Affirmative Action Creates Victims

I’m sure that no regular reader of my blog needs reminded that people should be treated on merit and ability, not race.

But it seems that some have not yet caught onto this idea. The results can be very ugly. The National Review covers a case where a young man was admitted to a university despite being far under the required standard for entry. The result is a young man who is failing at everything around him.

But the Times story conveys a subtler point as well: Racial preferences are not just ill advised, they are positively sadistic. Only the preening self-regard of University of California administrators and faculty is served by such an admissions travesty. Preference practitioners are willing to set their “beneficiaries” up to fail and to subject them to possible emotional distress, simply so that the preference dispensers can look out upon their “diverse” realm and know that they are morally superior to the rest of society.

Simply declaring a policy as “good” isn’t enough. It actually has to result in good, not just the feeling that those who have implemented it have done something morally superiour.

What is interesting however, is that this student was in the top of his High-School class. No doubt those same people who thought it was a good idea to put him in college also opposed setting up a charter school so that the most talented of those attending his school could meet their potential.