Affirmative Action To Prevent Discrimination Actually Encourages Discrimination

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – Did white people choose to be white?  So you’re going to carve out a special disfavor because you assert that there is this thing called an affirmative action program because you’re just born and destined and get admitted into any college that you want simply by virtue of the color of your skin?  I must have missed out on that one, too.  I was only invited, and I wasn’t even invited.  I only applied to go to a junior college, and I only went for one semester.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  I want to play this for you first, Patrick J. Buchanan.  I talked about this earlier when I teased this up.  When The McLaughlin Group, which is, as I said earlier, an old-school news program — the cool kids that we’re talking about watching Miley Cyrus would never watch The McLaughlin Group.  Let’s just get that out there.  Patrick J. Buchanan does make an appearance on it.   He’s a regular on The McLaughlin Group.  The discussion you’re going to hear is whether or not there ought to be affirmative action admission standards in college.  The voices you’re going to hear are Eleanor Clift, Patrick J. Buchanan, John McLaughlin, Zuckerman doesn’t say anything, and this woman named Michelle Bernard.  It’s Bernard that gets the lion’s share of the audio until the end when Buchanan tries to interrupt and go: Wait a minute now, you’re saying it’s okay and legal to discriminate against white people in the United States today?  Here’s the quote, “Whites are the only group that you can discriminate against legally in America now.”  Here’s the digital media file.

[start audio clip]

Michelle Bernard: Here’s a question I have. One of the things I always say, because I think you can measure diversity in a lot of ways.  I think there’s an argument to be said that the greatest affirmative action program that there is in the country is being born white. There is a natural assumption when you are applying to institutions of higher education that you . . .   

[end audio clip]

Mike:  That’s Bernard.  That’s the highlight.  So the greatest affirmative action program in the United States is being born white.  I just happen to have been Caucasian.  Nobody asked me.  I wasn’t polled on it.  To my knowledge, although I’m sure sometime before our Heavenly Father said you can go down to Earth and pick a body, many of us didn’t have anything to do, we didn’t get to choose this.  How ironic is this?  The same crowd that’s out there talking about, [mocking] “Gay people didn’t choose to be gay.  They were born this way.  They didn’t learn that.  They didn’t choose those tendencies.  They didn’t choose to be transgender.  They’re all born with it and you have to acknowledge it, carve out special favors for it.”  Okay.  Did white people choose to be white?  So you’re going to carve out a special disfavor because you assert that there is this thing called an affirmative action program because you’re just born and destined and get admitted into any college that you want simply by virtue of the color of your skin?  I must have missed out on that one, too.  I was only invited, and I wasn’t even invited.  I only applied to go to a junior college, and I only went for one semester.  Here is the rest of the discussion in context.

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[start audio clip]

John McLaughlin: Are you saying college admissions should be based on diversity?

Eleanor Clift: Yeah, I mean, I think lots of factors go into diversity.  I think race can be one of them —

McLaughlin: Sixty-seven percent —

Clift:  — and I think the Supreme Court so far agrees with that.

McLaughlin: Sixty-seven percent opposed it, 28, you’re in the minority. Only 28 percent are in favor.

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Pat Buchanan: It should be based on excellence, John.

Clift: As long as the Supreme Court agrees with me, I’m fine.

Buchanan: It’s just like the NFL. Whoever is the best player plays, and whoever does best academically should be advanced. What is wrong with that?

Michelle Bernard: Here’s a question I have. One of the things I always say, because I think you can measure diversity in a lot of ways.  I think there’s an argument to be said that the greatest affirmative action program that there is in the country is being born white. There is a natural assumption when you are applying to institutions of higher education that you are excellent or you are more superb or more brilliant than others.

Buchanan: With due respect, whites are the only group that you can discriminate against legally in America now.

[end audio clip]

Mike:  We ought to have admissions standards in state-subsidized colleges where there is a consideration for diversity.  No one bothers to define diversity.  What’s diversity?  It’s whatever the admissions people or whatever the board or whatever the faculty or whatever the state says is diversity.  The irony is, for the sake of diversity, you are actually pointing out and making it so that there has to be recognition.  Look, those people got in and we let them in because of . . . so by saying you’re going to do admissions based on this thing called diversity, you are saying, at some point, you are implying and then following through with legal action that you are going to admit people into these universities and you’re going to use as a criteria for admitting them in what people are not supposed to recognize about them.

That’s the thing that ought to drive you nuts about this diversity thing.  I want to be advanced “not because of the color of my skin but the content of my character,” said Martin Luther King.  We’re supposed to have this colorblind, race-less, gender-less society, yet at every turn we have the same people say it’s supposed to be colorblind, gender-less, sex-less — in other words it doesn’t matter what sex it is you choose to be, what sex it is you choose to have your relations with and what have you — the same people insist that you must acknowledge and recognize that person because of that distinction.  How do you purport to ever deal with this so that you don’t have to deal with it?  Isn’t this something that is going to perpetuate itself?  As long as we continue down this path, you’re always going to have people that are going to become part of these communities that receive these allowances, if you will, from those that are in the positions of power to dispense them.

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I think Buchanan makes a point.  We’re talking about a university here.  The university used to be one of the most renowned and respected entities amongst all the public institutions, or all the institutions of any particular land.  It was a place where the best and brightest went.  We seem hell bent and determined to make sure that the best and brightest are not acknowledged for going to university.  [mocking] “Well, they got in but they only got in because they’re white.  They only got in because they look the right way.  We’ve got to equalize this playing field here.”  When you do that, you systematically diminish the allure and the loftiness that graduating from a place like that or actually gaining admission into, the prestige that is associated with it.  Anybody ought to be able to get in there.  No, anybody should not be able to get in there.  It’s part of the whole problem with public education.

I have a story here today that goes along with this where the Attorney General of the United States is trying to tell the citizens of Louisiana that we are not allowed to allow our citizens to take what amounts to their moneys and use them to choose the lower education location of their choosing.  In other words, to be able to pick what school it is they want their kids to go to.  This will not be done by geographical location, which I have always thought is — if you’re trying to do something that will systematically lower the expectations and standards of teaching and of learning anything that is above what a human can actually learn outside of this thing we call education, the systematic way to make that less attractive and less productive and to have it worth less than it could be, to not have the exacting standard that we only ask and only teach and only promote those that are able to achieve at a high level.

The single best way to do that would be to do it by geography.  If you do it by geography, you say: If you can get into that neighborhood right there, then you can get in and go to that particular school, instead of saying we don’t choose school districts like that.  We let parents choose the school districts.  We let parents say: What if I don’t want to live in that neighborhood?  It’s public money.  I ought to be able to send my brat to wherever I think they have the best shot of getting ahead, if they can gain admission to it, which is basically what Louisiana is trying to say.  Now we have Eric Holder coming along, [mocking] “Just hold on a cotton pickin’ moment now.  No, no, no, there are federal moneys here.  We get to tell you how you’re going to spend it.  We get to determine how it is and where it is and why it is that Louisiana families, those that live in this state and are using the public education system, we have to have a say-so in this.”

What is really at work here, there is a mechanism in place to defend lack of achievement and defend the fact that standards continue to drop, this while we continue to spend and invest more and more money.  Money is obviously not the answer.  What is the answer?  You people out there that are homeschooling and are seeking alternative education, I think you already know what the answer is.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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