Demanding Discrimination?

Racial preferences, euphemistically known as affirmative action, is plain, old government racial discrimination.

Over the years, affirmative action became preferential treatment. The policy was created purportedly to rectify past discrimination by casting a wide net to include qualified applicants historically denied opportunities based race. It morphed into a justification to lower standards based on race.

Affirmative action was first used in a 1961 executive order by President John F. Kennedy. It instructed federal contractors to take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are treated equally “without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” President Lyndon B. Johnson followed up with a similar order in 1965. Contractors were encouraged to cast a wider recruitment net to include more qualified minorities in the hiring pool. Ironically, a Republican president opened the door to racial preferences. In 1971, President Richard M. Nixon authorized the U.S. Department of Labor to set specific goals (quotas) and timetables to correct the “underutilization” of blacks by federal contractors. Instead of ending racial discrimination, Nixon set up a sort of reverse discrimination in which blacks were the beneficiaries.

But racial discrimination by any other name tastes just as bitter.

We’ve come to the point where a rejected black student now demands that a school admit her–based on race. The University of Michigan rejected Brooke Kimbrough’s application. She, along with the pro-racial discrimination group, By Any Means Necessary, believe the school should reconsider it.

“I believe I have been rejected because of the morals I stand for,” Kimbrough said. “I will make it my civic duty to document every news of a rejection letter that the university produces to our black, brown and red bodies.”

Though Kimbrough didn’t meet admissions standards, she wants the school to accept her anyway. But schools like Michigan already lower admissions standards for certain minorities to increase diversity. Why not drop standards altogether?