December 1, 2008

Colleges Are Accused of Giving Little Consideration to Alternatives to Affirmative Action

Many colleges have largely disregarded the U.S. Supreme Court’s admonition to seriously consider other options before using race-conscious admissions policies, argues a forthcoming Catholic University Law Review article co-written by a former federal civil-rights official.

The majority opinion in the Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger, involving the University of Michigan’s law school, held that colleges must first give “serious, good-faith consideration” to “workable, race-neutral” alternatives to achieving diversity if their race-conscious admissions policies are to be considered narrowly tailored to promoting a compelling government interest.

But colleges have received little or no guidance from the courts or federal government on how to meet such a requirement, and as a result they “appear to be floundering,” argues the law-review article. The authors are George R. LaNoue, a professor of political science and public policy at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, and Kenneth L. Marcus, a visiting professor at the City University of New York’s Baruch College who served as staff director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2004 until this year and as a top lawyer in the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights before that.

The issue of how to comply with the Grutter decision’s guidance should not be as difficult for college administrators or the courts as it appears to be, because educational-program evaluation “is a well-developed field with established methodologies and standards,” the article argues. It warns that “administrators’ failure to apply proper program analysis to race-neutral alternatives could jeopardize many diversity programs.” —Peter Schmidt

Comments

1. Well-off and well-educated professionals tend to feel good about themselves when they are in a position to give away something they don’t own, and don’t lose a chance at themselves, to members of groups they consider underdogs (which constitute a very very narrow subset of all such possible groups, but who has time for complexity?).

   So their motivation to change the longstanding “free feel-good” system without systematic compulsion seems minimal. I have even heard deans at major universities say, “If they take affirmative action away, no problem. We’ll just find a sub rosa way to do it.”

   — g    Dec 1, 03:39 PM    #

2. What I have never figured out is: if your goal is to achieve racial diversity on campus, how do you choose who to admit without considering race? Using other measures is just avoiding the point. Wherever you go, you come back to the same point: to achieve a different mixture of faces, sort by face type.

   — ap    Dec 1, 04:44 PM    #

3. Once again the Chronicle gives us only one side of this issue. The Supreme Court called for a holistic view of a student, with race being one of many factors. The article also gives us no examples of colleges and unversities acting according to the Grutter decision’s mandate to consider race neutral alternatives. Was there no one on the other side to reach for a comment on this article or the related law review article? I find that difficult to believe given the number of experts in this field. I agree with Justice Blackmun in Bakke that in order to get beyond racism, you must first take account of race; there is no other way. To accept this argument, the Chronicle will first have to accept that there is a history of racism that has led to economic, educational and social disadvantages in America.

   — SJ Wilcher    Dec 1, 05:05 PM    #

4. The problem with affirmative action is that it is hopelessly mixed up with political correctness__ a divorce between these two is essential if we are ever to get past this mess & on to something resembling equality.

   Professional sports and the US military have demonstrated success in this area by stressing merit and performance over identity and entitlement__ the fact that Academe’ is still floundering with politically correct stereotypes is an embarrassment at this late date, but apparently it is just not equipped to deal with these kinds of problems intelligently.

   — KD    Dec 1, 05:15 PM    #

5. KD’s insight that AA is hopelessly mixed up with PC is right on! Political correctness continues to stand in the way of progress in academe, government, and elsewhere. The problem is that the concept belies the equality it is trying to promote insofar as the obligation to adhere to principles of PC do not apply to everyone (an inequality that PC prevents us from discussing). PC as a quiding principle escapes me as among our rights as set forth in the constitution is NOT the right to be comfortable all the time. Shame on people who hurt others through language, but to those who may be hurt by another’s comments I say “Get over it.” Neither the government, nor academe should be in the business of legislating everyone’s perpetual comfort.

   — md    Dec 1, 05:48 PM    #

6. If we truly want to deal with the issue of discrimination, both in its current practice and historical context, then we cannot avoid the issue of race. Our entire problem is based on our current and historical practices of discriminating against individuals based on race. AP (post #2) clearly points out the paradox. So, this is a matter that requires more honesty and directness than we, as a society, are willing to demonstrate. For those who question whether discrimination based on skin color is still a real factor in current society given the election of Obama to the presidency, one need only look at the highly segregated by race public schools in urban areas across the USA.

   MD (post #5), this is not about”…legislating everyone’s perpetual comfort.” This is about creating equal opportunity for those persons who, because of skin color, are so often denied equal opportunity in our society.

   — Rick    Dec 1, 09:05 PM    #

7. Any criteria based on skin color is firmly anchored in quicksand. The real problem is our insistence, historical or otherwise, on treating the term race as meaningful. You can argue cultural distinctions, socio-economic distinctions, and sexual distinctions, but race? Obama is a perfect case in point. His culture is distinctly American, but his race? Based on which parent?

   — CW    Dec 2, 06:55 AM    #

8. I agree that moving beyond race is the future. And I agree that electing Obama was a case in point of championing multi-racial, multi-ethnic diversity. But I don’t see how commentators that critique “PC” as the problem have any kind of commitment to reality. Political Correctness is relative — every faction has their “PC.” But there’s no getting around the fact that it’s a lot farther from the ‘hood to UPenn than it is from the affluent suburbs. Where one is born is not one’s own fault, so evening the playing field is a quite reasonable thing to do. And may I add that it’s also a long way from the backwoods, or any other socio-economically depressed place. Class is as big of an issue as race and gender, if not bigger. Talk about your PC . . . mention Class and 140 talking heads will begin spewing spittle laden, anti-socialist epithets. It’s like mentioning inter-racial marriage at a KKK meeting.

   — DH    Dec 2, 08:09 AM    #

9. As long as we make the prejudicial assumption that only African-Americans are subject to race bias and that the mistakes some of our slave owning forefathers—including a handful of African American slave owners—warrant PC driven affirmative action programs we’re going to continue floundering in a deeply flawed system that not only requires but in fact perpetuates racial division in our country. It’s not that academe is incapable of acting; it’s that we lack the will because the very mention that PC/AA is itself founded upon biases is an inviataion to one’s own professional funeral.

   — Grant    Dec 2, 08:11 AM    #

10. On the whole, this seems a relatively sane discussion so far. John Jackson’s book Racial Paranoia addresses a lot of these issues. Part of the problem is the insidious way Political Correctness deludes us into thinking we’ve accomplished something. I agree with the comment above, “Shame on those who would hurt others through language,” but “get over it” may or may not be the right advice in all cases. When the prejudice (whatever the linguistic nicey-nice) is there, glibly “getting over it” can be a little trickier than it might at first seem. PC language can in fact be nothing more than Paper Covering a substantial problem, not always a racial problem.

    To take a nonracial example of learning accommodation: People, well-intentioned but self-conscious about not being certain which term is “most correct,” have asked my daughter whether she is “deaf,” “hearing impaired,” “profoundly hearing impaired,” “hard of hearing,” or what. I can’t say I blame them. My favorite is “Deaf,” as if one could hear (slightly chilly inside-group humor) the capital D. The simple fact is that students who can’t hear need some reasonable accommodation, and thanks to the scientists and engineers and technicians who have made such technology possible. No thanks to people who are so busy getting lost in word games that they can’t spare the effort to give someone else a hand up.

    Technology isn’t the answer in itself, but its intelligent use can be a large part of the answer. (Attitudes are more important than labels, after all.) Semantic “solutions” seldom help much. The kid hears no better on “Deaf” than on “deaf and dumb,” although the latter will get you a much more interesting—and prolonged—reaction. But you’ll still have to get it across to her visually first.

    — Dan    Dec 2, 08:40 AM    #

11. Taking race, face type etc. in consideration in admissions is a corrupt practice that also breeds many more corrupt practices and many more ways to bypass fairness, law and justice. It is a cause of many failures.
    Bringing “minorities” to the level of old majority is a humane goal, but it must be attempted BEFORE admission process. The admission process is corrupted when it gives priopity to the individuals on the basis of race etc. Admission is a judgement of academic preparedness. Prepare the “minorities” first.

    — Michael Pyshnov    Dec 2, 09:24 AM    #

12. So Dan should AA include people with disabilities? Or is there a different between a deaf white person and a black/Hispanic/Asian deaf person? They both shared deaf and sign language, but are they equal but separate under AA?

    — Michael    Dec 2, 09:26 AM    #

13. OK, let me get this straight. A couple of guys, who both served some time under Bush, gutting civil rights law and enforcement, having previously made reputations as lawyers attempting to gut affirmative action, pen a paper accusing universities of not abiding by the ruling of Grutter, offering little to no evidence of this accusation, and this qualifies as news?

    Pot, this is kettle.

    Yes, it would have been nice to get an alternate opinion thrown in there. I know this is an academic paper, but I also know you don’t routinely advertise every academic paper that makes it to publication. Unless it’s something new. This isn’t new. This is old wine in old bottles.

    — Marktropolis    Dec 2, 09:33 AM    #

14. KD#4, sports and the military are two different things. the military required education and physical skills. Sports only required sports. see
    Dark Thoughts
    “If the NFL is 70 percent African-American, why are there so few black quarterbacks? And while we’re at it, why is the NFL 70 percent African-American? And why are we afraid to talk about it?” at http://www.jonentine.com/articles/dark_thoughts_recon.htm or go to http://www.jonentine.com

    — Michael    Dec 2, 09:37 AM    #

15. She is a dumb stupid idiot, but she is aimed at leadership. All she learned is communication skills. Don’t tell me you never met her. There is an army of them in academia.

    — Michael Pyshnov    Dec 2, 10:06 AM    #

16. Well, Michael, you raise a point. However, an Asian deaf person probably does not in fact share a language with an American black or white deaf person, unless the “Asian” person has grown up with ASL. British signing is as different from ASL as French is from English.

    The point is that we need less pigeonholing and more accommodating. Sports and the military have produced solid results, because they are in fact results-oriented. The point is not to produce a better set of pigeonholes, but to give people of widely varying backgrounds and abilities and sometimes disabilities a decent break. Equal opportunity doesn’t mean equal results.

    Education is like getting people out of the ocean and into lifeboats. The important thing is to get the people into the boats and out of the water, without sinking anyone. The names of the lifeboats are not material. Sorting people into the “right” lifeboats isn’t either; it uses up valuable time and resources, and it threatens the success of the mission.

    Now, if someone could explain comment 15 to me, I’d be grateful.

    — Dan    Dec 2, 10:27 AM    #

17. Comment #11 makes no more sense to me than #15. It reads like a sound clip from a propaganda statement, but there’s no substance behind the assertions.

    — ap    Dec 2, 11:03 AM    #

18. I think what Mr Pyshnov (no. 11) is saying is that preferences in college admissions do nothing to address the deficiencies in academic preparation that made such preferences necessary in the first place. He believes that intervention should come at an earlier stage, rather than the university level when it’s too late to do much about problems with basic literacy and numeracy.

    It seemed to me like a reasonable point.

    — Gustave    Dec 2, 11:27 AM    #

19. Dan, I like your comment about education and lifeboats (#16). But I would add that the criticism from the other side would be, “but affirmative action is determining who gets to be in the boat.” One of my favorite analogies is that of handicapped parking. There’s now a general acceptance of these spaces (and they’re increasing in many areas) because people “get” the reality of a handicapped person needing a little extra help getting to the door. Add the ramps. Which are everywhere now. How is affirmative action different from that? And I realize that this brings up the specter of quotas, but to carry the analogy – there’s plenty of other parking spaces, why are you complaining? I will submit that much of the criticism of affirmative action has a lot to do with entitlement. I deserved that spot, and you stole it. Or I deserved it more.

    Admissions folks give preference for athletes, musicians, artists, math wizards, poets, etc. If we’re looking at admissions holistically, shouldn’t we be looking at the entire person, and not just their grade scores? And doesn’t that whole person include where they come from (geographically, ethnically, linguistically)?

    — Marktropolis    Dec 2, 11:37 AM    #

20. Yeah, I’m foggy about #15 too. As for #11, I think there’s enough empirical evidence to support the assertion that AA is just a different form of bias, regardless of the intention (spelled it right that time!) behind it. If one were to take an average, run of the mill EEOC statement from Anystate U and replace “women” and “minoroties” with “males” and “whites” what do you think the reaction would be?

    — Grant    Dec 2, 11:39 AM    #

21. At one point it was considered appropriate to implement affirmative action through “race norming”, which consisted of adjusting SAT scores on the basis of group averages__ if an Asian student and an African American student generated the same raw score, the African American student had outscored the Asian.

    That practice finally sank under its own weight, but there were years that anyone who raised an eyebrow over its use was deemed a racist.

    That is no longer a discussion or an issue.

    Just because it’s deemed “affirmative action” doesn’t make it sound practice. The problem is how to work toward a true egalitarianism, and PC is the absolute worst basis for that__ it’s produced an array of false starts and dead end practices that only contribute to racial tensions and misunderstandings.

    What PC does do is give people who want to be seen as intellectual and morally superior a simple set of scripts for doing so. This is not a means of moving either education or society at large forward.

    — KD    Dec 2, 11:41 AM    #

22. Deciding who gets to be in the boat puts it well. I suppose I could try to justify stretching the analogy further, but is it worth it? Who gets into the boat is whoever is there, insofar as possible. Some people need a bit more lifting than others, and some are colder than others . . .

    Handicapped parking is a good case in point. My daughter was torn between amusement at the idiocy of bureaucracy and anger when she learned that, as a handicapped person, she was “entitled” (My God, how I’ve learned to hate that pernicious word.) to a “handicapped” parking sticker. What on earth does being deaf have to do with where one parks?

    Wandering from the point as usual. I certainly agree that PC supplies a facile way for people to think better of themselves, in this case, to be seen as intellectually and morally superior. T. S. Eliot once remarked that half the evil in the world arose from people’s desire to think well of themselves.

    Political Correctness is merely a stance, not a program of action (like that other AA). All the PC talk in the world doesn’t improve anyone’s condition, doesn’t level a playing field, doesn’t remove obstacles from the path. It’s cosmetic, not substantial. Putting on makeup may make one feel better, but its change is less than skin deep. PC further, imho, lets people off too easily, so that instead of effective action we have good intentions and bad information, which as has been pointed out by brighter folks than me is a guaranteed recipe for disaster.

    — Dan    Dec 2, 11:58 AM    #

23. KD (#21) my retort would be: Just because it’s deemed “affirmative action” doesn’t make it an unsound practice. Yes, it’s been practiced in some places contrary to it’s intentions, and in some cases contrary to the law. So we are supposed to toss the intervention because some abused it?

    Gustave (#18), that might seem like a reasonable point if in fact it were based on any facts. Deficiencies in preparation sees no color. Just look at the recent increase in remedial courses in higher ed institutions. Furthermore, IHEs have been trying for years to assist in the reform of K-12 education for just that reason. I too believe that interventions should come sooner. But they’re not. So what is an IHE to do? They can’t affect the preparation. They can affect recruitment, selection and completion.

    That being said, yes, to a large extent, deficiencies in preparation are/were part of the argument supporting affirmative action. And the research on the effects of affirmative action on the recipients documents that if someone accepted via affirmative action gets through the other side, they are as successful if not more so than those who didn’t. See Shape of the River.

    So again, what’s the issue?

    — Marktropolis    Dec 2, 12:04 PM    #

24. I’m inclined to go back to KD’s comment (#4) and implore the conversation to get off the topic of PC. It’s really not relevant to the topic. And it’s really only useful if you want to confuse things further. As long as critics of AA can hang their hats on PC, they will. Since that’s really all they have to work with. <snark alert> After all, it’s got nothing to do with racism, it’s all about those language Nazis with their PC codes taking away my right to attend an ivy league college.

    — Marktropolis    Dec 2, 12:19 PM    #

25. I am saying that admission, promotion etc. must not be based on anything except academic success and ability. Taking a lower criteria for any “group” can lead and in most cases will lead to the “need” of supporting the same person for non-academic criteria all his life: get him in college, but he lags behind again, so, take him to grad. studies, the same again, give him tenure, again because he belongs to “minority group”. How many are really given tenure (this is after 2-3 undeserved promotions) for equalizing, say, “gender” balance?
    Wouldn’t it be better to give a person whose, let say, parents, were utterly unintelligent people, an additional year or two years tuition, free, before college? This is where the money must be spent; and, he will proudly enter competitions all his life.

    — Michael Pyshnov    Dec 2, 12:55 PM    #

26. Well, M, the issue is whether academia is in fact doing any favours to anyone other than itself by admitting candidates who are not prepared for higher education; struggle mightily to keep up; and eventually fail or drop out in disproportionate numbers. If that is the price of ensuring that “someone accepted via affirmative action gets through the other side,” some of us might consider that it’s too high a price to pay (and all the more so inasmuch as someone else does the paying). As for “remedial courses in higher ed institutions,” if that was all that was necessary to bring the under- or unprepared up to a functional level, we probably wouldn’t be having these discussions.

    What an institution of higher education might do, therefore, is to say that those who aren’t equipped to profit from its offerings can’t attend—regardless of race, class, legacy status or anything else. Personally I’d do away with all such end-runs around the normal admission process. No doubt that would lead to a significant drop in enrollments—majority and minority—in the short term. But it would also create a powerful incentive for resolving these problems at the point where they’re resolvable. Admitting hundreds of thousands of ill-prepared students who have little or no chance of completing their degrees does nothing whatever to further that objective.

    — Gustave    Dec 2, 01:01 PM    #

27. Ah, the cry of meritocracy (#25). So how is it that you determine academic success and ability? Grades? Test scores? Is a 4.0 from an exclusive private school worth more than a 3.0 from an inner-city battle field? If you’re Harvard, and every application you see has 4.0s and 1600 SATs, what do you use to make your next selection?

    If we simply used test scores and GPAs to make admissions decisions, most competitive institutions would be overrun by Asians (assuming there are enough in the country to make that happen). Well, at least overrun in the sense of being a disproportionate majority/minority.

    So, back to your comment in #11, if the K-12 system is unable to equalize preparation across racial/ethnic distinctions (which is currently the case, and probably will be for the foreseeable future), are you suggesting that colleges simply ignore that reality, and in turn ignore all those “utterly unintelligent” people? Furthermore, you made the point that it’s the preparation (#11) but at the same time you think that simply providing two years of tuition will solve the problem? Assuming for the moment that these folks are hopelessly underprepared, how will throwing money at them help?

    — Marktropolis    Dec 2, 01:14 PM    #

28. Of course, the presumption that races and “genders” are equal in academic abilities is no more than a communist dream. But, they are equal as humans in their rights and in simple respect that they deserve. And, this is again a communist perversion to drag everyone into college. The fruits of mass education are here, and will stay, crippling society, for a couple of generations, even if we wake up now.

    — Michael Pyshnov    Dec 2, 01:16 PM    #

29. I agree with 24, Pc has nothing to do with AA. AA is not a feel good potion for minorities. Without AA all you have is white priviledge run amok .

    — Bill    Dec 2, 01:17 PM    #

30. Gustav, check the latest issue of Focus from the Lumina Foundation. Remediation Redux looks at successful efforts from a number of colleges to address the challenges of students needing remediation. This may not be “all” that’s required, but it’s a damn good start.

    Also, what do you think the “normal” admissions process is? Most significant affirmative action occurs in highly competitive institutions. So, what’s normal about Harvard’s process? What’s normal about Yale? As I pointed out earlier, at these types of institutions, if you look at “traditional” measures (GPA, test scores, etc.) every applicant looks the same. But you’ve got 10,000 applications for 2,000 slots. how do you pick?

    Assuming the research submitted for the record in the Grutter case was legit (and I believe it was) there is an argument to be made for the positive role of diversity in the educational process. So how do you achieve that diversity?

    — Marktropolis    Dec 2, 01:23 PM    #

31. Who do you give this additional tuition? This is up to the teachers. Unfortunately the teachers who can see talent are all dead and replaced by statists. Teachers who can explain things and who can talk to kids informally are dead. Even if they were alive, they would not have rights to do this at the present state of affairs. Nobody is simply trusted with making his or her decisions. Nor they are indeed competent.

    — Michael Pyshnov    Dec 2, 01:29 PM    #

32. Re: #28, Michael P., I think your biases are showing. It’s been a few years since I was accused of communism. What year is it again?

    Wow, and you put gender in quotation marks.

    — Marktropolis    Dec 2, 01:31 PM    #

33. To be honest, I’m less concerned about the Harvards and Yales than I am about the Oklahoma States and Purdue-North Centrals. There are, I believe, somewhere of the order of 1,800 BA-granting institutions in the United States, and probably 90% of them do not have competitive admissions. For the great majority, the point of an admissions process—or the test of one—is whether those accepted are in a position to take advantage of the education the college or university in question has to offer. If they are not, no good whatever is achieved by admitting them. And with due reverence to Grutter (or Bakke), having those students there for however long it may be before they drop out or flunk out so that the successful may enjoy a more diverse educational experience is not, in my view, a sufficient justification for setting them up for an all-too-predictable failure.

    — Gustave    Dec 2, 01:41 PM    #

34. Gustave, my point was that affirmative action as we are discussing it – or rather how it was brought up in the opening article – really only exists in the competitive institutions. The Oklahoma States (or in Grutter’s case, the Michigan States) don’t really utilize affirmative action. They don’t need to. And if they do its on such a small level as to not impact anyone else’s admissions chances. That was part of the sorry part of Prop 209 in California, outlawing any consideration of race in college admissions. The only places that were significantly affected were places like Berkeley and UCLA. But the state system is HUGE, and they threw out the bathwater with the baby.

    As for how long individuals stay in – especially at the kinds of institutions you’re talking about – those considerations a larger than AA. The data show that there isn’t really much of a differentiation in terms of completion times. At least none that I’ve seen. Also, the increase in the length of time it takes to complete a degree currently has more to do with students having to work, so they can’t take a full load. But long and short, the issue of time to degree is an entirely different kettle of fish.

    — Marktropolis    Dec 2, 01:51 PM    #

35. Colleges and universities all required a Ph.D. for application for faculty jobs. Is that discriminatory? racist? Who will have the money and time to spend 6 years on a Ph.D. which are often not work related later….

    — Peter    Dec 2, 01:56 PM    #

36. Marktropolis, I have a lot of biases when you judge me in terms of policies and procedures. Judge me with the facts in mind. Give me the definition of the term “gender” and you be all right. Last time I put it in quotation marks, nobody came up with definition.

    — Michael Pyshnov    Dec 2, 03:28 PM    #

37. Michael P. It’s a little tough to judge you on facts, when you’re busy comparing affirmative action to communism. As for defining “gender”, there’s this thing called a dictionary. They even have them online now. And since you’re here, I’m guessing you know what “online” means. But I could be wrong.

    Outside of that, I don’t even understand what your first sentence is trying to say. Except to say that I think you and I have reached the end of what’s possible in terms of civilized debate.

    — Marktropolis    Dec 2, 03:35 PM    #

38. In both the Australia and the USA the Indigenous Nations/People are very much under represented. They are the original owners of the land. Hopefully Obama will put at least one person from each and every sovereign American Indian Nation which has experienced cultural genocide by us, the non indigenous occupiers. Many of us talk about the mistreatment of Tibetans in China, Roma in Europe and the Black and Hispanics in the USA, but we totally neglect and forget the cultural genocide of the Native American Indians. Hopefully this administration will do something about it, and Minimally put Native Indian Americans in charge of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. We need to not be like Australia, where there is a noticeable lack of Aboriginals on academic faculties, Deans, Presidents of Universities and also Cabinet positions and member of the local, state and federal government. This should be the number one priority of this Administration. We have waited way to long correct this problem. It is one of the reasons why we and Australia do not get tough with China about Tibet. We have our own indigenous people/nations which we treat as bad or maybe even worse.

    — KJJ    Dec 2, 03:49 PM    #

39. In fact, I wasn’t discussing time-to-degree. My point was that students whose preparation for college is insufficient drop out and/or fail at far higher rates than others, and that members of some racial minorities are disproportionately represented among the numbers of those who do so. There are, I believe, ample data to support both propositions. I agree that the problem is bigger than “affirmative action” alone, although even there it plays a part when it results in a student who might complete the course at a less-competitive institution failing to do so at a more-competitive one in which they have been placed as a result of a no doubt well-meaning, but counterproductive, preferential admissions policy. (To use an illustration: I might manage to hold my own in a Physics 101 course at Michigan State. I’d almost certainly fail if I were taking the same course at Caltech or MIT.)

    — Gustave    Dec 2, 04:02 PM    #

40. So, after all this heat and even a bit of light, the question still seems unresolved: What are we to do?

    That is, “Whither goest thou? I mean, man, whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?”

    — Dan    Dec 2, 04:58 PM    #

41. We have just elected a President who is obviously a person of colour. Can’t we bury the divisive race-conscious policies of the 70s and 80s? As far as I am concerned, we are all Americans, period.

    — Mark Smith    Dec 2, 10:44 PM    #

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