Anne just sent me this article by Tim Wise of ZMag/AlterNet entitled Whites Swim in Racial Preference. The article examines discusses Michigan’s Affirmative Action program and Bush’s criticisms of that program. The article is “in your face” about its point, but the facts it presents about the Michigan AA program are interesting. I hadn’t read a more complete disclosure of the point system until this article. Most everyone was focusing on the 20 points minorities got, but ignoring the other aspects of the point system. Good read.

An excerpt:

Very telling is the oft-heard comment by whites, “If I had only been black
I would have gotten into my first-choice college.”

Such a statement not only ignores the fact that whites are more likely
than members of any other group — even with affirmative action in place
– to get into their first-choice school, but it also presumes, as
anti-racist activist Paul Marcus explains, “that if these whites were
black, everything else about their life would have remained the same.” In
other words, that it would have made no negative difference as to where
they went to school, what their family income was, or anything else.

The ability to believe that being black would have made no difference
(other than a beneficial one when it came time for college), and that
being white has made no positive difference, is rooted in privilege
itself: the privilege that allows one to not have to think about race on a
daily basis; to not have one’s intelligence questioned by best-selling
books; to not have to worry about being viewed as a “out of place” when
driving, shopping, buying a home, or for that matter, attending the
University of Michigan.