Author: mopress

Jan. 2004

Welcome. This site has a working thesis:

the Texas A&M University Board of Regents, as party to an on-going de-segregation plan, should respect

its own civil rights responsibilities and restore affirmative action in admissions to the Texas A&M

campus.
With respect to this thesis, it is widely doubted that Texas A&M has any civil rights

responsibilties when it comes to affirmative action in the admissions process. But if this is true for

Texas A&M, while it is party to a de-segregation plan, then what role does affirmative action play?

David Skrentny’s work shows that affirmative action was devised by civil rights

enforcement agencies who otherwise would have been left with only the tool of case complaints–a

procedure that will leave with you a higher stack of complaints each day. Without a tool for adjusting

“institutional” behavior, civil rights cannot be adequately enforced. Without affirmative action,

then, how else are civil rights to be em nforced?

Everyone forgets that Texas

A&M was the first campus in Texas to adopt affirmative action as a show of “good faith” that was

supposed to signify a commitment to self-responsibility for de-segregation. As a result, Texas was

allowed to negotiate its own de-segregation plan.

If, 22 years later, the state

higher education system is still not de-segregated, then what does the unilateral revocation of

affirmative action signify?

The suspension of numerical goals cannot signify that

Texas A&M needs to abolish affirmative action in order to free the admissions process to consider each

applicant “for who they are rather than what they are,” because if it were necessary to abolish

affirmative action in order to achieve “individual consideration,” then affirmative action would not

have survived its fierce and persistent cons :So what is Texas A&M saying about any of its students

who have been admitted under affirmative action? That they were never invited as individuals, but only

as “whats”?

In short, the decision by Texas A&M violates its own “good faith” sign

of self-responsibility, ignores constitutional law, and demeans the very process of affirmative action

as a responsible civil rights policy wherever de-segregation persists.

With miraculous

pitching, the abolition of numerical goals was spun as a “diversity initiative.” But how can this

be?

If what Texas A&M did last year is not illegal, it should be. It presents an

intolerable civil rights environment when state agencies (in Texas or any other state), while operating

under a de-segregation plan, can allow site administrators to suspend their commitments to numerical

goals.

True, no one expects excellence in civil rights from Texas A&M. But these low

expectations of the College Station campus in Texas may fool us into agreeing to something more than

letting A&M be A&M. Without numerical goals, how are the civil rights of de-segregation to be

pursued?

If desegregation requires no numerical goals, then what does?

Greg Moses
Site Editor
gmosesx@prodigy.net

Below

are the latest clips and comments. See the “Stories Archive”; “Sections”; “Topics”; “Web

Links”; and “Forums” for more news, background, and opinion. Please add your comments to articles.

And please register in order to add your own

contributions.

[Quote: Wiley College Professor Oliver C.] Cox did not dismiss racism among working-

class whites. He argued that “the observed overt competitive antagonism is produced and carefully

maintained by the exploiters of both the poor whites and the Negroes.” He recognized that elite whites

defined the matrix within which non-elite whites crafted their political agency, and he emphasized the

ruling-class foundations of racism as part of his critique of the liberal scholars of race relations

who theorized race relations without regard to capitalist political economy and class dynamics.[end

quote, Adolph Reed’s Introduction to the Monthly Review edition of “Race”–part three of Cox’s

masterwork, “Caste, Class, and Race” see “Web Links” or additional quote below.] Cox’s

perspective goes right to the heart of how we should try to understand race by encouraging us to move

beyond categories for defining and sorting supposedly discrete human populations, beyond concepts of

racial hierarchies, and beyond racist ideologies—all components of a singular, indivisible unholy

trinity—and instead recognize that race is the product of social relations within history and political

economy.

Email: “Hola, Greg”
from Professor Marco Portales,
Texas A&M

University
Thu, 29 Jan 2004

Dear Greg,

Glad I have your e-mail

address from your
Texas Civil Rights Review website. Good to
see some outside help. I read your

letter to
the Eagle and the one to the Battalion and
meant to write to you . . . but I

have
been busy finishing the books listed below.
I have been writing on the race issue

for
awhile, as you may have gathered. FYI: When the minority faculty and staff met

with
President Gates on campus on December 18th,
2003 (a meeting that was not reported by any

of
the media), four Latino faculty members
stood up, as well as several other faculty

and
staff TAMU members, to urge him to follow
the Grutter decision, to leave legacy behind,

and
to do several other things that we believe would
improve our chances of recruiting more

minority
students and faculty. But he was already committed
to the position of admitting

applicants only on
“merit” considerations, excluding race anew (as
Hopwood, which has now been

superseded)
required between 1996 and 2003.

Below I am sending you my recent

and
forthcoming publications, two of which
address the issue of why we should embrace
race, in

keeping with the Constitution. As
you can see, I don’t buy the way conservative
groups have

interpreted the 14th Amendment
for their convenience, just as they had it their
way before the

Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Part of the problem is that they always want it
their way, and only

their way, without working to
bring in the perspectives of minorities.
Fortunately, Justice

O’Connor saw the
constitutionality of Bakke. So we are
constitutionally correct; the problem is

that
they have the power and the support of the
general public,

unfortunately….

Best

regards,
Marco

_____________________________

BOOK MANUSCRIPTS

under Contract for Publication

“Quality Education for Latinos: Print and Oral Skills

for All Students, K-College”; this book manuscript, written with my wife, Rita Portales, is designed

to produce more academically-competitive minority students. The 272-page manuscript received an

advanced contract from the University of Texas
Press in the summer of 2003 and will be published

late in 2004 or early 2005

“Latino Sun, Rising: Our Spanish-speaking U.S. World” is a

collection of 44 essays divided into three parts: Youth (8), Parenthood (12), and Public Policy Issues

(24).

The Texas A&M Press will published this 310-page
manuscript in Fall 2004

BOOK

CrowdingOut Latinos: Mexican Americans in the Public

Consciousness Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000; 209 pages

FORTHCOMING

ARTICLE

“A History of Latino Segregation Lawsuits” in The Unfinished Agenda of Brown

v. Board of Education, edited by James Anderson; Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, (March or

April, 2004, 20 pp.

REFEREED PUBLICATIONS

“Can the Supreme Court

Constitutionally Uphold the
Hopwood Opinion? Race, ‘Color-blindness’ and Public Opinion before

Bakke,” Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts & Letters , Volume 26, Number 1, Winter 2003,

26-46. Article traces the history of the concept of “color- blindness” from the Reconstruction Period

following the Civil War to Bakke and Hopwood.

“Examining the Recruitment and

Enrollment of Eligible Hispanic and African American Students at Selective Public Texas

Universities,” New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1999, Volume 16, Readings on Equal Education, an education

series. One of eleven articles in Education of Hispanics in the United States: Politics, Policies and

Outcomes, pp. 201-222.

“Hopwood, Race, Bakke and the Constitution,” Texas Hispanic

Journal of Law and Policy, University of Texas School of Law publication, Volume 4, Number 1, Spring

1998, pp. 29-44.

“Anti-Hopwood: Why Race Ought to be Legally Recognized,” The

Hopwood Effect: Problems, Prospects, and Impacts on Minorities in Higher Education; conference

proceedings, edited by Mitchell Rice, Race and Ethnic Studies Institute, Texas A&M University, Fall

1998; pp. 172-176.

“Affirmative Action: Best Idea, So Far,” Hispanonoticias: The

Hispanic Caucus of the American Association for Higher Education, featured one-page article; June

1995.

“K-12 Education and the Responsibilities of the University,” one-page excerpt

published by HACU, the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities; Seventh Annual Meeting

presentation; Washington, D.C., October 1993.

[Quote:] Statistics for the University of Texas last year showed 75

percent of the freshmen admitted were in the top 10 percent of their high school

class.

Texas A&M hopes not to be in the same boat, said Frank Ashley, associate provost

for enrollment….
Ashley said he believes the top 10 percent rule is a good rule, but it needs

some changes. He said he believes every student should take a college preparatory course, because some

students may not take more rigorous courses in high school. [end quote TheBatt.Com, Texas A&M, “Top

Ten Percent Rule Criticized,” by By Pammy Ramji, Jan. 30,

2004.]