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Are Racial Preferences Really Necessary?

In a move that will surprise no one, the Missouri NAACP ?opposes petition to end discrimination-based affirmative action.? Of course it does, because it actually supports ?discrimination-based affirmative action.?

And here is something else that, after similar misrepresentations in the recent campaign for an identical initiative in Michigan, is not a surprise: opponents make assertions that simply are not true. Thus, asserts Mary Ratliffe, head of Missouri NAACP,

Many African Americans are underprivileged economically due to past inequities.... To not grant any race- or gender-based criteria would mean many African Americans and women would be unable to attend college.

If that is true, it should be easy to provide some examples of blacks and women who ?would be unable to attend college? if they did not receive preferential treatment based on their race or gender. Who are they?

It is certainly true that, in the absence of racial preferences, some black applicants will be turned away from their first choice college or graduate school. (Women, being over- rather than under-represented, rarely receive preferential treatment in college admissions, although some do in some professional programs.) But ?unable to attend college? at all? Any college? This couldn?t be true, since most colleges don?t provide preferential treatment based on race in their admissions policies.

Full post as published by Discriminations on January 24, 2008 (boomark / email).