Understanding Affirmative Action
by Robert Martin

A few months ago, the University of Michigan defended its affirmative action policy of automatically adding 20 points to a minority student's admission scores. This policy was strongly defended by the liberal establishment, and its political defeat in a Supreme Court case was portrayed by the liberals as a major setback for civil rights. Liberals are so supportive of this discriminatory principle that they were willing to go to all the way to the nation's top court in order to defend their right to discriminate based upon race.

Help me understand this then. When football great Paul Hornung makes the following statement about affirmative action, liberals call it offensive to blacks:

"As far as Notre Dame is concerned, we're going to have to ease it up a bit. We can't stay as strict as we areas far as the academic structure is concerned, because we've got to get the black athlete. We must get the black athlete if we're going to compete"

Why is this comment considered "offensive to blacks?"

This may be news to liberals, but special race based privileges is the very intent of affirmative action, and is the policy they went to the Supreme Court to defend. Their reaction to Hornung is essentially admitting that affirmative action is "offensive to blacks." Is one to believe that it is okay to support affirmative action; you just aren't allowed to publicly mention your support? Is affirmative action the Orwellian "elephant in the living room" that everyone knows is there but no one will acknowledge it? Liberals can't have it both ways; either affirmative action is "offensive to blacks" and racist in nature, or it isn't. You can't simply support affirmative action in principle and then call statements describing it as "offensive to blacks."