Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Sotomayor, Gates and Race

Soon-to-be-Justice Sonia Sotomayor has called herself "a product of affirmative action" who was "accepted rather readily into Princeton" despite test scores that were lower than those of more privileged classmates due to "cultural biases built into testing."

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., capitalizing on the avalanche of publicity he touched off by attributing to racism his July 16 arrest at his home by a white police officer, has declared that America is "racist" and "classist" and that "there haven't been fundamental structural changes in America.... The only black people who truly live in a post-racial world in America all live in a very nice house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

What Sotomayor and Gates share is a habit of drawing dubious lessons about race from their own experiences.
"Affirmative action" that may have helped her get into Princeton, and her admission was resoundingly vindicated by her stellar academic performance there."

That the problem with "equal opportunity" - does anybody think that, after a little help getting into Princeton, she made it the rest of the way on her own. That she was never given extra credits to keep up with whites
. Blacks have had a foot up for at least 45 years. It is time for all of us to be equal now. Either fish or cut bait. Cut out the 'my Granny was a slave' act. It's getting to be boring.

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