Can we make Roberts as obviously disqualified as Bolton? Can we make a single issue or complex of issues as important to the DLC as Social Security? One thing The Moderate and LL are right about is the faintheartedness of the DLC. Unless Roberts' nomination is viewed as vital to their immediate short term survival they will allow Roberts to be appointed to the Supreme Court.

It also shows Roberts to be a liar, recommending that the Attorney General lie to Coretta Scott King about why Reagan was cutting funding to an anti-crime non-profit bearing her husband's name.

And it reveals Roberts to be a staunch supporter of legislation that would strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction in cases involving abortion, school prayer and busing -- a corruption of checks and balances.

now roberts takes this to mean affirmative action is a failure, and he criticized affirmative action in strong words.  but to say that his critique shows he is "racist" is, i think, pretty preposterous.

Trillin
http://www.mnleftyliberal.blogspot.com

"Just to be clear," the prejudice imputed to Roberts is derived from such a bad case of logic twisting that it seems Scott Shields is being flat out dishonest here. I expect better from a post at MyDD.

Roberts' point is that adequately prepared minority candidates are not served by affirmative action progams and therefore the program only benefits "inadequately prepared" candidates. Roberts may fail to weigh all considerations fairly and wisely in opposing the program but he in no way suggests there is a certainty all minority candidates are "inadequately prepared."

I can think of a lot of reasons I don't want Roberts to replace O'Connor, but if his appointment results in the end of affirmative action as we now know it, that really isn't a negative to me.  

My personal anecdotal experience is that AA mostly helps middle class minorities who really didn't need the help anyway, while doing little for poor urban minorities (or whites) who actually need some assistance to overcome the huge societal and economic disadvantages they have suffered from birth.

If you want to get Dems thinking hard about Roberts, talk about abortion, gay rights, labor rights, environmental regulations.  That's where judges like him will hurt us.  AA shouldn't be a Dem issue.  I feel like we've been stuck defending a bad policy just because it came from our party many decades ago. Let the Supreme Court strike it down and get it off the table for us.

Opposing this Roberts nomination is a waste of time and strategically imprudent. Roberts will be confirmed period. The republicans have the votes on a straight up and down, and they can always go nuclear. Bush will get his judge.

Causing futile drama only gives the MSM a story regarding the nomination -- a fight is what they want. That gives them an excuse to ignore the other big story that only can benefit the dems: turdgate. Of course, the old bait and switch distraction is exactly what Bush wanted and you are suggesting the dems should make it worthwhile?

The dems should avoid the filibuster and deny the MSM a story aside from the Plame outing, and at the same time save their ammo and the public patience for the next supreme court appointee that will very likely come.

Of course there are an awful lot of first time posters in this diary as well, but it is still difficult to separate the trolls from the benign racists.

What is pissing me off a long the length of this discussion is how ignorant a lot of people are to accepting that diversity, and experience such as mine do matter in the process of selecting students. When I got into my top 20 school, I was told quite ignorantly by a guy with a similar SAT score and slightly lower GPA that I got into college because I'm black. It didn't matter what the facts were. It was just enough that I was black. And, please don't tell me this person said this because of affirmative action. He said this because he had to justify his own lack of sucess. Here was  kid who had it all, and he still could not match what I was achieving.

This resentment, and all the other issues people are talking about along this thread, existed before affirmative action. It shows a fundamental lack of knowledge, much less understanding or wisdom about history, not to know that whites were often pitted against blacks way before affirmative action. Yes, it was economically based. No, economics doesn't describe the psychological aspect of it. If it did, I wouldn't have had the general counsel at a prominent fortune 500 company ask me whether I took contract law in law school (contract law is a core first course in all ABA approved law schools). He followed that up with explaining to me that I was not applying to a minority internship. These were the first two things he said during the interview.

To say  that affirmative action is the reason for this resentment ignores this history, and attempts to absolve people of being personally responsible. I don't care to legislate how you feel- I do care to make sure you don't screw with me or my future through your ignorance of facts.

In college, I came into contact with similar thought processes. Indeed, I had a legacy admission w/ a C average in high school tell me that I got into my top 20 undergraduate school because I am black. The ironic thing, even if that were true, I was a double major in Biology and Pol Sci, including taking grad classes during my undergrad years. Whatever my background, I had long ago earned the right to match brains with the best of my school. His comments had very little to do with the facts or circumstances, and everything to do with his own inadequacies. It's offensive to be told that somehow its this program that helped just open the door a little bit which explains this kind of behavior.

Essentially, that's what all of this conversation really is- its about resentment. No one cares about real fairness. Just do they personally have the opporutnity  As I pointed out above when I later was in California, I watched as people argued that affirmative action (a process that affected less than 10 percent of the population of students) meant their kid didn't get in. Having taken stats in college, the logic of the statement was lost of me. My question, of course, was you are telling me that John and Mary didn't have a shot of getting in with 9 out of 10 other slots available to them? What does that say about your kid's real abilities. Not very much. This part of reality was lost of them.

When they switched the CA system so that there was no affirmative actions, a few things happened. a) Even the unquestionably qualified students among the African American and Latino population started not to tend the UC system because they felt justifiably they weren't wanted in the system. b) Asian students, and not white students, became the largest population in the UC system. c) There became a problem with diversity, d) and the white students still complained.

When I got into a top 20 law school, I heard such idiotic comments such as "I deserve this because my father worked hard to get me this" and "There is nothing wrong to use my connections to get what I want" from my fellow class mates.  There, in law school, I learned my first valuable lesson. The lesson I was starting to learn is that America is not a meritocracy. Not in its laws and not it practial application. I was also begining to learn that fairness has no meaning outside of context. Opportunity exists only as far as it is real opportunity rather than words. I didn't learn this through affirmative action, which was more about just openning a door than "really" openning the real doors in society. I could work hard all my life and not suceed at the American dream because even with a top 20 law school on my resume, and later admissions to two of the hardest bars ithe country, I still lacked the connections. I would also realized truthfully what I really lacked was the passion for what I was doing. But, most kids in law school lack any real passion so that didn't really mean much.

I learned that America is not a meritocracy through watching my classmates. I watched as a friend of mine tried for two weeks to get an assignment completed, only to have his boss, a former prominent politician make one phone call and it was done. The doing apparently was more about knowing the right call to make, versus understanding the right law to apply.

My further education about our system came after law school when I worked in big corp law firm x. There I watched as people made deals that really didn't make any sense, and listened as partners said to me, "if you are shitting on the pot, and you think of the client, bill them." It was a joke, but also a truism about the modern practice of law. We were all whores.  Actually, let me back up- some additional lessons came in the interview process. One partner at big law firm z wanted me to become the token at his firm because he had a problem retaining minorities because he couldn't find anyone qualified. Needless to say, I turned the offer down. One of the white candidates he had hired was someone who openly bragged about a B minus average in law school. The idea that it was qualifications was just a joke to me at that point. For some, it is qualifications, and for others it is not. It's not even just a matter of money. Sometimes, it's who you click with. It's who has the right fit with the firm.

In big law, I watched how the game really works. How decisions are made about who gets assignments, and gets to talk to x client. Often, it came down to personal likes which came down to who looks like and acts like the partner rather than simply skill. Lawyering, these days, isn't about being particularly skilled at the lower ranks because there are so many of us. Most Americans face this reality- the laws of economics says a lot of people in a global economy, even lawyers, are fungible. I would later go inhouse to deal with a company ran by guys with no experience, no business accumen other than the most important element OPM (other people's money). One of the reason I understand the Republican came so well is because I used to see it in business all the time. Some guy convincing another guy on little or no facts that his product is the best, or that you really got to give him that money to make a venture where he can't even tell you how he will earn your money back, much less turn a profit. In the 90s this was heightened, but always part of the game I sensed from talking to older professionals. The point again was that it wasn't merit based.

I also began to talk to other associates, about the process and how people are weeded out. How associates were given assignments that the senior associate knew would reasonably take a week, and asked the AA associate to have it ready in 2 days. At one law firm, as I mentioend above, this was handled through a hiring partner who designed to engage in affirmative action to prevent this kind of weeding out of minority associates, sometimes by other minority associates. Sometimes they were given part of the assignment, but criticized for their writing ability (I am writing this off top my head so please no comments like this). One of my friends recounted how he wrote a brief for the managing partner in his group. He was thoroughly criticized. To test whether it was his writing, or the partner, he wrote another brief annoymously for a friend who was a white guy. That brief, as you may guess, was thoroughly liked by the partner. He said it was his first eye openner about how race influences thinking.

There is a lot more that I can say on the subject of race, but I am tired. Basically, a lot of people a long this thread are talking theorectical assumptions, and I am talking experience. Your theory is that affirmative action made it easier for me. It didn't. I still had to perform like everyone else or I was out. The retention rate at big law firm for minority associates is horrible. Part of that is the nature of the job- the hours at big law in a major city are horrible. 70 hours a week is not unheard of. In really bad times, 100 is not impossible. This is why I left. The hours and stress plus I found my true passion in life. All of this made it all seem unworth it to me.

What I find most offensive here is this notion that somehow I didn't work for what I got. That it is because of affirmative action that people think that I didn't work for a living. No, you think this because you think I am inferior. You think I am inferior because you need to believe this. This has been taught in America since slavery in America first occured. Poor whites were told that at least they were better than poor blacks. Jesse Helms used that in his 1990s ads against his black rival in NC. "Guess who's got your job." Cue on hand of black guy shaking hands of the boss. The conventional wisdom is such a part of the mentality of American thinking now, that it's hard to combat it with the reality. For the record, my history classes and pol sci courses were taught by mostly conservatives. But, they were old style conservatives who believed that if they are going to argue a position, it should be with facts and context. Those conservatives have been replaced by people who are conservatives in form only because to them the things I mention don't matter. It's truly disappointing to come to a left leaning or liberal blog to see the same sort of form over substance arguments being made. Opportunity in theory, not in fact.

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