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Post |
| ashu |
Posted
on 01-Apr-03 06:09 AM
Today, the US Supreme Court will hear the arguments in "Grutter versus Bollinger".
The substance of the case is: "Does the University of Michigan Law School's use of
racial preferences in student admissions violate the equal protection clause of the
14th Amendment?"
Let us hope that the Court decides that the MLS's use of racial preferences in student admissions does NOT violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
Such a decision would be in favor of Nepali-Americans too, not to mention, indirectly, of foreign applicants to American universities.
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
*******************
Friends of Affirmative Action
(An NYT editorial)
Without affirmative action, the United States might not be able to defend itself from foreign enemies. That startling assertion comes from a legal brief filed by high-ranking retired officers and civilian leaders of the military, including Adm. William Crowe Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Ronald Reagan, and Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of allied forces during the first gulf war.
The military brief is one of a tall stack of amicus curiae, or friend of the court, briefs filed on behalf of the University of Michigan in two pivotal affirmative action cases being argued in the Supreme Court today. At issue is not just the admissions policies at Michigan's college and law school, but the question of whether race can be taken into account by universities, employers and the government to promote diversity. The briefs provide the court and particularly Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the likely swing vote with compelling reasons to uphold affirmative action.
The briefs supporting Michigan filed by major corporations, elected officials and academics, among others testify to how central affirmative action is to preserving diversity in American life, and to how much damage would be done if it were eliminated. In Vietnam, the military brief notes, many African-Americans served among the enlisted but few were officers, and the forces were racially polarized. It became so bad, the brief says, the leadership feared that the military was "on the verge of self-destruction." But race-based recruitment programs increased the percentage of minority officers and greatly improved race relations.
Fortune 500 companies tell the court about the importance they, too, place on affirmative action. A brief on behalf of 65 corporations, including Microsoft, Coca-Cola and General Electric, asserts that racial and ethnic diversity in colleges and universities is vital to the companies' ability to maintain a diverse work force, and ultimately to their "continued success in the global marketplace."
The civil rights movement started on the fringes of society, but today its goals of inclusion and diversity are core American values. In its 1978 decision upholding the use of race in admissions, the Supreme Court recognized that universities have an interest in promoting diversity through an admissions policy that takes race into account. This interest in diversity has only grown since then as our nation has become more multiracial and multicultural, and the world has grown smaller.
Today's cases are not about minority rights, but about the kind of society we want to be. An impressive number of establishment institutions have all weighed in to say that affirmative action is a good, and even a necessary, policy for the nation as a whole. Count this page as one more friend of the court that urges it to uphold the University of Michigan's admissions policies.
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| najar |
Posted
on 01-Apr-03 11:07 AM
Ashu,
Thanks for posting this.The U.S. Supreme Court will hear the oral arguments today about the constitutionality of the University of Michigan's use of affirmative action in admissions to its Law School and its undergraduate college. U-M won lower court victories upholding its policies. Those lower court rulings are now under review by the Supreme Court.
Several of us here, too are keeping our fingers crossed in the hope that the court will favor the UM's approach.
We shall find out soon!
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| bhedo |
Posted
on 01-Apr-03 02:44 PM
I don't know about you guys, but if, by any chance, hypothetically speaking, I find out that I went to an ivy league college because of my skin color, I don't think I would be able to live with it. Anyway, I don't know how it would help Nepali Americans, because, after all, we are Asian Americans, and as far as I know, Asian Americans are overrepresented in most American colleges. From what I know, Asian Americans have even outperformed White Americans...well at least some ethnic groups have, perhaps not Nepricans.
Affirmative Action should only be applicable to Black Americans, IMO, because they were the only ones that were really oppressed and enslaved. Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, etc, shouldn't be included, because they are NEW immigrants, and most of them came here after the civil rights movement, I would say.
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| ashu |
Posted
on 01-Apr-03 06:06 PM
Bhedo,
No Ivy League school knowingly admits students who cannot do the work just because the students happen to be of particular skin color.
The whole thrust of the debate here is NOT that students be admitted based on the color of the skin or the basis of ethnicity.
No one is saying that.
The thrust here is that let race/ethnicity continue to be ONE OF THE MANY DATA POINTS when a dean of admissions and his/her team are putting together the next incoming class of students at their college/universities.
Whether we like it or not, [American] colleges and universities are the places where
we meet -- often for the first time -- people of diferent political, social, financial, ethnic, racial, artistic, sexual and so on backgrounds . . . and the argument is that learning
to live in such a diverse milieu [in colleges/universities now] will help us better cope
with the world (later) that is becoming intertwiningly more multiracial and multicultural.
A few years ago, two former Ivy League university professors Derek Bok and William Bowen published a massively detailed book called "The shape of the river" which argued with evidence drawn from following the lives of many students well after graduation into
their careers that, on balance, the social gains of affrmative actions have been very impressive by any measure.
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
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| el paso |
Posted
on 01-Apr-03 06:22 PM
Interesting. I don't know how data points work, but let's say there are two students, one better than the other by a bit, but the not-so-better one is a person of color. So, based on this(this is just an example, and I might be wrong),
for person of color, we have(:
ethnicity: 10 points
character: 10 points
grades: 5 points
SAT: 6 points
for white, we have:
character: 10 points
grades: 10 points
SAT: 10 points
It might be that ethnicity doesn't carry as much weight as, say, grades, but I exaggerated, just to prove a point. Based on this, we clearly see that the white applicant has a disadvantage, SOLELY BECAUSE of his skin color. You might say, we are choosing from a sea pool of applicants, but still, the minority has an advantage, not because he is smarter, but because of his skin color. Of course, to get to an ivy league school you need to be smart, but it does not change the fact that the color of your skin counts. Clearly though, if the minority were just as smart as the white guy, skin color becomes useless. In other words, affirmative action wouldn't come into play, now would it??? IMO, that is how it should go. Accepting a prospective student, thus should be based solely on one's merits.
On a sidenote, for Bush to denounce affirmative action is very wrong, because he got in due to his dad's legacy. Legacy is also worth some data points.
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| Nepali Kanchi |
Posted
on 01-Apr-03 06:28 PM
affirmative action hurts ASIANS because they are way over represented (i think only 4 percent is the quota for AA)!!
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| whine and chij |
Posted
on 02-Apr-03 09:43 AM
does aa apply to developing country elites' kids?
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