Picking sides on Affirmative Action
The U.S. Supreme Court hearing of two suits challenging the University of Michigan affirmative action admissions policy is expected to result in landmark decisions affecting programs across the country.
More than 300 organizations and individuals have filed briefs in support of the U of M policy guaranteeing a diverse student body. This support has created an awesome coalition, such as the UAW and the AFL-CIO, numerous Fortune 500 companies including General Motors and DaimlerChrysler, military leaders (Generals Norman Schwarzkopf and Wesley Clark) and members of Congress.
But the opposition is not so wide-ranging. From the Bush administration, which filed an amicus brief on behalf of the plaintiffs against the university, to the Center for Individual Rights (CIR), a far-right Washington law firm that represents the plaintiffs against the U of M. And, in the background, the Pioneer Fund, which supports the discredited notion that whites are genetically superior to blacks.
Dr. Barry Mehler, director of the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism and a professor of history at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Mich., said CIR’s claim to be a civil rights organization is absurd.
“The Center for Individual Rights is one of these organizations that masks itself as a civil rights organization,” Mehler said. “They are using the term ‘civil rights’ to attack the civil rights agenda.”
The CIR once received about $30,000 from the Pioneer Fund, pointed out Dr. William H. Tucker, a psychology professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey and the author of “The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund.” Tucker said Pioneer’s racist, segregationist ideology has been rejected by society as a whole, but it has sought other ways to advance its agenda, such as funding CIR’s efforts to roll back civil rights.
“Pioneer has funded some pretty ugly stuff,” Tucker said.
When it became public that CIR accepted money from the Pioneer Fund, the right-wing law group stopped accepting its funds.
“However, their agendas are the same,” Dr. Mehler added. “You don’t just come across the Pioneer Fund. It’s a birds-of-a-feather kind of association.”
That agenda is to push civil rights back to the 1950s, when America was more segregated, not inclusive and denied voting rights to many of its citizens.
Mehler noted that the university’s policy of using race as one of many factors in considering admission is sound social policy. Universities must try to attract students from as many diverse backgrounds as possible or they will not receive a well-rounded education.
“You don’t want your kids to have to go to a school that has all preppies,” he said. “Even the prep schools don’t want that.
“We want our students to be able to see the rest of the world.”
