But the student in question was from Africa. South Africa to be exact. He IS an African-American.

According to the Darwinists aren't we all from Africa?

Mr. Judd;

I've advocated that for years. I've repeatedly asked but never found an answer for "what is the legal basis for being black?". I'm really surprised that no company sued about affirmative action has responded by questioning the government's ability to legally establish that the rejected applicants were "black" (or "hispanic" or whatever).

I agree too. The philosophical roots of affirmative action are racist. Since the Supreme Court (tragically) accepted the legitimacy of affirmative action, the logical fallback position is to work to make those racist roots as obvious as possible by insisting that its defenders clarify and abide by their implicit principles.

I don't see why we call can't check off Native American.

Nice, Matt.

Old story. In 1973 I was at a conference at Georgia Tech where they told me about their experience in trying to get top black students to consider engineering as a career. With Ford Foundation money, they invited 50 minority high schools to the campus during the summer.

At the train station they were surprised to end up with 48 black kinds of 2 white kids.

Turned out, one of the whites had put down "Native American" on his application.

The other was from the Alabama Black Belt, which is about 3/4s black and had about 0% whites in the public schools. His principal, who was black, had recommended him because it was for "minorities."

As for determining who is what, in the old days Louisiana had a bureaucrat who did that. In doubtful cases, she made unappealable decisions.

Just so. As long as there is an advantage, one could say, "a property," in being of a certain race, there perforce must be a way of adjudicating who may be entitled to that advantage. In the happy times for this sort of thing there was a discipline of Rassengewissenschaft, which include cranial measurement and armpit-sniffing to determine just who was eligible for university admission or government employment.

The amusing thing is that the seekers of preference are sometime pitted, one against another, when it comes to whacking up the boodle, as when "real" Hispanics argue that Brazilians are excluded from their particular plantation, by reason for Portugese heritage.

Seriously, under the present state of the law, we are going to have to legislate this abomination out of existence. This bane will not be crushed until it is color-blindness is a contition of participation in federal contract or program