Jonah Goldberg explains: affirmative action in college admissions is wrong -- because of slavery.
June 10, 2009 2:53 pm ET by Jamison Foser
Jonah Goldberg explains why college admissions offices shouldn't consider the race of applicants, but should be free to consider whether the applicants' parents have given money to the school:
People say, 'well, why should we be neutral on race when people aren't neutral about whose family gave more money to a school and all the rest?' And there's a longer answer, but a short answer is simply that, you know, we fought a civil war over race. We amended the constitution a couple of times because of race. We had the civil rights act because of race. Seems to me that race is different, and that we've learned from bitter experience with lots of dead people that government getting in the business of picking winners and losers by race is a bad way to go.
Got that? Because African Americans used to be enslaved, because they used to be denied voting rights, because they used to be prevented from using "white" facilities, Goldberg thinks it would be inappropriate for a college to accept a qualified black applicant over a white kid. But, by all means, keep giving such advantages to legacy children of wealthy (and, probably, white) parents.
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Or if they went to High School in North Dakota?
Or if one or both of their parents happened to have attended that school?
Slavery was disgusting. Slavery was one of the most disgusting concepts ever to hit a civilized nation. However, sometimes I think people forget that the only people that owned slaves were a few rich white people. Most of the other "white" people in today's U.S.A. came later, have ancestors that never owned a slave and many of which would have fought in the Civil War against slavery. Sure, a few white people owned slaves but a hell of a lot more white folks fought to free slaves.
I LOVE the way that you completely ignored the years of persecution & laws against blacks being allowed to vote, marry whites or to go to white schools.
Yup, you sure nailed that one, genius!
That slavery was practiced by only a "few rich white men", is totally untrue. Millions of indentured servants and slaves were exploited and owned across the economic spectrum in most colonies and states north, south, east and west, for over 250 years until the 13th amendment abolished it. Slave and servant prices ran the gamut according to age, race, physique, gender and household position. Children as well as the the disabled and elderly were often worth no more than livestock.
Then your argument implies that after the 13th amendment, oppression ceased and that future white Americans were not complicit in keeping blacks from attaining equality under the law or even basic civil rights. Institutional racism is still widespread in the United States and race/gender balancing policy and laws are absolutely necessary in a society still denying civil rights to any minority group.
I'd ask Goldberg to consider the histories of our current president and the one before him and (with a straight face) have him tell me who is the bigger recipient of affirmative action.
Like George W. Bush. Legacy students are affirmative action for the rich.
I would be interested in how the Pantload explains using the 14th Amendment to limit punitive damages to multinational corporations, as non-activist, originalist, constructionist judges tend to do?
The Founders didn't accept that King George should rule because of who his father was.
Giving preferences to college applicants because their-parents-went-there-and-later-donated-a-large-sum-of-money is a system of contemporary royalty.
Isn't he pretty clearly saying the civil war was a mistake? Should've let that slavery thing work itself out without government interference?
I didn't get into Stanford when I wanted because of their affirmative action program. Of course, I had other options: Caltech, University of Chicago, MIT. So "boo hoo." I missed my #1 choice once in my life. I bet the person who got "my" place at Stanford got overlooked many more times than that!
As a white male in the US, I have seen minorities discriminated against hundreds of times and so have most other whites, if we care to open our eyes to it.