President Ford On Affirmative Action & Open Thread
By Taters on February 6, 2008 at 2:20 AM in Democrats, Open Thread, Republicans
I’m a Democrat and I believe in and support affirmative action. However, I believe I’ve never read a better stated case for affirmative action than by President Gerald Ford, who was also coming to the defense of his beloved University of Michigan - during what he felt was an assault on the diversity of this institution of learning. His eloquent words are that of an American that strongly believed that we all deserve a fair shake. He would not be considered a conservative by today’s standards - but he stood up for what he believed in.
Inclusive America, Under Attack
By Gerald R. Ford
The New York Times Op-Ed, Sunday, August 8, 1999
Of all the triumphs that have marked this as America’s century — breathtaking advances in science and technology, the democratization of wealth and dispersal of political power in ways hardly imaginable in 1899 — none is more inspiring, if incomplete, than our pursuit of racial justice. The milestones include Theodore Roosevelt’s inviting Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House, Harry Truman’s desegregating the armed forces, Dwight Eisenhower’s using Federal troops to integrate Little Rock’s Central High School and Lyndon Johnson’s electrifying the nation by standing before Congress in 1965 and declaring, “We shall overcome.”
I came by my support of that year’s Voting Rights Act naturally. Thirty years before Selma, I was a University of Michigan senior, preparing with my Wolverine teammates for a football game against visiting Georgia Tech. Among the best players on that year’s Michigan squad was Willis Ward, a close friend of mine whom the Southern school reputedly wanted dropped from our roster because he was black. My classmates were just as adamant that he should take the field. In the end, Willis decided on his own not to play.
His sacrifice led me to question how educational administrators could capitulate to raw prejudice. A university, after all, is both a preserver of tradition and a hotbed of innovation. So long as books are kept open we tell ourselves, minds can never be closed.
But doors, too, must be kept open. Tolerance, breadth of mind and appreciation for the world beyond our neighborhoods: these can be learned on the football field and in the science lab as well as in the lecture hall. But only if students are exposed to America in all her variety.
Gerald Ford put together of group of retired military officers such as Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, Gen. Hugh Shelton, Adm. William J. Crowe Jr. and numerous others to present the view of why affirmative action was necessary in the armed services.
Jeffery Toobin said:
In all, considering the statements at the oral argument and Justice O’Connor’s opinion, the submission from the retired officers, as set in motion by Mr. Ford, may have been the most influential amicus brief in the history of the Supreme Court.
Thoughts?
, the basis for the Best Motion Picture Nominee (Golden Globes) starring Brad Pitt.
, the novel by John Le Carre, a new motion picture starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth.
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