Affirmative Action

There are a couple of particularly pernicious notions about affirmative action (which seems to be under attack by everyone, including some black people) that bother me. One is that people who are admitted to elite universities under affirmative-action programs are unqualified and don't perform well in their chosen professions. False. In fact, a University of North Carolina study of law school graduates (even in California, where Proposition 209 has effectively ended affirmative-action admissions at some schools)

The surprising strength of the Democrats in last Tuesday's elections, and the unexpected resignation of House Speaker Newt Gingrich, pushed a major civil-rights story out of the headlines: Initiative 200, Washington state's bid to end affirmative action in employment, education and contracting, passed with 58 percent of the vote. It was a stunning victory, because anti-affirmative- action forces were outspent 3 to 1 by the pro-affirmative-action camp, including heavy corporate hitters such as Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks, Eddie Bauer and the Seattle Times, which devoted free ad space to fighting the ballot measure.

The Camden County administration has proposed overhauling its affirmative- action practices to reverse what officials have concluded is a "poor record" on hiring and promoting blacks, Hispanics and women. In a plan to be given to the freeholders today, County Administrator Louis S. Bezich proposes that the county assign about 20 administration officials to monitor hiring and promotion. "There's a feeling that affirmative action has been icing on the cake," Freeholder Director Robert E. Andrews said.

America has never been the color-blind meritocracy of our highest ideals. But today we are a little closer to the goal of equal opportunity, thanks to a surprising shift by a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. With the March 25 Johnson vs. Santa Clara Transportation Agency decision upholding the right of public employers to adopt hiring and promotional goals for women, the court has arrived at a consensus supporting affirmative action to help victims of discrimination. The ruling is right on time for the growing number of women who are becoming aware of sex discrimination on the job. A Gallup Poll reported March 20 that 56 percent of the women surveyed believe they do not have equal job opportunities with men, up from 49 percent in a 1975 Gallup Poll.

Africans first came to the Western Hemisphere in chains, to work without pay for European settlers. After 245 years and a bloody civil war, the slaves were released. But for another 100 years they were denied full citizenship, terrorized and even hanged. After enactment of a civil-rights law and an epidemic of race riots, policies were created 30 years ago to compensate African-Americans for nearly 400 years of oppression. These policies are called "affirmative action. " Now black people are equal - in fact better than equal.

The conventional wisdom is already busy predicting that the "wedge issue" of the 1996 campaign will be affirmative action. Before you leap into the fray, are you sure you know what affirmative action means? Can you define the difference between affirmative action and reverse discrimination? Can you define the difference between affirmative action and anti- discrimination laws? Between affirmative action and quotas? Do you know which laws promote affirmative action and which encourage reverse discrimination?

Based on the intensity of the current political assault on affirmative action across the country by many Republicans, conservative Democrats and even some African Americans, one might think that so-called "reverse discrimination" is at the heart of most of America's economic woes. If you read the news stories about the debate, you'd think affirmative- action proposals were liberal Democratic initiatives that came out of the civil rights struggle of 30 years ago. You would think that they have outlived their usefulness and have severely limited the opportunities of white males to get government contracts, employment and education.

One of the arguments supporting affirmative action in police hiring is that adding African American officers can help a department handle crime in black neighborhoods more effectively. However, John Lott, a professor at Yale Law School, has completed a study that appears to shoot a large hole in that argument. It shows that in cities where departments have entered into consent decrees to increase minority hiring, crime rates have risen. This is particularly true, he finds, in cities that have a disproportionately large black population.

Hugh Price, the Urban League president who warmed conservative cockles last summer with his don't-blame-it-all-on-racism admonition, told an interesting story the other day. It was the spring of 1963, he said, and he had "really butchered" his test for admission to law school. He had been an outstanding high school student, and a solid B scholar at Amherst. But his law board score ("probably 200 points below that of the average white enrollee") threatened to derail his legal ambitions.

MAYBE IT'S the magical ride of Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin that's been on my mind lately. When I heard that the Supreme Court would hear a case claiming that affirmative action at the University of Texas had resulted in discrimination against a white woman named Abigail Noel Fisher, I immediately thought: How do Asian students fare under college admissions and affirmative-action programs? Asians, after all, are a minority group, like blacks and Latinos. It turns out that Asians are seen as a worse enemy of the sacred goal of diversity on college campuses, and some studies have indicated that they must get substantially higher SAT scores than even white students to be considered for admission to the top colleges.

Some Mummers offensive I attended the Mummers Parade, as I do every year, looking for something new from the very talented String Bands Division. Hegeman's "Just Imagine," a tribute to the Beatles and London (they finished sixth), was a beautiful presentation, and by Mummers standards, pretty modern. By contrast, Ferko's "Bring Back Those Minstrel Days" theme (they finished fifth) was downright creepy. The backs of some of their costumes had black-faced caricatures in white clown makeup.

Posting record loss of $15.9B WASHINGTON - The struggling U.S. Postal Service reported an annual loss Thursday of a record $15.9 billion and forecast more red ink in 2013. The losses for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30 were more than triple the $5.1 billion loss in the previous year. "It's critical that Congress do its part and pass comprehensive legislation before they adjourn this year to move the Postal Service further down the path toward financial health," said Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe, calling the situation "our own postal fiscal cliff.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court said Friday that it would consider eliminating the government's most potent weapon against racial discrimination at polling places since the 1960s. The court acted three days after a diverse coalition of voters propelled President Obama to a second term in the White House. With a look at affirmative action in higher education already on the agenda, the court is putting a spotlight on race by reexamining the necessity of laws and programs aimed at giving racial minorities access to major areas of American life from which they once were systematically excluded.

'Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. " That was Barack Obama in 2008. And he was right. Reagan was an ideological inflection point, ending a 50-year liberal ascendancy and beginning a 30-year conservative ascendancy. It is common for one party to take control and enact its ideological agenda. Ascendancy, however, occurs only when the opposition inevitably regains power and then proceeds to accept the basic premises of the preceding revolution.

The economy, central to the campaigns of U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr. and Republican foe Tom Smith, played the starring role in their lone debate Friday. Casey cast Smith, who sold his Armstrong County coal company and spent $16.5 million of his profits on his campaign, as a Tea Party radical who supports Republican budget proposals that will hurt middle-class taxpayers. Smith called Casey "Senator Zero," a career politician who hadn't done anything to end deficit spending in the federal budget or reduce the national debt.

IN 1982, DURING my senior year at Bryn Mawr, I applied to law school. Given that my recently deceased father had been a proud graduate of Temple, I naturally applied to his alma mater. To make a long story short, I didn't get in. No tears, because I ended up at my first choice, Villanova. But to this day, something about Temple's application process bothers me. Back then, the school had a program called SPACE, which was designed to promote "diversity. " Of course, race was one of the factors, if not the primary factor, used to measure "diversity.

Once again, affirmative action is before the U.S. Supreme Court, which is being asked to decide how much is enough when it comes to efforts to achieve racial diversity on college campuses. The mere fact that the court agreed to take up the issue has fueled speculation that it might hand down a landmark decision invalidating programs specifically designed to increase a student body's minority representation. In 2003, the court ruled that the University of Michigan School of Law could consider race as one factor in student admissions, but it did not mandate that colleges must have affirmative action programs to achieve diversity.

NEW YORK - Civil-rights lawyer John Payton, who defended the University of Michigan's affirmative-action policy before the Supreme Court and led the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, has died. He was 65. Payton died Thursday at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore after a brief illness, said Lee Daniels, spokesman for the New York-based NAACP fund. President Obama said in a prepared statement that he and first lady Michelle Obama were saddened to learn that their "dear friend" had died.

MAYBE IT'S the magical ride of Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin that's been on my mind lately. When I heard that the Supreme Court would hear a case claiming that affirmative action at the University of Texas had resulted in discrimination against a white woman named Abigail Noel Fisher, I immediately thought: How do Asian students fare under college admissions and affirmative-action programs? Asians, after all, are a minority group, like blacks and Latinos. It turns out that Asians are seen as a worse enemy of the sacred goal of diversity on college campuses, and some studies have indicated that they must get substantially higher SAT scores than even white students to be considered for admission to the top colleges.