WOLVERINES WIN! PART 2
A brief history of the University of Michigan’s admissions case, and the forces that almost destroyed quotas.
The true shame of the whole eight year debacle was that the University of Michigan had to explain they’re own admissions policy. Once again major media grants the public at large another well worn chance to rake affirmative action over the coals. Once again the country being brainwashed to think that African Americans are getting something for nothing through race initiatives that have in actuality barely made a dent in terms of economic equality for Blacks. Once again the outrage of White racism is being drowned-out by the few White Americans ranting against a program that has barely adversely affected them.
What is being overlooked is that according to the UM admissions laws, every year some White students are admitted with lower test scores and GPAs than some minority students who are rejected. Of course the outrage over that is extraordinarily invisible, the convenience of the quota issue is that a lot of closet racist and racists in denial can briefly crawl out of their roach motels, and look like freedom fighters. Few still even know how this whole Michigan debate started. Back in 1995 Jennifer Gratz, a young White female was put on an extended waiting list when trying to enroll at the prestigious Ann Arbor school. On one hand she may have a point, her high school GPA was almost 3.8 (out of a possible 4.0), her American College Testing score was 25 out of a possible 36, and according to Online Newshour, she comes from a working class suburban Detroit family. Her father is a police officer. Another White female, Barbara Grutter was rejected by the law school. Grutter is now 44-years-old and a health care consultant, and mother of two.
Gratz-now at the University of Michigan at Deaborn-blamed racial discrimination on her not being immediately accepted. While I can just imagine the conversations over the dinner table, after all it was Dad’s job to haul young Blacks to jail, not have one of them beat his angel out of a seat at UM.
Of course I’m making fun of a serious matter, while there is no definite proof that Gratz was passed over for a minority student (she is in fact a minority herself-affirmative action’s biggest beneficiary, a White female), she is only just one of several White students who applied and were rejected since ’95. The mere fact that Black students with high grades apply to Michigan is a testament to superior training, not genetics or any bell–curve dogma. The public high schools in today’s inner cities are waging their own battle against Black achievement called under-funding. What choice does UM have but to consider other factors?
The Michigan suit was filed by the Center for Individual Rights, one of three deceptively named groups that are leading the conservative charge of this battle, they have an annual budget of $1.7-million. The American Civil Rights Institute out of California, their budget, $1.4-million, the Black conservative Ward Connerly is their chairman. And The Center for Equal Opportunity, out of Sterling, VA., their annual budget is $1-million, that’s a lot of money time and effort being directed towards fighting the cause of White student admission, when 70% of Michigan’s student body is already White. But these legal advocacy groups don’t operate on logic, they operate on White angst, any effort of their clients to admit their own shortcomings would mean a sharp cut in funding. To quote columnist/author Carl Rowan “it is now impossible for them to drive women out of the labor force, so now they direct their anger at Black males.”
Stevenson is a columnist for the Buffalo Criterion, pointblank also appears in www.voiceoffreedom.com. as well as Black and alternative newspapers across the country.