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American Morning

Politics of Race

Aired January 16, 2003 - 09:40   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: The president certainly has a bunch of challenges these days, Iraq clearly at the top of the president's agenda, but there are some other top issues to tackle as well. Of course he's weighed in on subject of affirmative action, saying yesterday that he supports racial diversity in every way the law permits, but he calls the University of Michigan's attempt to boost minority admissions -- quote -- "fundamentally flawed." Today, the Bush administration will file a brief to the Supreme Court challenging the university's admissions program.
Joining us now with his take on the political and legal implications of all of this is Jeff Greenfield.

Good morning.

This president certainly not the first who has to tread these treacherous waters.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST: Race is on the agenda of every president for the last 120 years. You go back to Abe Lincoln trying to figure out whether to free the slaves and the Civil War, President Grant's reluctance to keep federal troops in the South to enforce reconstruction, even Theodore Roosevelt, who invited Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House, and received a torrent of criticism, outraged that he dined with a Negro. You had Harry Truman after WWII desegregated the armed forces in 1948, and then adopted a strong civil rights point that drove the Dixiecrats point. Or Eisenhower putting troops in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957 to integrate the school. Or Kennedy proposing, and then Lyndon Johnson pushing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act.

But this may surprise some people, but it was a Republican, Richard Nixon, who pushed through the toughest affirmative action, called the Philadelphia Plan, that in effect, required quotas of minority employment for anyone doing business with the federal government. It's a long history.

ZAHN: So is this is the first time an administration has gone on record so vehemently against affirmative action?

GREENFIELD: No. Even the Carter administration, that supported bureaucratic diversity, the idea that the government should reflect America, when it came to race-based preference in college admissions in the landmark Baki (ph) case, Carter split the difference. Their argument was race can be a criteria, but not the way California did. The Reagan administration originally oppose opposed idea of taking tax exemptions away from schools that practiced one form or another of race discrimination, like Bob Jones university, that banned interracial dating. Ultimately, they wound up backing laws to end those exceptions. It's not unprecedented.

ZAHN: And let's talk about the backdrop under which this all happening. The president obviously very concerned about the 2004 election. He's got to try to get his numbers up in minority community, much more so than the last election. The timing of this is really interesting, why he would take such a public stance at that point.

GREENFIELD: Today was the deadline to take a stand, because this was a case that's coming before the Supreme Court; he didn't set that agenda. But I think in the backdrop of the Trent Lott controversy, the interesting thing about this, is this exactly is why so many conservatives, one reason, wanted Lott out as Republican leader. He was trying to save his job, Lott went on BET, and he's promised to support affirmative action. Now, the essential conserve argument is, it's a bad idea, not a way to get to color blind society, and by removing Lott, it made it more possible for the president to oppose these preferences.

There is another problem that came up yesterday in "The Wall Street Journal," another kind of affirmative action, the so-called "legacy acceptances." If your mommy or daddy went to school, you get special privileges.

ZAHN: He got some of those points, didn't he, at Yale?

GREENFIELD: Well, he was a legacy, absolutely, and you look at schools like Harvard, Notre Dame, until it was outlawed, the University of California gave -- look at these numbers, overall acceptance rate at Virginia 36, legacy is 52 percent, or rather 14 percent of the enrolled students are legacies, and you see that at Harvard, the legacy acceptance rate is four times that of people whose parents didn't go. Now, who does that benefit? It benefits overwhelmingly white affluent people, because their mommies and daddies went to school. If race is not a factor, should legacies be? Isn't that another kind of affirmative action? So it gets tricky, and Bush was very careful not to say he doesn't want affirmative action.

ZAHN: No, he kept on using the word quota.

GREENFIELD: Because, like so many things in America, people like -- they split the difference. They want to see minorities given a shot, but word quota implies unearned admission, you know, a kind of rigid system. When he was governor, he said top 10 percent of any high school graduating class gets into the University of Texas, even low income and bad school neighborhoods, so there -- it's a very tricky road to maneuver.

ZAHN: We appreciate your dropping by.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired January 16, 2003 - 09:40   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: The president certainly has a bunch of challenges these days, Iraq clearly at the top of the president's agenda, but there are some other top issues to tackle as well. Of course he's weighed in on subject of affirmative action, saying yesterday that he supports racial diversity in every way the law permits, but he calls the University of Michigan's attempt to boost minority admissions -- quote -- "fundamentally flawed." Today, the Bush administration will file a brief to the Supreme Court challenging the university's admissions program.
Joining us now with his take on the political and legal implications of all of this is Jeff Greenfield.

Good morning.

This president certainly not the first who has to tread these treacherous waters.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST: Race is on the agenda of every president for the last 120 years. You go back to Abe Lincoln trying to figure out whether to free the slaves and the Civil War, President Grant's reluctance to keep federal troops in the South to enforce reconstruction, even Theodore Roosevelt, who invited Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House, and received a torrent of criticism, outraged that he dined with a Negro. You had Harry Truman after WWII desegregated the armed forces in 1948, and then adopted a strong civil rights point that drove the Dixiecrats point. Or Eisenhower putting troops in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957 to integrate the school. Or Kennedy proposing, and then Lyndon Johnson pushing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act.

But this may surprise some people, but it was a Republican, Richard Nixon, who pushed through the toughest affirmative action, called the Philadelphia Plan, that in effect, required quotas of minority employment for anyone doing business with the federal government. It's a long history.

ZAHN: So is this is the first time an administration has gone on record so vehemently against affirmative action?

GREENFIELD: No. Even the Carter administration, that supported bureaucratic diversity, the idea that the government should reflect America, when it came to race-based preference in college admissions in the landmark Baki (ph) case, Carter split the difference. Their argument was race can be a criteria, but not the way California did. The Reagan administration originally oppose opposed idea of taking tax exemptions away from schools that practiced one form or another of race discrimination, like Bob Jones university, that banned interracial dating. Ultimately, they wound up backing laws to end those exceptions. It's not unprecedented.

ZAHN: And let's talk about the backdrop under which this all happening. The president obviously very concerned about the 2004 election. He's got to try to get his numbers up in minority community, much more so than the last election. The timing of this is really interesting, why he would take such a public stance at that point.

GREENFIELD: Today was the deadline to take a stand, because this was a case that's coming before the Supreme Court; he didn't set that agenda. But I think in the backdrop of the Trent Lott controversy, the interesting thing about this, is this exactly is why so many conservatives, one reason, wanted Lott out as Republican leader. He was trying to save his job, Lott went on BET, and he's promised to support affirmative action. Now, the essential conserve argument is, it's a bad idea, not a way to get to color blind society, and by removing Lott, it made it more possible for the president to oppose these preferences.

There is another problem that came up yesterday in "The Wall Street Journal," another kind of affirmative action, the so-called "legacy acceptances." If your mommy or daddy went to school, you get special privileges.

ZAHN: He got some of those points, didn't he, at Yale?

GREENFIELD: Well, he was a legacy, absolutely, and you look at schools like Harvard, Notre Dame, until it was outlawed, the University of California gave -- look at these numbers, overall acceptance rate at Virginia 36, legacy is 52 percent, or rather 14 percent of the enrolled students are legacies, and you see that at Harvard, the legacy acceptance rate is four times that of people whose parents didn't go. Now, who does that benefit? It benefits overwhelmingly white affluent people, because their mommies and daddies went to school. If race is not a factor, should legacies be? Isn't that another kind of affirmative action? So it gets tricky, and Bush was very careful not to say he doesn't want affirmative action.

ZAHN: No, he kept on using the word quota.

GREENFIELD: Because, like so many things in America, people like -- they split the difference. They want to see minorities given a shot, but word quota implies unearned admission, you know, a kind of rigid system. When he was governor, he said top 10 percent of any high school graduating class gets into the University of Texas, even low income and bad school neighborhoods, so there -- it's a very tricky road to maneuver.

ZAHN: We appreciate your dropping by.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com