02/23/2005
However badly affirmative action has turned out, it was at least meant to redress some of the inequities created by slavery, and to help the descendants of American slaves. Nowadays the program actually harms black American citizens with that background by using immigrants to fill up diversity quotas at universities. In fact, a recent study within some top universities found that 41 percent of the black students identified themselves as immigrants, children of immigrants or mixed race.Diversity bean counters are happy to have a sprinkling of dark faces appearing on campus. According to retired University of California Regent Ward Connerly, "Recent immigrants are the beneficiaries of this terribly flawed program. The institutions don’t care about that — all they care about is chalking up the numbers."
The whole concept of quota- driven victimhood has become so twisted that in San Francisco there is actually an organization called Chinese for Affirmative Action (for Chinese, naturally). Meanwhile, across the bay at UC Berkeley there are more Asian undergraduate students than white. (As of 2004 the numbers of UCB Asian undergrads was 9390 versus 6980 for whites.)
Even so, the Chinese for Affirmative Action manages to whine with a straight face about the oppression of Asians in America. One outstanding idiocy was CAA’s objection to a sensible public health measure prohibiting China-resident students from attending UC Berkeley during the SARS epidemic. The ethno-pushers didn’t care that their recommendation of welcome for possibly disease-carrying foreigners would put the local community at risk. What does the general good matter when compared with greater "diversity"? A.K.A -. advantage for your ethnic group.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.