Honesty About Race

The SF Chronicle ran an Op/Ed by Ruben Navarette titled Alito Plays Dumb on Race:

Americans still can't talk honestly about race or racism.

Perhaps Mr. Navarette could start.

Throughout the article he uses the Orwellian "affirmative action" when what he is referring to is "racial preferences". Honest?

I don't know why my colleagues didn't sink their teeth into what was obviously a delicious tidbit -- a nominee's possible misgivings about affirmative acion...

Perhaps because whenever given the chance, Americans have voted repeatedy to reject racial preferences and its inherent discrimination by race. Americans have misgivings about racial preferences, Mr. Navarrette. Honest?

They can't even talk about programs -- however flawed -- that were created to alleviate the effects of racism.

Mr. Navarette may have missed the memo, but the Supreme Court in Bakke explicitly denied the use of racial preferences to "alleviate the effects of racism". Ironically, they did allow their use to create "diversity" under the "compelling interest" that students benefit from a diverse student body.

Of course, the faculty of our universities, the most ideologically monolithic group in the country (with Mr. Navarette's "colleagues" a close second), are unaffected. We are asked to believe that those sitting beside the students are more important to learning than the professors standing before them. Honest?

Finally:

Latinos still have to put up with insult added to injury. First, the nation's largest minority is passed over three times by President Bush...

Perhaps Mr. Navarrette should familiarize himself with the plight of Miguel Estrada. President Bush nominated Judge Estrada for the D.C. Court of Appeals, the nation's 2nd highest court, only to be filibustered by Senate Democrats "because he is a Latino".

From the Wall Street Journal:

Leaked Democratic memos indicate that Mr. Estrada was targeted, in part, because, "he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment," and because, "we can't make the same mistake we made with Clarence Thomas."

So by all means, lets start talking honestly about race.