td11 wrote:i love Justice Sotomayor: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/sonia-s ... ive-action

Does the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment forbid what its text plainly requires?

Sotomayor wrote:Although the term “affirmative action” is commonly used to describe colleges’ and universities’ use of race in crafting admissions policies, I instead use the term “race-sensitive admissions policies.” Some comprehend the term “affirmative action” as connoting intentional preferential treatment based on race alone—for example, the use of a quota system, whereby a certain proportion of seats in an institution’s incoming class must be set aside for racial minorities; the use of a “points” system, whereby an institution accords a fixed numerical advantage to an applicant because of her race; or the admission of otherwise unqualified students to an institution solely on account of their race. None of this is an accurate description of the practices that public universities are permitted to adopt after this Court’s decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306 (2003) . There, we instructed that institutions of higher education could consider race in admissions in only a very limited way in an effort to create a diverse student body. To comport with Grutter, colleges and universities must use race flexibly, id., at 334, and must not maintain a quota, ibid. And even this limited sensitivity to race must be limited in time, id., at 341–343, and must be employed only after “serious, good faith consideration of workable race-neutral alternatives,” id., at 339. Grutter-compliant admissions plans, like the ones in place at Michigan’s institutions, are thus a far cry from affirmative action plans that confer preferential treatment intentionally and solely on the basis of race.

blogger wrote:What if a Supreme Court Justice, writing an opinion upholding the right to abortion, suddenly announced — in a footnote — that she wasn't going to use the word "abortion" anymore, because "some comprehend" it to mean things she thought were incorrect and distracting? Henceforth, she's only going to call it "reproductive freedom."

Kennedy leaves these old decisions standing, but they don’t mean what they used to mean. They no longer set meaningful limits on how a majority of voters can pass a seemingly neutral law that has a disparate effect on a minority. Now courts can only legitimately stop state action if it poses “the serious risk, if not purpose, of causing specific injuries on account of race.”

These cases, suddenly, do not imply that the minority has any right to stop the majority from imposing a policy that’s counter to the minority’s interest, if we’re talking about “the ‘interest’ of a group defined in racial terms.” Courts can’t describe any interest in such a way, according to Kennedy, because to do so would be to rely on and further racial stereotypes, and “racial division would be validated, not discouraged.” In another context—gay rights—Kennedy has worried a lot about how a majority’s display of “animus,” or prejudice, can hurt the minority. But he’s not concerned that’s what drove Michigan’s voters to ban affirmative action. This time he sees only an entirely valid democratic process.

The single point on which Scalia and Sotomayor agree is that Kennedy has reinterpreted the 1960s and 1970s rulings beyond recognition. (Best Scalia zinger: “Moving from the appalling to the absurd.”) Scalia wants simply to overrule the old cases that worried about majorities trampling over minorities. He goes further, attacking one of the Supreme Court sentences most cherished by the left: a footnote in a 1938 case called United States v. Carolene Products. The case is about how Congress could regulate the sale of milk, but never mind: The crucial footnote (No. 4) observes that a law motivated by “prejudice against discrete and insular minorities” merits “more exacting judicial scrutiny.” Mountains have been made from footnote No. 4. Scalia brings in the bulldozers for mountaintop removal. He calls the footnote an “old saw.” He quotes an article called “Is Carolene Products Obsolete?” And he questions why black and Hispanics—14.3 percent and 4.6 percent of the population in Michigan, respectively—can’t wield plenty of political power.

But I had my doubts when I got to a telling exchange between Roberts and Sotomayor. It’s over the basic underlying question that is nowhere resolved in this case: Whether affirmative action—or any awareness of race—is still needed or valid. Sotomayor stands up for the “importance of diversity in institutions of higher education” and despairs “how little my colleagues understand about the reality of race in America.” Race matters, she says, because of “persistent inequality in society.” She continues:

And race matters for reasons that really are only skin deep, that cannot be discussed any other way, and that cannot be wished away. Race matters to a young man’s view of society when he spends his teenage years watching others tense up as he passes, no matter the neighborhood where he grew up. Race matters to a young woman’s sense of self when she states her hometown, and then is pressed, “No, where are you really from?”, regardless of how many generations her family has been in the country. Race matters to a young person addressed by a stranger in a foreign language, which he does not understand because only English was spoken at home. Race matters because of the slights, the snickers, the silent judgments that reinforce that most crippling of thoughts: “I do not belong here.”
Roberts doesn’t let her have the last word. He quotes her “doubt” about belonging, and retorts that

it is not ‘out of touch with reality’ to conclude that racial preferences may themselves have the debilitating effect of reinforcing precisely that doubt, and—if so—that the preferences do more harm than good. To disagree with the dissent’s views on the costs and benefits of racial preferences is not to ‘wish away, rather than confront’ racial inequality. People can disagree in good faith on this issue.
I can’t read this without noting that in previous cases, Roberts has expressed his preference for color-blindness. This is where the conservatives on the court lose me. Good faith or no, it is at odds with reality to imagine that race no longer matters. I hope the states that ban affirmative action continue to enroll more low-income students as they also find ways to admit black and Hispanic applicants. But we still live in a world of race and class considerations. Not either/or.

swishnicholson wrote:Too lazy to actually read the Michigan law or the policies it affects. If the state universities were to focus on socioeconomic data alone, giving preference in admission to those from impoverished backgrounds or other straitened circumstances, and this then had the effect of giving preference to minority students, would this be illegal under the law? Or is this something to be hashed out in the future through numerous lawsuits?

pacino wrote:why should we give a boost to poor people

TenuredVulture wrote:The thing about affirmative action is that it really hasn't been all that effective in addressing the problems it was supposed to address. I think something like the Texas 10% plan, though far from perfect, is a better approach.

pacino wrote:]Cliven Bundy said some more crazy shit:

But if the federal government has moved on, Mr. Bundy — a father of 14 and a registered Republican — has not.
He said he would continue holding a daily news conference; on Saturday, it drew one reporter and one photographer, so Mr. Bundy used the time to officiate at what was in effect a town meeting with supporters, discussing, in a long, loping discourse, the prevalence of abortion, the abuses of welfare and his views on race.

“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” the rancher began as he described a "government house" in Las Vegas where he recalled that all the people who sat outside seemed to "have nothing to do."

“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he said, as quoted by the Times. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

TenuredVulture wrote:The thing about affirmative action is that it really hasn't been all that effective in addressing the problems it was supposed to address. I think something like the Texas 10% plan, though far from perfect, is a better approach.

evada rancher Cliven Bundy claimed during a Friday interview on CNN that he didn’t understand the bipartisan outrage over his recent comments suggesting the "Negro people" were “better off” as slaves, and blamed the perception that he's racist on Martin Luther King Jr. for not finishing “his job.”

"I took this boot off so I wouldn’t put my foot in my mouth with the boot on," Bundy said. "Let me see if I can say something. Maybe I sinned, and maybe I need to ask forgiveness, and maybe I don't know what I actually said, but when you talk about prejudice, we're talking about not being able to exercise what we think.

“If I say 'Negro' or 'black boy' or 'slave,' if those people cannot take those kind of words and not be [offended], then Martin Luther King hasn't got his job done yet," he added. "We need to get over this prejudice stuff."

Bundy has allowed his cattle to illegally graze on government-owned land without paying fees since 1993. He has been championed as an anti-government crusader in recent weeks by some conservatives, including Sens. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.), though they've distanced themselves from him in the wake of his racist remarks.

jerseyhoya wrote:Two examples, one a guy who represents less than 4,000 people, another a guy who's going to get crushed in his primary election. But they represent the party.

MoBettle wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:The thing about affirmative action is that it really hasn't been all that effective in addressing the problems it was supposed to address. I think something like the Texas 10% plan, though far from perfect, is a better approach.

It's not supposed to address a problem though, it's supposed to make the school a better school.

And it's weird that generally no one has a problem with letting the schools make admission decisions regarding how they will become a better school, except when it comes to letting black people in.