The Anti-Miers Propaganda

Here is the source of Miers quote being bandied about by her adversaries. The Washington Post piece quotes this phrase, "our legal community must reflect our population as a whole," but the conclusions drawn from it are false and misleading. She mentions that there are not enough minorities graduating from law schools, but attributes that to the fact that there aren't enough minorities staying in school and pursuing professional education, and recommends the bar's mentoring program to reach out to at-risk minority kids in public schools. There's no mention of set asides, quotas or lowering the bar for minorities.

The Washington Post story asserts, falsely in my opinion, "To some conservatives, the types of policies pursued by the Texas bar association amount to reverse discrimination." They do not. There is no suggestion that standards should be lowered or discrimination practiced, only that aspirations should be encouraged.

What Miers advocated is what I have always considered true and acceptable affirmative action, which helps those who have been disadvantaged to achieve at the same level that other groups do. That's not the same as discrimination in favor of lesser qualified minorities over better qualified whites. It's what I've always thought conservatives should be advocating as opposed to quotas and set asides, but it's being misrepresented, and that suggests to me that those using it to discredit Miers either haven't read the piece or really are racists and don't believe that minority youth should be helped to really achieve.

The prejudice against Miers has bothered me from day one of this, and this accusation bothers me even more, because it's twisting her words to make her appear to be something she isn't. It also bothers me that conservatives who are always arguing that the MSM can't be trusted are taking this report by the WaPo at face value without checking it. The reporters quote a few conservatives and law professors who claim that the bar was engaged in reverse discrimination, but there's a crucial difference between saying "try to give more qualified minorities a chance and to help minority kids to achieve what others do; and saying lower the bar, give them opportunities without having to earn them.

Maybe that's not the kind of subtle distinction that George Will and others want her to be able to make, but it seems pretty good to me.