Is It Time to "Blame the Victims"?
Published December 03, 2002
Regarding affirmative action, the Supreme Court has returned to the fray:
- The court will decide by next June if race can be used in college admissions, an issue that the justices have dealt with only once before, in a cloudy 1978 ruling that led to more confusion.
The justices will consider whether white applicants to the University of Michigan and its law school were unconstitutionally turned down because of their race.
Justices took the unusual step of taking the case anyway, without awaiting a ruling.
The high court has passed up other well-known cases that presented similar questions about the role of race in higher education.
There was pressure from both sides of the debate for the court to intervene now.
"It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the court's decision in these cases will directly affect the lives not only of this generation of students but of generations of students to follow," Theodore Shaw, counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, told justices in a filing on behalf of black and Hispanic students.
....The last college higher education case at the Supreme Court involved Allan Bakke, a white man rejected for admission to a California medical school while minorities with lower test scores got in through a special program. The court on a 5-4 vote outlawed racial quotas. Justice Lewis F. Powell wrote separately that schools could still consider race, so long as they did not use quotas. Courts around the country have set contradictory rules.
....Maureen E. Mahoney, a lawyer for the university, told the court in a filing that if the 1978 ruling is overturned, it "would produce the immediate resegregation of many — and perhaps most — of this nation's finest and most selective institutions."
She said colleges are trying to improve learning with a diverse environment.
About 15 percent of the first year Michigan law students are minorities. The Supreme Court was told that without diversity considerations, the number of minorities in a freshman class could plunge to less than .04 percent. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
- Is It Time to "Blame the Victims"?
- Published: December 03, 2002
- Type:
- Section: Culture
- Writer: Eric Olsen
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We seem to be in conceptual agreement - my use of the term "victim" here is meant to convey those heretofore not held accountable for their own lives due to the victimology policies of the "poverty pimps" as you call them. My main point, perhaps not clearly made, is that the most important decision is not identify yourself as a "victim" in the first place.
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It would make the point clearer and more consistently to simply drop the word "victim." If you're doing it to yourself, you're not a victim. Holding someone accountable for their own actions is not "blaming the victim."
Now, you could reasonably say that they are victims of the poverty pimps [eg Jesse Jackson, Kweisi Mfume] and the general culture that encourage bad attitudes and irresponsible behavior, but you'd still be hanging on to the unhelpful model of irresponsibility.
The main point is that (in a free society at least) people are usually their own worst enemies. In this case, black folks are doing it to themselves. It's not whitey that tells blacks to disdain learning. It's not whitey that tells black folks they should have 70% of their children born out of wedlock.
It's perhaps not "nice" to hold people to account. It's doesn't get the observer any credit for empathy or compassion. If your principle goal is to feel good about your own compassion, then accountability isn't the obvious strategy.
If actually improving people's lives is your goal, however, truthful and honest input is key.