The Polite Bigotry of Pity
Commentary by By Deroy Murdock

By giving every black-, brown-, and red-skinned applicant 20 points just for having the right complexion, the University of Michigan offers a pristine example of what President Bush has called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” The admissions officers do not practice the nasty, snarling bigotry born of hatred, but the polite, smiling bigotry born of pity.

An X in the box signifying that an applicant is black, Hispanic, or American Indian affords a dramatic boost over someone with white or yellow flesh. Altering Ann Arbor to a perfect SAT score, by comparison, earns an applicant only 12 points.

This is academic racial profiling. And if—as civil rights activists scream until they swoon—it is wrong for cops to assume a black man is a criminal, why is it right for the University of Michigan to assume he needs special help simply for applying while black? How dare Michigan’s administrators automatically conclude that minority applicants are disadvantaged and downtrodden?

Admissions officers should evaluate applicants as individuals, not as ethnic inputs. But they crudely regard whites as, ipso facto, privileged. Some whites have, indeed, spent their formative years floating in yacht basins. Others who have excelled, however, hail from chicken farms, trailer parks, and modest ranch homes. White and yellow students struggle with personal hardships, too.

And minority applicants can be honor students, varsity athletes, and student body presidents. The tough love of high expectations offers minority students more promise than does the bigotry of low expectations. Yes, it will be hard to change attitudes within the lamentably numerous minority communities where merit and achievement have surrendered to grievance and slipping standards. But it’s not impossible.

As Chicago’s Marva Collins Preparatory School demonstrates, kids who study Dostoevsky, Milton, and Shakespeare can go from the ghetto to greatness. As Manhattan philanthropist Dan Rose’s Harlem Educational Activities Fund proves, fatherless seventh graders on federally subsidized lunches can be tutored and mentored all the way to national chess championships and colleges like Syracuse, Columbia, and Yale.

We must keep lifting the bar for minority students. Rather than patronize them, our political leaders should inspire these children to dream, strive, and succeed. To demand less of them than of their white counterparts is racism, not matter how elegantly decorated.

New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a columnist witht he Scripps Howard News Service.