face, the president’s decision flies in the face of the organized elite who kowtow to the idea that race must be used to get beyond racism. That is the easy, short-term, and unconstitutional way to address problems of race in this country. Thus, it took courage on the president’s behalf to oppose convention – to oppose political correctness with moral right.
While the arguments in the Michigan cases renew the debate about race and racism in this country, we should remember one thing, and it was taught to us by Thurgood Marshall in his historic brief in Brown v. Board of Education: “Distinctions by race are so evil, so arbitrary and invidious that a state, bound to defend the equal protection of the laws must not invoke them in any public sphere.” Marshall was right in 1954, and so is President Bush today. Race should play no factor in educational opportunity or any other right or privilege in 21st century America.
William J. Bennett was U.S. secretary of education in the Reagan administration. He is a co-director of Empower America, and the co-author of “Counting By Race,” among other books.
