Outrage in Wisconsin

For some reason Wisconsin is in the news a lot these days, and not in a good way, largely because of the activities of government unions and the policies of the uber liberal University of Wisconsin's admissions policies as they relate to the affirmative action law.

On the subject of higher education this post from Innovations - The Chronicle of Higher Education blog, presents a recent "incident" that occurred at the U. of Wisconsin, having to do with the interruption of a meeting held in a local hotel by a respected organization that studies the effect and results of affirmative action policies (diversity initiatives) by institutions of higher learning.  It seems this organization through the FOIA had acquired the records on admissions at the U of W and was meetig to discuss these results when a student "mob", at the direction of the vice provo of the school's "Diversity" department, interrupted the meeting by taking over the site and threatening the participants.  Obviously the university and the "students" feared the outcome of the meeting, which indeed was discussing the facts of the admissions policies of the school in a most unfavorable light as is seen in this link to a post describing the events.  

This blatantly illegal action on the part of the students, goaded on by a school administrator, is an outrage but in keeping with what is going on at schools all over the country.  The facts of the admissions policies including the graduation rates of the affirmative action admits are laid out in the post and make for discouraging reading if you are at all concerned about the quality of education offered by our universities and the impact of the diversity outreach programs which flow from the affirmative action law.  Thank you Sandra Day O'Connor for your contribution to the official discrimination against white and Asian students now rampant and legal at universities around the country.  Affirmative Action never was a good idea, never mind its dubious constitutionality.  That law has now created an virtual industry of administrators and professoriate who are infusing universities with the twin poisons of political correctness and multiculturalism.  This will come to no good end.

Affirmative action revisited by J.R. Dunn of American Thinker

Helen Sargent, a southerner by birth and upbringing, has commented numerous times after visiting family and friends in Alabama, about how well the blacks are doing economically, and how comfortable race relations were in her old home town of Mobile.  This fact she attributes to the history in the south in which blacks and whites have shared space together for a long time, admittedly much of that time in a repressive, one could say evil relationship, and as such learned about each other and in many ways oddly came to be comfortable with one another.  For several decades now blacks have been returning to the south from the economically depressed mid-west and elsewhere, and seemingly are integrating comfortably in the new/old culture there.  Elsewhere in the country race relations are quite tense and can be said to have worsened under the Obama leadership.  J.R. Dunn here lays much of the blame for this condition on the polarizing effect of Obama playing the race card whenever it could possibly benefit him, and on the highly toxic effects of Affirmative Action and the inherent divisiveness of the policies, e.g. set asides, quotas, etc., of this political construct.  Objectively it is hard to see where Affirmative Action has had any positive effect.  What it seems to do quite effectively is pit race against race causing strained relations all around.  What's more the policy is the antithesis of the American can-do spirit of individualism in which each person is ultimately responsible for making his own way in life.  Liberals may agree with this thought but argue that blacks need a leg up to catch up as a result of the debilitating effects of centuries of slavery.  The downside of this latter argument is the dependency culture effect of Affirmative Action that liberals cultivate and nurture for political purposes.  Many thinking blacks agree that this construct has been counterproductive.