this is the point I was trying to make -- which unfortunately led to a pointless & useless debate with JKS. Due to lack of time & energy, I'm letting that one drop. In any case, it had degenerated to a discussion about "what Jim Devine REALLY thinks" (since JKS attributed opinions to me which I don't have) which is essentially boring to the list (or by any objective standard).
------------------------
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ravi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 10:14 AM
> To: Progressive Economists List
> Subject: [PEN-L:34166] How Affirmative Action Helped George W.
>
>
>
> http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030127-40
> 9553,00.html?cnn=yes
>
> How Affirmative Action Helped George W.
>
> The President might ask himself, "Wait a minute. How did I
> get into Yale?"
>
> By MICHAEL KINSLEY
>
> George W. Bush is all for diversity, he explained last week, but he
> doesn't care for the way they do it at the University of Michigan. The
> Administration has asked the Supreme Court to rule the Michigan system
> unconstitutional because of the scoring method it uses for rating
> applicants. "At the undergraduate level," said Bush, "African-American
> students and some Hispanic students and Native American
> students receive
> 20 points out of a maximum of 150, not because of any academic
> achievement or life experience, but solely because they are African
> American, Hispanic or Native American."
>
> If our President had the slightest sense of irony, he might
> have paused
> to ask himself, "Wait a minute. How did I get into Yale?" It wasn't
> because of any academic achievement: his high school record was
> ordinary. It wasn't because of his life experience �
> prosperous family,
> fancy prep school � which was all too familiar at Yale. It wasn't his
> SAT scores: 566 verbal and 640 math.
>
> They may not have had an explicit point system at Yale in
> 1964, but Bush
> clearly got in because of affirmative action. Affirmative
> action for the
> son and grandson of alumni. Affirmative action for a member of a
> politically influential family. Affirmative action for a boy from a
> fancy prep school. These forms of affirmative action still go on. The
> Wall Street Journal reported last week that Harvard accepts 40% of
> applicants who are children of alumni but only 11% of applicants
> generally. And this kind of affirmative action makes the student body
> less diverse, not more so.
>
> George W. Bush, in fact, may be the most spectacular
> affirmative-action
> success story of all time. Until 1994, when he was 48 years
> old and got
> elected Governor of Texas, his life was almost empty of
> accomplishments.
> Yet bloodlines and connections had put him into Andover, Yale and
> Harvard Business School, and even finally provided him with a fortune
> after years of business disappointments. Intelligence, hard
> work and the
> other qualities associated with the concept of merit had
> almost nothing
> to do with Bush's life and success up to that point. And yet
> seven years
> later he was President of the U.S.
>
> So what is the difference between the kind of affirmative action that
> got Bush where he is today and the kind he wants the Supreme Court to
> outlaw? One difference is that the second kind is about race, and race
> is an especially toxic subject. Of course, George W.'s affirmative
> action is about race too, at least indirectly. The class of wealthy,
> influential children of alumni of top universities is
> disproportionately
> white. And it will remain that way for a long time � especially if
> racial affirmative action is outlawed.
>
> A second difference is that the Michigan system is crudely numerical,
> whereas the favoritism enjoyed by George W. Bush is baked into the way
> we live. Between these two extreme examples are all the familiar
> varieties of preference: explicit racial favoritism without numbers,
> favoritism based on something as amorphous as social class or as
> specific as your high school, favoritism limited to recruitment and
> preparation, and so on.
>
> Opponents and supporters of affirmative action actually tend to agree
> that there is something bad, generally called quotas, and something
> good, generally called something like diversity. Their
> argument is about
> where you draw the line. Bush calls the Michigan 20-point
> bonus a quota,
> and his critics insist that it is not. But both sides are
> wrong. If your
> sole measure of the success of any arrangement is whether it increases
> the representation of certain minorities, then it doesn't
> really matter
> what procedure you use to achieve that result: some people are getting
> something desirable because of their race, and an equal
> number of people
> are not getting it for the same reason.
>
> Of course a series of somebodies didn't get into Andover, Yale and
> Harvard Business School because their blood wasn't as blue as Bush's,
> and other somebodies didn't get a chance to own the Texas
> Rangers or to
> use the capital Bush borrowed to buy his share of the team
> because these
> somebodies were nobodies. Life is unfair. A legitimate criticism of
> affirmative action is that it politicizes life chances and
> focuses blame
> on race. If you get turned down by Yale to make room for a George W.,
> you're not even aware of it. But if you get turned down by the
> University of Michigan, you're likely to blame affirmative action (if
> you're white), even though the numbers say you probably would
> have been
> turned down anyway.
>
> So ask yourself: Would you rather have a gift of 20 points
> out of 150 to
> use at the college of your choice? Or would you rather have the more
> amorphous advantages President Bush has enjoyed at every stage of his
> life? If the answer to that isn't obvious to you, even 20 extra points
> are probably not enough to get you into the University of Michigan.
>
>
