Electoral Reform

[Chaerophon]

Actually, it does, and we have had court cases for the last ten years addressing this. The Affirmative Action programs are being challenged on just those grounds, the most common challenge being about admission to Universities in a number of states. The mechanism behind this status is based on rather Old Testament thinking: visit upon the grandchildren the sins of their grandfathers and great grandfathers, by assigning a remediation status in selected cases, based on ethnicity. My daughter is not eligible for about 2/3d's of the scholarships easily available here in Corpus Christi and Texas because I did not lie and claim that I am of Mexican or Hispanic heritage. Her status as an Anglo precludes her being considered. (Other programs are means based, and we make enough to qualify for very small grants, which I have directed her to apply for.)

Hi Occhi,

I find your comments re: "paying for the sins of the grandparents" interesting. After all, the argument can quite reasonably be made (especially in the south) that many minority groups are paying for the same sins as your daughter - and that they have even less reason to pay for them than she does. It's only been 40 years since the first BA's were granted to blacks in many of the major universities of the south (including Duke, Emory, Rice, Vanderbilt, etc.). That's not a lot of time.

I am also somewhat skeptical about the very aggressive AA agenda pursued in education, but for different reasons having to do with its effectiveness as presently instituted. Is your objection really made on grounds of principle, or is your concern more practical/a matter of the "scale" of AA?

EDIT: Just wanted to make sure you realized that I mean no disrespect to your daughter. I know that it can be frustrating to look through the lists of available scholarships and fellowships and realize that you aren't eligible for the vast majority of them.