A quick note

This bothers me a lot and it has since I was a kid. Affirmative action has always struck me as the wrong tool (in my lifetime). Absolutely, it had a place 50-60 years ago where it was implemented to battle discrimination. But in this day and age, we've moved past that point in two very critical ways. 1) Both passive and active racism are significantly reduced over what they were 60 years ago (partly BECAUSE of affirmative action having changed attitudes) and 2) Computerized applications provide a level of anonymity and objectivity that should not be discounted.

Some of the proponents of Affirmative Action state that they can't achieve racial diversity (which is a good goal) without race based admissions standards. I say that's hogwash. You could very easily, and constitutionally, replace race based adjustments with class based adjustments based on parent's tax returns and/or home value. To the degree that Blacks and Hispanics are still battling the affects of hundreds of years of oppression, this will help them immensely. There are actually some people that say this approach does not work. I haven't read any of the briefs filed (I don't have the kind of time) but I'm hard pressed to see how that's possible. And IF that is the case, well, it points to only two possible explanations, all of which are scary:

1) There's still a high level of racism in the admissions process.
2) You believe that, controlling for all other factors, Blacks and Hispanics still perform worse academically than Whites and Asians

Let me address number 2 first because it's absolutely NOT what I believe but it seems to be what some people are implying. If you're out there saying, "When we adjust for socio-economic factors, we fail to achieve a diverse student body," then what you're really saying is, "Once we control for all of the socio-economic factors in a person's life, I still find that minorities are underrepresented." That's a shocking, shocking statement. It smacks of either a failure to control your institution (#1) or a racist belief every bit as negative as those people you claim to combat (#2).