Blacks for Bush

  Why we can live without affimative action

There is ONE reason that is always brought up to condemn Bush when I suggest that blacks should vote for Bush. That is of course his stand against affirmative action. Bush like the majority of Americans don't support affirmative action. I am sure I and many of my friends have benefited from it, so I personally support it.

Unfortunately its an idea who's time has past. The program has been flawed from the start because it was elitist. Yes its nice to help the top 2% of black America but that leaves out the other 98 percent. Thus its not a program that is well designed to help black people. As this NYTimes article states not only does it piss off the majority of Americans it also fails to help those who it was designed to help. We need to refocus on solution like NCLB which help all black children get a better education.

While about 8 percent, or about 530, of Harvard's undergraduates were black, Lani Guinier, a Harvard law professor, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., the chairman of Harvard's African and African-American studies department, pointed out that the majority of them, perhaps as many as two-thirds—, were West Indian and African immigrants or their children, or to a lesser extent, children of biracial couples.

They said that only about a third of the students were from families in which all four grandparents were born in this country, descendants of slaves. Many argue that it was students like these, disadvantaged by the legacy of Jim Crow laws, segregation and decades of racism, poverty and inferior schools, who were intended as principal beneficiaries of affirmative action in university admissions.