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Commentary Oregon Daily Emerald Thursday, January 20, 2005 NEWS STAFF (541)346-5511 JEN SUDICK EDITOR IN CHIEF STEVEN R. NEUMAN MANAGING EDITOR JARED PABEN AYISHA YAHYA NEWS EDITORS MEGHANN CUNIFF I’ARKER HOWELL SENIOR NEWS REPORTERS MORIAH RAL1NGIT AMANDA BOLSINGF.R ADAM CHERRY KARA HANSEN ANTHONY LUCERO NEWS REPORTERS CLAYTON JONES SPORTS EDITOR JON ROETMAN SENIOR SPORTS REPORTER STEPHEN MILLER BRIAN SMITH SPORTS REPORTERS RYAN NYBURG PULSE EDITOR NATASHA CHIUNGERIAN SENIOR PULSE REPORTER AMYUCHTY RYAN MURPHEY PULSE REPORTERS CAT BALDWIN PULSE CARTOONIST DAVID JAGERNAUTH EDITORIAL EDITOR GABE BRADLEY JENNIFER MCBRIDE AILEE SLATER TRAVIS WILLSE COLUMNISTS ASHLEY GRIFFIN SUPPLEMENT FREELANCE EDITOR DANIELLE HICKEY PHOTO EDITOR LAUREN WIMER SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER TIM BOBOSKY PHOTOGRAPHER NICOLE BARKER ERIK BISHOFF PART-TIME PHOTOGRAPHERS BRET FURTWANGLER GRAPHIC ARTIST KIRA PARK DESIGN EDITOR WENDY KIEFFER AMANDA LEE DUSTIN REESE BRIANNE SHOLLAN DESIGNERS SHADRA BEESLEY JFANNIE EVERS COPY CHIEFS KIMBERLY BLACKF1ELD PAULTHOMPSON SPORTS COPY EDITORS AMANDA EVRARL) AMBER LINDROS NEWS COPY EDITORS LINDSAY BURT PULSE COPY EDITOR ADRIENNE NELSON ONLINE EDITOR SLADE LEESON WEBMASTER BUSINESS (541)346-5511 IUDYRIEDL GENERAL MANAGER KATHY CARBONE BUSINESS MANAGER REBECCA CRITCHETT RECEPTIONIST NATHAN FOSTER AIB1NG GUO ANDREW LEAHY JOHN LONG HOLLY MISTELL HOLLY STEIN DISTRIBUTION ADVERTISING (541)346-3712 MEUSSA GUST ADVERTISING DIRECTOR TYLER MACK SALES MANAGER MATT BETZ HERON CALISCH-DOLEN MEGAN HAMLIN KATE HIRONAKA MAEGAN KASER-LEE MIA LEIDELMEYER EMILY PHILBIN SHANNON ROGERS SALES REPRESENTATIVES KELLEE KAUFTHEIL AD ASSISTANT CLASSIFIED (541)3464343 TR1NA SHANAMAN CLASSIFIED MANAGER KATY GAGNON SABRINA GOWETTE LESLIE STRAIGHT KERI SPANGLER KATIE STRINGER CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING ASSOCIATES PRODUCTION (541) 3464381 MICHELE ROSS PRODUCTION MANAGER TARA Cl DAM PRODUCTION COORDINATOR JEN CRAM LET KRISTEN DICHARRY CAMERON GAUT JONAH SCHROGIN DESIGNERS The Oregon Daily Emerald is pub lished daily Monday throutfi Fri day during the school year by the Oregon Daily Emerald Publishing Co. Inc, at the University of Ore gon, Eugene, Ore. The Emerald operates independently of the University with offices in Suite 300 of the Erb Memorial Union. The Emerald is pnvate property. Unlawful removal or use of papers is prosecutable by law. R/WANGLE* "MAKE SURE YOU TOP IT OFF REAL GOOD... I'VE GOT A LOT OF STOPS PLANNED!" Bret Furtwangler | Graphic artist ■ In my opinion The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks resulted in many casualties: at least 2,917 lives, uncountable economic damages, an immeasurable psycholog ical toll and a lost national sense of (relative) innocence. These losses are so terrible and wrenching that they obfuscated some of the nation’s less visible sufferings, including a swollen intolerance of peo ple of Arab descent. An Oct. 11, 2001, Zogby poll commissioned by the Arab American Institute revealed that 20 percent of Arab Americans had person ally experienced discrimination since the attacks. An ABC News/Washington Post poll reported that 58 percent of those surveyed said that Arabs should undergo special security checks before boarding planes. Trouble found some Arab Americans outside the polls, too: some 1,147 Arabs and Arab Americans were de tained (anonymously) between Sept. 11 and December 2001, but charges were only eventually brought against one of them. Since, discrimination against Arabs — from delays at airports to detainments — has grown into an ugly scar on the worn body of Ameri ca's racial history. These stories bother us for a good reason: To root out a few would-be criminals, the government inconveniences thousands of people and arguably violates their civil, if not human, rights. Worse, these people are picked out for this treatment on account of their race (and maybe gender and, in some cases, nationality, too). Our country is racially diverse but has yet to come to terms with how race affects our daily lives. This sociological immaturity only further tangles discussions of what to do about this apparent conflict be tween individual liberties and collec tive security. Fortunately, the Supreme Court has long since specified a strict criterion for when the government can TRAVIS WILLSE RIVALLESS WIT consider race. Because considering race can so easily slip into violations of the 14th Amendment — which grants equal protection under the law — the government can’t consider race, except when the classification is intended to accomplish a “compelling state inter est” with methods “narrowly tailored” to achieve that interest. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor gave the most interesting (and probably most embattled) recent example of a sufficiently compelling state interest — that of a diverse student body in a state sponsored institution — in her majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger. (Obligatory plug: See my June 26, 2003, column, “Affirmative re-action,” and my June 24, 2004, piece, “Affirmative actions” for more discussion). The corresponding “nar rowly tailored method” in this case is the qualitative consideration of race in deciding who’s accepted at a given school and who isn’t. Whether a diverse student body is a sufficiently compelling state interest to justify unequal treatment of college applicants — it’s probably not — is be yond the scope of this column. But be cause the legality of affirmative action in college admissions is constitutional ly predicated on a fuzzy notion of di versity — rather than, say, remunera tion for past discrimination — what schools mean by diversity is critical. Often this turns out to include, among other considerations, being a member of a racial minority, as is evident in the oft-employed language of the necessity of a “critical mass” of stu dents of various racial identities. In other words, when perfect, detailed in formation isn’t available (always), race is sometimes used as a coarse, and pre sumably partial, substitute for a more subtle and ill-defined quality: the po tential to enhance campus diversity. But using race as an incomplete, and presumably statistically correlated, substitute for a priori unknowable in formation is very much what happens in devoting disproportionate attention to Arab-looking people in the name of staving off terrorism. Imprisonment without charges probably violates even pragmatic moral codes, even if its os tensible goal is preventing attacks on innocents; delaying people according to racial appearance before they board flights with the same goal in mind is a subtler ethical issue. Regardless, the latter at least passes constitutional muster: If something as ill-defined and objectively immeasurable as campus diversity makes for a compelling state interest, then certainly so do securing the blessings of liberty and protecting the life and limb of its citizens. Without more discussion of the un derlying ethics, these facts say little about the legitimacy of the role of race in either context. However, sup porters of considering race in the ad missions process (at least, those who support it in the legal framework mandated by the Supreme Court) thus have little room to argue against the legitimacy of the more benign and narrowly tailored considerations of race in the war on terrorism. Like wise, those who categorically oppose discrimination at the airport on ac count of human or civil right sensibilities have little room to sup port affirmative action as presently legally constructed in the collegiate world. traviswillse@dailyemerald. com ■ Editorial Bush trying to avoid being held accountable After President Bush won re-election in November, he explained that with his win came “political capital” and he made it clear that he intended on spending it. The statement was brazen to say the least, con sidering Bush had the lowest job approval rating of any re-elected president in recent memory. But did we really expect something different from our cowboy president? Since then, Bush has extrapolated fur ther on his theory of political capital: “We had an accountability moment, and that’s called the 2004 election. The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates and chose me, for which I'm grateful.” Read ing between the lines, by “accountability moment” the president means the election results clear his administration of account ability for the mess it has created in Iraq. He feels like a man absolved of all his sins by the American people, and now, on the day of his inauguration, he can move for ward with a clear mandate to execute the war in Iraq his way. But maybe not. A Washington Post/ABC News poll this week shows that 55 percent of Americans feel the war was not worth fighting. Furthermore, 58 percent of those polled objected to how Bush handled the war in Iraq and 57 percent did not believe Iraqi elections would lead to a stable government. Other polls have produced similar re sults. A USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll sug gests that 52 percent of Americans believe it was a mistake sending troops to Iraq in the first place. Some mandate. Bush’s talk of “political capital” and his “accountability moment” illustrates his main failing as a president: his inability to recognize a losing strategy and make the necessary adjustments at halftime. Rather than viewing the election as a mandate, he should see it as an opportunity to change course and fix the mistakes he has made. That would truly be an ac countability moment. ■ Out loud “I do agree that the tsunami was a won derful opportunity to show not just the U.S. government, but the heart of the American people, and I think it has paid great dividends for us.” — Condoleezza Rice, at her confirmation hearing, looking at the bright side of the catastrophe that claimed some 168,000 lives. “We didn’t have the right skills, the right capacity, to deal with a reconstruc tion effort of this kind. ” — Condoleezza Rice, again at her confirmation hearing, looking at the dark side of the catastrophe in Iraq, finally. “You, those who wear our uniform, have given much, and much more will be asked of you in the months and years ahead.” — President Bush, kicking our military when they are down, at a ball cel ebrating his re-election. He has obviously been taking lessons on morale building from Donald Rumsfeld.
