By Jim Brown
June 25, 2003

(AgapePress) - A conservative attorney says he's troubled by the Supreme Court's decision to give minority applicants a special edge when applying for admissions to universities.

Monday, the high court upheld a controversial affirmative action program at the University of Michigan Law School, but struck down a system awarding bonus points to undergraduate students on the basis of their race. Gary Kreep, executive director of the U.S. Justice Foundation, says by ruling that race can be a factor in admissions, the high court is buying more litigation.

"[Based on] my experience in litigation and dealings with public school systems, school districts [K-12] and colleges will look for increasing ways to 'eat around the edges' because of the ideological bias [and] the 'elitist racism' that many of these officials have," Kreep says.

Kreep says the ruling opens the door for liberal groups to find ways to have a quota system in public education without calling it a quota system.

"African-American and Hispanic children should not be discriminated against," he says, "but to take the position ... that they're inherently stupid and can't compete, so therefore they need special tools and special privileges, is inherently racist."

According to Kreep, that position is consistent with the philosophy of liberal Democrats such as Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy. "They believe that blacks and browns cannot compete with non-blacks and non-browns without special privileges," he says. "They think that they're stupid -- and that's not the case."

Kreep says supporters of affirmative action either want to use race as an issue for their own political gain -- or because they are racist. While Kreep laments the law school ruling, he is happy that the high court eliminated what he calls the "de facto quota system" at Michigan's undergraduate school.

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