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Last Saturday Maine motorcyclists rode from Bath to Camden to show their support for reform and raise funds for non-profit community medical clinics in Maine. Before the group of bikers shoved off, they joined Organizing for America’s state director Julian Fedlerle, Will Towers (a corrections officer and the President of AFSCME Local 2968), and Greg Douglas (a carpenter from Harpswell who was recently featured in an AP story about health care) at a press conference where they called on Senators Collins and Snowe to support a plan that lowers costs, guarantees choice – including a public option, and ensures all Americans have access to quality, affordable care.

Here’s a news segment from WCHS6 in Portland, ME and a few other news stories from events in Independence, MO, Indianapolis, IN and Atlantic City, NJ.

“A vote of ‘qualified’ for a white applicant doesn’t mean s/he’s coming, only that he or she can compete to win the “slate” of up to 10 nominations that (most typically) a Congress(wo)man draws up. That means that nine ‘qualified’ white applicants are rejected. SAT scores below 600 or C grades almost always produce a vote of ‘not qualified’ for white applicants.

“Not so for an applicant who self-identifies as one of the minorities who are our ‘number one priority.’ For them, another set of rules apply. Their cases are briefed separately to the board, and SAT scores to the mid-500s with quite a few Cs in classes (and no visible athletics or leadership) typically produce a vote of “qualified” for them, with direct admission to Annapolis. They’re in, and are given a pro forma nomination to make it legit.”

Read it again, and understand what’s going on. This is not affirmative action. This separate-track admissions practice is how colleges and universities across the country achieve skin deep-only diversity. Admitting students without regard to race would produce a freshman class of too few blacks, how ever these schools define “too few blacks.” To overcome this “embarrassing” obstacle, they assess blacks students against one another, not against the general pool of applicants. Consequently, black students generally are admitted with lower grades and scores than whites and Asians.

It’s patently unfair, but that’s how it works.

The blogosphere recently buzzed over the Naval Academy’s widely reported “commitment” to diversity. The academy has twice as many blacks and Hispanics as it did 10 years ago, and the increase is the result of “a blitz of 1,000 outreach and recruitment events across the country.” (Source)

If only that were so, it would be the stuff from which affirmative action is made! The so-called blitz produced a pool of underqualified applicants who were admitted because they were minorities. As Fleming notes, diversity comes at a price. Interviewed for the Washington Post article, he said, “First of all, we’re dumbing down the Naval Academy. Second of all, we’re dumbing down the officer corps.”

The Naval Academy may boast that 76 percent of its 2013 class comes from the top 20 percent of their high school classes, the same proportion as 10 years ago, but “top 20 percent” doesn’t mean much if minorities are coming from schools with mostly low-achieving students.

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of white firefighters and against the city of New Haven in Ricci v DeStefano. The city had thrown out the results of a promotions test because no blacks scored high enough to qualify for promotions. The city claimed that had it certified the test results, it could have been sued by black firefighters under the disparate impact theory.

“Keep in mind the Supreme Court didn’t close the door to affirmative action,” Obama told the Associated Press. “I’ve always believed that affirmative action was less of an issue or should be less of an issue than it has been made out to be in news reports. It hasn’t been as potent a force for racial progress as advocates will claim and it hasn’t been as bad on white students seeking admissions or seeking a job as its critics say.”

Obama is delusional to think racial bean-counting “hasn’t been as bad” on whites applying to schools or for jobs. Racial discrimination is just as demoralizing and unfair to whites as it is to blacks, regardless of what Obama says. The government has no businesses judging one individual as more deserving than another based on the color of his/her skin. Private employers shouldn’t do it, either, but the government is constitutionally required to treat citizens as individuals and not as members of a racial group. By preferring one person over another based on race, the government is doing exactly that.

While the president tries to appease both sides of the debate with smooth rhetoric, to reasonable people, it rings false. The size and extent of the negative effects of racial discrimination aren’t the point. Racial discrimination needs to be abolished in whole, not in part.