Scalia a Racist!!! Said about blacks in Texas affirmative action case: "...having them go to a less-advanced school, a slower track school where they do well."

An important affirmative action case, now before the the Supreme Court, is about to be decided by a shockingly racist justice; Antonin Scalia!!! There's no question on this one.

The fact that the major media didn't lead with this story may be the next biggest headline. From Mother Jones:

Justice Scalia Suggests Blacks Belong at "Slower" Colleges: Yes, he really said that.

Scalia's comments came during arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas, a case over whether the university's use of race in a sliver of its admissions decisions is constitutional:

“There are those who contend that it does not benefit African Americans to get them into the University of Texas, where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a slower-track school where they do well. One of the briefs pointed out that most of the black scientists in this country don't come from schools like the University of Texas. They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they're being pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them.”

"I'm just not impressed by the fact the University of Texas may have fewer [blacks]. Maybe it ought to have fewer. I don't think it stands to reason that it's a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible."

Right wing bloggers are desperately trying to defend Scalia by pointing out he was only reflecting what other people have been saying, a familiar Republican smear tactic that shifts responsibility for their comments to some anecdotal source. I'm not buying it this time or ever. It's not actually a serious academic critique. In the real world we call it racism. Scalia's own statement above gives it his stamp of approval:

...once the transcript emerged, it turned out that critics had jumped the gun. Scalia wasn’t sharing his own views, he was asking about a very serious academic critique of affirmative action that others had made.

And while the above defense of Scalia will give every racist cover, it's is what it is, BS. In a shoot-the-messenger moment that completely and conveniently ignores the issue....

By the way, the brief cited by Scalia reminded me of anti-climate change researchers that typically trash the prevailing science for not being 100% perfect. Check it out here. For anyone to take this brief seriously, after reviewing the incendiary framing of affirmative action policy, you really have to wonder about the competence of any Justice pushing this crap. Here's an example:

The breadth of mismatch effects, and the failure of higher education institutions to grapple with the problems they raise, reinforce the importance of not deferring to the rhetoric of universities that pervades preference programs, and of pushing universities to be transparent and to demonstrate empirically the specific benefits they contend will flow from racial preferences in admissions.

Check out this analysis, which better explains away the theory above.

Believe it or not, Justice John Roberts echoes Glenn Grothman on Affirmative Action Ban!

You’re always hearing Republicans talk about that state’s rights thing, and how every state is different, so who needs the federal governments overbearing one-size-fits-all interference?

Thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision today, the more things change, the more they stay the same in Republican world. Add banning affirmative action to the list.

Let’s face it, Republican have a national one-size-fits-all agenda that includes trashing Common Core, wiping out teachers unions, killing public education, promoting vouchers, defunding higher education, deregulating business, corporate tax cuts, corporate welfare, streamlining DNR permitting, vaginal probes, activist conservative judges, voter suppression…what part of that makes each state different?

It doesn't. It’s a national policy duplicated in every red state.

Take State Sen. Glenn Grothman’s latest idea, stolen from Michigan’s own constitutional law banning affirmative action:

jsonline: In the wake of Tuesday's U.S. Supreme Court decision, one Wisconsin lawmaker is pledging legislation to ban affirmative action policies in the state. State senator and congressional candidate Glenn Grothman, a Republican from West Bend, said he would seek to bring back such legislation, which he has proposed in the past without success.

Grothman pointed to state and federal contracts going to businesses owned by women and minorities or to businesses with certain hiring or subcontracting practices for those groups. Those kinds of requirements and targets are "divisive."

You know something is wrong when Glenn Grothman is giving us the same argument as Justice John Roberts. You read that right:

Justice Roberts: "...it is not “out of touch with reality” to conclude that racial preferences may themselves have the debilitating effect of reinforcing precisely that doubt, and—if so—that the preferences do more harm than good."

Legacy and privilege ignored in the affirmative action policies of college admissions.

Having just hosted the racist Virginia think tank against affirmative action of any kind, the Center for Equal Opportunity, I thought this perspective on "legacy admissions" was just as important. Keli Goff:

It's the provocative question that polite people don't like to ask in the presence of their friends of different races. Who really has it tougher? Black person A or white person B or Asian person C, Latino person D or multi-racial person E? ... we also acknowledge that there are endless qualifiers to that question. When the word "unless" enters the equation, it makes it easier for people to argue that the equation itself should not exist. Welcome to the 2011 debate over affirmative action.

Let me state this for the record: I don't believe that I should receive an opportunity for a job or admission into an institution of higher learning over someone more qualified simply due to the color of my skin, and wouldn't want to. By the same token I wouldn't want to lose a job or admission to an institution of higher learning due to factors equally beyond my control, such as my last name or my class status, yet that kind of missed opportunity happens to people like me all of the time. (To clarify, by "people like me" I mean those of us who were not born wealthy, well connected and fabulous.)