4. Archives - Corporate Supporters of UM Quotas
Page 4 of 4
| Site Index:  |
Corporate Supporters of UM's Racial Quotas Came Out Early in 2000. See also other relevant commentary from this period, below. |
Use your Browser's BACK Button to Return. |
Microsoft, Intel, 18 others support U. Michigan reverse discrimination (10/17/00) On Monday, Oct. 16 2000, motivated by fear of NAACP boycotts, and by fear of harassement by the Clinton / Gore Justice Department, the following Fortune 500 companies agreed to publicly support racial quotas in the University of Michigan's student admissions policies. These 20 companies thus also publicly oppose the civil rights of rejected white UM applicants Jennifer Gratz and Barbara Grutter. The following firms do not support fair and equal treatment under the law without regard to race:
DETROIT (AP) According to the Associated Press, 20 Fortune 500 companies have been so intimidated by the threat of racial boycotts by the NAACP and by the Clinton/Gore Justice Department that these companies felt they had no choice but to publicly and loudly support the University of Michigan's racial quotas. Various Fortune 500 spokespeople have tried to put a good face on their support of quotas by touting the "value of diversity" and the need to "participate in a global marketplace." But not one of these rich, Fortune 500 executives has dared to address the illegal and unconstitutional nature of the University of Michigan's policies which deny admission to UM applicants Jennifer Gratz and Barbara Grutter -- highly qualified white women who were refused admission to UM in favor of less qualified minorities. According to AP: "Microsoft, Intel and 18 other Fortune 500 companies threw their legal support Monday [Oct. 16, 2000] to the University of Michigan's affirmative action admissions, now under attack in a federal lawsuit. The 20 companies filed a brief Monday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Detroit backing the university's legal defense of its [race-based] admissions' system. "Without a strong commitment to diversity from the world's leading academic institutions, it will become more and more difficult for multinational corporations to compete at the global level," said James Hackett, chief executive of office furniture-maker Steelcase Inc. "Monday's filing comes three months before the start of the trial of one of two 1997 lawsuits that say admissions' policies unconstitutionally discriminate against whites in favor of less-qualified minorities. A trial of the case over law school admissions is set for Jan. 16, while a hearing on both sides' requests for summary judgment in the undergraduate admissions case is set for Nov. 21. "The 20 companies are following on the heels of General Motors Corp., which filed a brief supporting the university in July. In addition to Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp., and Steelcase, companies signing the brief are 3M, Abbott Laboratories, Bank One Corp., DuPont De Nemours & Co., Dow Chemical Co., Eastman Kodak Co., Eli Lilly and Co., General Mills, Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg Co., KPMG International, Lucent Technologies Inc., PPG Industries Inc., Procter & Gamble Co., Sara Lee Corp., Texaco and TRW Inc. The Center for Individual Rights (CIR), in Washington DC, is representing the two white students who were denied admission by the UM because of their skin color. According to the Associated Press, CIR's Terry Pell said "The university's effort to cloak their illegal admissions system in respectability is a day late and a dollar short. We'll see them in court." These Fortune 500 supporters of UM's racial quotas are terrified that the Clinton Justice Department and the NAACP, among other racial special interests, will attack their bottom line with profit-killing boycotts if the firms do not vocally support racial quotas. The Steelcase company, based in Grand Rapids, was a major organizer of Fortune 500 support of UM's racial quotas, and exemplifies the corporate fear that corporations had better support racial quotas or else see their business ruined by racial boycotts and by harassment from the Clinton/Gore Justice Department. According to AP, the Steelcase company touted the NAACP party line, saying the "current [UM rac-based] application process is critical to building an environment that breeds new perspectives and interaction." Steelcase is correct about that: racial quotas, and the thousands of innocent victims of racial quotas, certainly will develop a new perspective on so-called civil rights. One attorney for the white plaintiffs in the case said, according to AP, "that the university has a distorted view of diversity. As an example, a student coming from Vietnam or from the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan would get no help from its affirmative action policies, because they are not black or Hispanic, said attorney Kurt Levey. "It's an extremely narrow view of diversity."
Texas, California, and Washington State have been forced to scrap racial quotas in
educational admissions in response to similar legal and political challenges. (Based
on the AP story 10/17/00 by David Goodman, as printed in Michigan Live) (Michican, Ann Arbor): The fight for race-blind admissions policies at the University of Georgia took a step forward last Monday, as U.S. District Judge Avant Edenfield of Savannah ruled that race could no longer be a factor in admissions. Judge Edenfield ruled that three white women who were denied admission to the University of Georgia in 1999 solely because they were white should be offered admission for the Fall 2000 semester. [U-WIRE, ANN ARBOR, Mich.] -- "We're disappointed, but we respect the opinion of the court," University of Georgia spokesperson Matthew Winston said. Under U of Georgia's discredited quota policy, UGA had been admitting the lowest scoring 10 to 15 percent of applicants for racial reasons while rejecting better qualified non-minority applicants. Judge Edenfield ruled this practice was clearly racist and unconstitutional. "In a press release, UGA President Michael F. Adams said "This is yet another step in what promises to be a long process. ... We also want to be as aggressive as possible within the law in attracting people of all races and backgrounds to the University of Georgia," he added. Liz Barry, University of Michigan associate vice president and UM lawyer at Ann Arbor, hopes that the decision in the UGA case will have no effect on the two reverse discrimination admissions lawsuits that UM is currently trying to defend itself against. Ms. Barry said that the U. Georgia decision against racial quotas is "not binding on us and clearly not our view of the law." An attorney representing the pro-quota intervenors in the reverse discrimination lawsuit against Michigan's Law School, Ms. Miranda Massie, said she felt that the judge in the U. Georgia anti-quota lawsuit [Judge Edenfield] was a "confederate cowboy". Ms. Massie accused Judge Edenfield of racism in the UGA case, accusing him of a disregard for pro-minority, racist policies which favor certain skin colors and genders in college admissions over better qualified white applicants. As a racist partisan favoring minority admissions quotas, UGA's attorney Massie made the incredible public statement that Judge Edenfield's anti-quota, pro-color-blind ruling "shows the judge was totally prepared to disregard law and fact in order to rule for racism and unfairness." Ms. Massie said she thinks UGA has a good chance of winning the school's case for racist admissions requirements favoring minorities upon appeal. "Yes, they will appeal," she said. "They absolutely have a chance."
Ms. Massie remains hopeful that Michigan's racist, discriminatory admissions policies
against white students will somehow withstand judicial review later this year.
(Daily U. Michigan 07/31/00 by Joselyn Gingrich, via Excite.Com) (Michican, Ann
Arbor): "It seems that some top executives at General Motors Corp. prefer social engineering to mechanical engineering. Last week, the automaker's meddlesome legal team filed a brief in federal court that supports the University of Michigan's race-based affirmative-action policies. "The university is involved in two class-action lawsuits stemming from its use of a blatantly discriminatory "dual" admission program in undergraduate and law school admissions. University documents obtained by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Individual Rights show that in some cases, minorities are automatically admitted while white applicants with identical SAT scores and grades are automatically rejected. Race was not just a "plus" factor; it was the deciding factor. "Across the country, voters and courts have rejected these unjust and unconstitutional schemes. Polls show that both professors and students of all races are increasingly disenchanted with affirmative action. And more and more multiracial families like mine are defying intrusive government inquiries into our skin color. "... GM's lawyers argue "The future of American business" depends upon the preservation of race-based affirmative action. "High-level functioning in today's business world demands cross-cultural competence," they write. "What we are doing is supporting the policy of the university that will encourage a very diverse student body that ultimately is to the advantage of America," says Harry J. Pearce, GM vice chairman. "This is nonsensical pandering to the affirmative-action lobby." "... Unprecedented numbers of students are declining to identify their race at all in the admissions process. They want to compete on their merits, not their chromosomes. Now that's something a future employer should value. "... GM is using the University of Michigan case as a vehicle to appease racial quota advocates in academia and politics. When it comes to achieving true racial equality, the world's largest car company drives in reverse." (Excerpted from Michelle Malkin's 07/26/00 column
in Townhall.com) Michigan (Ann
Arbor): "It wasn't enough that Jennifer Gratz had to take on the University of Michigan and much of the civil rights establishment to try to fulfill a dream. Now one of the biggest corporations in the world, mighty General Motors Corp. (GM), is standing in the way. Why? Apparently it's because Miss Gratz, who happens to be white, has the wrong skin color. "In 1995, Miss Gratz was just another high school senior hoping to get into the university of her choice, the nearby University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. But she was no ordinary student. She was 12th in her high school class of 299, a cheerleader, National Honor Society member, student council vice president. She did volunteer work at a senior citizens center, organized a blood drive and served as a math tutor. "But she didn't get in. The school first put her on the waiting list, then rejected her. She was stunned. She was also skeptical because she believed her academic record was better than that of persons she knew had been accepted. "Although she didn't know it at the time, others were also suspicious of Michigan admissions practices. Working with professors at the school who had obtained admissions records through Freedom of Information Act requests, lawyers with the Washington-based Center for Individual Rights (CIR) discovered that the school was actually running a segregated admissions system: If minorities — African-Americans, Hispanics and others — obtained certain scores, they were automatically accepted. If members of disfavored ethnic groups [whites and others] achieved the same scores, they enjoyed no such guarantee. "In 1997, CIR filed a class-action lawsuit against the school on behalf of Miss Gratz and others who had suffered from Michigan's racial manipulations, charging the school with illegal discrimination. "This month General Motors filed an amicus brief defending the school's use of racial bias to set aside admissions openings for preferred races and ethnic groups —African-Americans, Hispanics and others — at the expense of people like Miss Gratz. It's not the easiest practice in the world to defend, and GM carefully doesn't try. ... Instead General Motors lays out an antiseptic vision of social engineering wiped clean of the casualties associated with it. "In General Motors' view," the company said in a press release and in the brief filed in federal district court in Michigan, "only a well-educated, highly-diverse workforce, comprised of people who have learned to work productively and creatively with individuals from a multitude of races and ethnic, religious, and cultural histories, can maintain America's global competitiveness in the increasingly diverse and interconnected world economy." [Emphasis added.] "General Motors' argument seems to be that unless U of M classrooms, dorms and athletic locker rooms achieve some percentage — quota — of racial or religious minorities, education (read: "consciousness raising") can't happen. "Proscribing the consideration of race and ethnicity in admissions," complains the company, would "dramatically reduce" diversity and deprive students of the "acquisition of cross-cultural skills." "So it is. A minority applicant starts with an extra 20 points (out of a possible 150) just for the color of his skin. Twenty points, says the school's 2000 admissions guidelines, "will be awarded to an applicant who . . . is a member of a federally recognized underrepresented race or ethnicity, which is also underrepresented on the UM Ann Arbor campus." To put that figure in perspective, the difference between having a 3.0 grade point average (gpa) and a 4.0 gpa or between a 2.0 gpa and a 3.0 gpa is also 20 points. Likewise, getting the highest scores in standardized college placement tests is worth only 12 points. "Alas, for Miss Gratz, she flunked Michigan's skin color test and had to go to school elsewhere in Michigan. When General Motors takes a break from its social engineering, perhaps it could take a few minutes to explain to her why it's a good thing she didn't get that chance. (Excerpted from the Washington Times editorial
07/27/00 by Kenneth D. Smith, editor of the Washington Times editorial page.) See Also: CIR's Student Handbook for Detecting Illegal Racial Preferences END: U Michigan (4) Archives - Corporate Supporters of UM Quotas (p. 4 of 4) |
Click here for Education MAIN Index, or make another U Mich Quota selection:
| A. Supreme Court Rulings 6-23-03 |
0. Archives |
1. Archives District Courts Overturn UM Quotas 2000, 2001 |
2. Archives News and Analysis 2001 |
3. Archives News and Analysis 2000, 1999 |
4. Archives Corporate Supporters of UM Quotas |
NAS Study: Forced Diversity Has NO Educational Benefit! |
