A Shame

In response to yesterday’s Supreme Court decision in the Fisher v University of Texas case, this blog offered its view and Community Advocates’ vice president, Joe Hicks, wrote an op/ed that appears in today’s OC Register (see below). Both pieces, we would like to think, were driven by arguments relevant to the decision, the issue of racial preferences and data that is accurately cited.

Attempting to be accurate, especially in dealing with an issue as fraught with emotion and four decades of passion as affirmative action is, seems the least that any commentator should aspire to. That made it all the more troubling to see major media outlets belie their biases and blatantly misrepresent not only the relevant data relating to the affirmative action debate, but some of the key actors as well.

The most egregious misrepresentation that I came across was by The New York Times in a special on-line column entitled ” target=”_blank”>last month they would have seen the obvious inaccuracy of their stats and their argument:

California was one of the first states to abolish affirmative action, after voters approved Proposition 209 in 1996. Across the University of California system, Latinos fell to 12 percent of newly enrolled state residents in the mid-1990s from more than 15 percent, and blacks declined to 3 percent from 4 percent. At the most competitive campuses, at Berkeley and Los Angeles, the decline was much steeper.

Eventually, the numbers rebounded. Until last fall, 25 percent of new students were Latino, reflecting the booming Hispanic population, and 4 percent were black. A similar pattern of decline and recovery followed at other state universities that eliminated race as a factor in admissions.

Clearly, the authors had a point they wanted to make and meaningful data that might intrude on that point were unwelcomed.

A second troubling article that surfaced in the post-Fisher media frenzy was in the Huffington Post and mischaracterize the concurring opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas. The screaming headline that begs for readers to “click through” was “Clarence Thomas Compares Affirmative Action to Slavery, Segregation in Opinion.” The author, clearly wanting to pique readers’ interest, completely misrepresented Thomas’ assertions.

Whether one agrees with Justice Thomas and his ideology or not, he deserves to have his opinions portrayed accurately—or at a minimum not totally distorted. In his opinion, in which he couldn’t have been clearer, he argued that historically “the worst forms of discrimination in the Nation have always been accompanied by straight-faced representations that discrimination helped minorities.” His examples included defenders of slavery saying it was “a positive good” that civilized blacks and segregationists who argued that segregation was good for black students.

There was not a hint in the opinion that he compared affirmative action to those sins. The only arguable language was in his transition from his discussion of slavery and segregation to the defenders of affirmative action, “following in those inauspicious footsteps, the University would have us believe that its discrimination is likewise…” He was unambiguously referring to the rationales offered both for the historic sins of slavery and Jim Crow and the rationale for affirmative action—not the activities themselves. There is simply no honest way to read what Thomas wrote as comparing slavery, Jim Crow and affirmative action. 

Clearly, the Fisher decision has struck some raw nerves, but passions and strong feelings don’t justify spinning data or dishonesty.