Snoop Dogg and Chilean Norwegians

As our readers know, the Center for Equal Opportunity has been every involved with urging (successfully) the Supreme Court to hear Fisher v. University of Texas, a case in which the use of racial and ethnic admission preferences in school admissions is challenged.  That case will now be argued next month, and CEO continues to discuss the case and how it ought to be decided.  Last week, I participated in a symposium on the case, published on the influential SCOTUSBlog website.  Below are some excerpts from my contribution, and you can read the whole thing here:

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Uncivilized Sport

As an American, I am proud of Olympic Gold medalist Claressa Shields' feat in women's boxing at the Olympics -- but as a woman who has suffered traumatic brain injury, I am deeply concerned that her win will encourage other young women to pursue this dangerous, potentially life-altering sport.

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Can Romney Win Over Hispanics?

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney traveled to New Mexico this week in search of the state's 5 electoral votes, but he has a significant hurdle to overcome. The latest Rasmussen poll numbers in the state show Romney trailing the president by 14 percent.

Romney began his campaign in Hobbs, New Mexico, by talking about his energy plan. It's good politics to talk about energy in the West, where the energy business provides lots of job and economic growth. But Romney's problem in the state has little to do with energy and much to do with demographics.

Romney has, so far, largely ignored the elephant in the room: the large Hispanic population in the state. New Mexico boasts the largest proportion of Hispanics of any state. A large majority of New Mexican Hispanics are native-born U.S. citizens. Hispanics in NM have a long history of political involvement from the state's founding to the present and make up almost 40 percent of eligible voters. What's more, NM voters have elected several Republican Hispanics, including current Gov. Susanna Martinez.

While New Mexico's share of electoral votes is small, Romney will need all the votes he can to overcome Obama's big advantage in electorally rich states like California, New York, New Jersey and other safely Democratic havens. With 191 electoral votes from states likely or leaning his way, Romney needs 79 of the remaining swing state votes, while Obama needs only 49 because he is already likely or leaning to win in states with 221 votes. The math is much more difficult for Romney unless he can win all the states he now leads in plus Florida, Virginia, Ohio and at least one other large toss-up state like Michigan or Wisconsin, or a couple of smaller ones, like Colorado or Nevada.

Gov. Martinez is scheduled to speak at next week's Republican National Convention in Tampa in prime time. But that's not enough to assuage Hispanic voters in her home state -- or elsewhere. Like Hispanics in other politically important states like Florida (where 14.5 percent of eligible voters are Hispanics), New Mexicans aren't keen on Romney's handling of the immigration issue, one he's largely ignored once he secured a lock on the nomination. Nor are Hispanic voters in Colorado or Nevada, where they make up about 13 percent of all eligible voters.

The candidate seems to think he can remain silent on the issue, but he'd be smarter to come up with a positive approach that emphasizes legal immigration reform and a willingness to consider alternatives to "self-deportation" (his phrase during the primaries) for the country's 11 million illegal immigrants.

President Obama has provided Romney with some opportunity to make inroads on the Hispanic. Hispanic support for Obama is among the highest of any group (70 percent in recent polls), but that's in part due to the GOP's hesitance to aggressively exploit Obama's weaknesses in the Hispanic community.

Hispanic unemployment is at record levels over the last four years. The economic downturn -- especially in construction -- has eliminated jobs in which Hispanics workers found a niche and an opportunity to move up the economic ladder. Hispanic unemployment now exceeds 10 percent. Obama's dismal record in creating jobs has hit the Hispanic community hard. And the 2010 poverty level among Hispanics (28 percent) exceeded that of blacks, when the economic benefits of food stamps, subsidized housing and other non-cash benefits are included.

Romney has begun airing an ad (in Spanish) accusing the Democrats of "fooling" Hispanics on the economy. But the ad is pretty generic and does little to sow doubts about whether a second Obama term might stall the impressive gains Hispanics have made in upward mobility over the years. But the problem for Romney and the GOP in general is that they have not made it clear enough that they actually believe in Hispanic economic mobility and the assimilation of Hispanics into the American mainstream. Instead, they've spent too much time talking about the threat of illegal immigration and allying themselves with groups that oppose legal immigration as well. It's no wonder many Hispanics don't feel welcome.

It's not too late for Romney to fix the problem, but time is running out. He should begin this coming week in Florida by offering up not just a few Hispanic stars but real solutions on the immigration front. Sooner or later, he'll have to. He'd be better off doing it on friendly turf than waiting for the issue to emerge during the presidential debates.

Schools, Contracts, and Colorblindness

The Justice Department announced last week that it has put an end to racially discriminatory selection practices in an Alabama school district, where two high schools had black slots and nonblack slots for their homecoming queens and Valentine’s Day courts.

The Department’s press release complained that the “schools considered race” and had “race-based selection criteria.” The release proudly declares that now, thanks to the Obama administration, the school district “will end the use of race-based election and selection criteria in all student activities.” After all, the release concludes, the Department must enforce “Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars public school districts, colleges and universities from discriminating against students on the basis of race [and] color . . .”

The quoted language in the preceding paragraph — culminating with a reference to the department’s duties here, not only with respect to “school districts,” but also for “colleges and universities” — clearly sets the stage for the Obama administration to support colorblind admissions in public universities when it files an amicus brief with the Supreme Court later this month in Fisher v. University of Texas. After all, the administration cannot possibly be thinking of taking flatly inconsistent positions in the two cases.

Can it?

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Speaking of schools:  During the 1960s and ’70s, hundreds of school-desegregation decrees were put in place, and rightly so. But the Supreme Court has warned that these decrees are not to stay in place forever. Normally local school districts, not federal judges, are supposed to run the schools; dissolving a desegregation decree when the school system is no longer segregated will not allow schools to readopt Jim Crow policies (the Fourteenth Amendment does not expire), but it will allow districts more flexibility with regard to charter schools and other student-assignment issues.

One problem that has arisen in particular is the tension between these decades-old decrees (which spell out rigidly which students can go to which schools) and needed reforms that allow students to transfer out of failing schools (as the federal No Child Left Behind statute, for example, does). Well, this news item points out a recent instance of this problem, where a 1960s-era decree has prompted school officials in one Louisiana district to warn students that they can’t transfer out of a failing school if they are the wrong color (in this case, white).

Now is a good time for judges to review any such decrees they have on their dockets, so that school districts can make informed and commonsensical decisions before school starts up again. The Center for Equal Opportunity has periodically written to all judges who have such cases on their dockets, and urged them to see if dismissal is appropriate (and, indeed, we wrote to the court in this particular case in October 2009, and received a response indicating — incorrectly, it would seem — that the case was considered to have been closed already). We set out the reasons why such a review makes sense; you can read a sample letter here. The federal government is typically a party to these cases, by the way, and the Bush administration did a better job of moving these cases along than the Obama administration has.

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The New York Times ran an article last week with the title, “Battling Perceptions About Minority- and Woman-Owned Businesses.”  It features a black female entrepreneur who complains that she is always “battling misperceptions about the capabilities” of minority-owned businesses, sensing that people are afraid that companies “certified” as minority for affirmative-action purposes are not quite up to snuff.

Well, guess what? —this is the inevitable price of any affirmative action program. If people are given preferential treatment on the basis of race, ethnicity, or sex, then other people are going to assume that they are less qualified than those who are not given preferential treatment. If we don't like it when people make that assumption, the only solution is to stop giving preferential treatment.

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And speaking of contracts:  The Obama administration announced last week that it will need another month to decide if Arab Americans will be added to the list of groups eligible for services from its Minority Business Development Administration. Alexander Kazam wrote about the issue earlier this summer, as did I.  And the Center for Equal Opportunity has filed a formal comment with the Obama administration, which argues that, in 2012, it makes no sense — and is inconsistent with the Constitution — to compile an ever-longer list of racial and ethnic groups eligible for special government programs.

Obama’s Bad Brief

Last week the Obama administration filed an amicus briefwith the Supreme Court in Fisher v. University of Texas, supporting the school’s use of racial and ethnic preferences in undergraduate admissions.

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Race Isn't the Problem for Obama

The president of the AFL-CIO is worried that President Obama is doing poorly among white, working class, male voters -- and he plans on putting 400,000 of his troops in the field in six key states to change the equation.

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Use English, not quotas

Center for Equal Opportunity board member Rosalie Pedalino Porter recently testified before Congress in favor of legislation to make English the nation’s official language.  It earned her a mention in a New York Times editorial, and if the reference was not exactly to praise her, well, consider the source.  Great job, Dr. Porter!

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Let the pandering begin!

Last week President Obama announced in a speech to the Urban League that he was going to sign an executive order launching a White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African-Americans, to be housed in the Education Department.And, later in the week, he did.

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