It's in the P-I

From the pages of today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

The front-page headline reads: Allied in Defense of War[pdf] (referring to Tony Blair's visit to Washington). A more accurate reading of Blair's speech to Congress would be: "Allied in Defense of Civilization"

James Huntley writes on the op-ed page that:

Experience says Japan will resist U.S.-imposed democracy

Can the United States impose democracy on an unreceptive people? My experience helping build democracy in postwar Germany from 1952 to 1955 suggests not. We did our job in Germany; we are poised to fail in Japan

oops, my mistake. He actually wrote that "we are poised to fail in Iraq", but all of his reasons why democracy won't work in Iraq would also have applied to Japan in 1945.

An unsigned editorial castigates local Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn for opposing a wasteful boondoggle, arguing that it's her job to support wasteful boondoggles as long as the money is spent in Washington State.

Finally, the P-I leaves unchallenged a conspiracy between University of Washington administrators and Washington State legislators to circumvent the will of the voters and effectively reduce the number of Asian students admitted to the University. The University and the legislators want to reintroduce racial preferences in admissions, overturning the successful 1998 ballot initiative I-200 which explicitly bans such a practice. The University reports that last year's freshman class had the following composition (excluding the 3% of the class from overseas):
White (non-Hispanic): 56.5%
Asian: 27.9%
Hispanic: 3.8%
African American: 2.9%
American Indian: 1.3%
Hawaiin/Pacific Islander: 0.5%
Not reporting: 7.1%

The P-I chose to leave out the important context of the State's actual ethnic composition:
White: 78.9%
Asian: 5.4%
Hispanic (of any race): 7.5%
African American: 3.1%
American Indian: 1.4%
Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0.4%
Not reporting/Other: 3.3%
(source: 2000 US Census)
In other words, all we can say about the University of Washington freshman class is that Whites are the most dramatically underrepresented group on campus, and Asians are the most dramatically overrepresented. The only way to bring "racial balance" to the University is to put a de facto cap on the number of Asians who are allowed in. The University, the legislature and the P-I all seem to think this is a good idea, others may disagree.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at July 18, 2003 05:20 PM