affirmative action

Almost no one understood it at the time, but Lyndon Johnson’s speech at Howard University in June 1965 marked a disastrous change in civil rights policy. Previously, the civil rights movement had sought to overturn the entrenched, often legally mandated discrimination that was the legacy of Jim Crow, and bring about the colorblind society in which people would be judged (as Martin Luther King put it) by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.

The Arkansas Democratic party is denying presidential candidate John Wolfe the delegates he earned in the state's primary because Wolfe's selected delegates fail to meet the party's standards for diversity.

Like many colleges and universities, Princeton professes its devotion to “institutional equity and diversity.” The university’s website claims that the school “actively seek[s] students, faculty, and staff of exceptional ability and promise who .  .  .

Rich Lowry: "The Effrontery of Rick Santorum"

Conn Carroll: "Welfare state should not be a middle-class subsidy"

Opponents of state ballot initiatives that outlaw race and gender based affirmative action programs have vowed to take their fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Ward Connerly, the former University of California Regent who was the galvanizing influence behind Proposition 209, which amended that state’s constitution to prohibit preferential policies, would welcome that challenge.

Pressing for a world without nuclear weapons, the State Department has been flacking the president’s upcoming Nuclear Security Summit, scheduled for April 12–13: "President Obama has invited over 40 nations to participate, representing a diverse set of regions and various levels of nuclear materials, energy, and expertise."  

Does "a diverse set of regions" mean that affirmative action has become part of arms control?  Does "various levels of expertise"  mean there will be representatives with little expertise as well as great expertise? Is the State Department being run by diplomats or clowns?

YEARS AGO, once colleges and universities had decided to make race and ethnicity "a factor" in their admissions, many of them cast about for additional ways to advance educational opportunity for minorities. So they came up with scholarship and financial aid programs, freshmen orientation programs, and academic-enrichment programs, to name the most prominent. And they made sure that the programs were, as the lawyers say, racially and ethnically exclusive. Only minorities were eligible.

ON OCTOBER 7, Californians will be offered more than a chance to pick a new governor. They will be asked whether they want to amend the state's constitution to outlaw most public classifications by race. Under Proposition 54--known as the Racial Privacy Initiative to its backers, and as CRECNO (the Classification by Race, Ethnicity, Color, or National Origin Initiative) to the ballot attorneys--the state could not require racial or ethnic information from those applying to college or seeking a job or a loan.

IN A JULY LETTER to colleges and universities across the country, Gerald Reynolds, head of the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, addressed "a subject," as he put it, "of central importance to our government, our heritage of freedom and our way of life: the First Amendment." Reynolds' office doesn't have the authority to bring lawsuits to enforce the First Amendment. What, you might wonder, possessed him to write a letter about it?

The answer begins with the fact that hundreds of colleges and universities have policies restricting speech that the First Amendment protects.

AT FIRST GLANCE, you might think, as I did, that the letter from Rep. John Dingell of Michigan to a fellow American--a law-abiding American--wasn't his but a parody. Surely, someone who fancies himself a satirist wrote the letter.

After all, would Dingell (or any member of Congress) actually write a letter commanding the recipient, who lives in another state, to "go home and stay there, you're not welcome here"? Surely, someone jests! But, no, the letter happens not to be a parody. Dingell wrote it, or he at least signed it.

Boss Dingell and the Outside Agitator

Ward Connerly sure knows how to get under John Dingell's skin. The point man in passing California's Proposition 209 in 1996, Connerly is supporting a Michigan initiative that would similarly ban race preferences in state hiring and university admissions. This provoked Michigan's famously bullying congressman into writing an astonishing letter that suggests Dingell would be right at home in the Democratic party of George Wallace, circa 1963.