Gerald Ford: Not Who You Thought He Was

In reading Jeffrey Toobin's over-rated book on the Supreme Court, "The Nine" (which essentially argues that liberal judges are in the real tradition of the Founders), I was suprised to discover that Gerald Ford had come out as a vocal defender of Michigan Unviersity's system of massive racial preferences during the bro-ha-ha over Grutter v. Bollinger, the Michigan Unviersity Affirmtive Action case. But even more eyebrow raising was this quote from a New York Times Op-Ed former President Ford penned entitled, "Inclusive America: Under Attack",

"A pair of lawsuites would prohibit Michigan and other unviersitys from even considering race as one of many other factors weighed by admision counslers such a move would condemn future college students to suffer the cultural and social impoverishment that inflicted my generation"

Perhaps I was wrong to affix this kind of liberalism to only those under 65 years of age. Ford is dead ofcourse. I thought his generation, that of the WW2, was proud of themselves and there nation and there culture. I didn't know they scorned the wholesome, united social and cultural atomsphere of the 1940's as "cultural and social impoverishment" inflicting them? If only Gerald Ford had turned on a TV in the last 20 years of his life and seen what a rap video is he probably wouldn't have written such nonsence. So according to Ford, we should scorn and throw away the culture of the American army on D-Day in favor of the American culture of 2009 when the chart topping refrain on the radios of the nation is "Move Bitch, Get Out the Way!"? Hmm.
This is a phenmonon in Modern America. Those who have spent little to no time in a black ghetto, never seen a hip hop video, never gone to school with African Americans in signfigant numbers, and who have, overall, the least knowledge of black or latino ghetto culture are consitantly the very ones speaking about how they know that increased spread of latino & black ghetto culture is not just good but "essential" at any Unviersity and know that Michigan Univiersity student will sufferer tremendously in the absence of black and latino culture on their campus. These people who have spent the least time in the black or latino communitys and who have the least knowledge of either, have the highest opinion of both and claim for a fact that the academic underachievment, chronically high rates of violence, crime, illegitimacy and poverty among both latinos and blacks in America is the result of white racism & white oppression.
However, those white people who actually know black hip hop culture, who actually know blacks and latinos, go to school with them, work with them, live in the same neigborhoods, have a radically different more modest view of blacks and how much they "deserve" the racial preferences that Ford supports. Those whites that have the most exsperience with and knoweldge of black Americans have a much less grandiously positive view of the African American community compared to those whites like Gerald Ford who have virtually zero familiarity with the black community that Ford claims he was deprived of as a young man at Michigan Unviersity. Those whites who actually know and live with or around black culture do not complaim like Gerald Ford about the lack of it (especially at the places they send there children). They don't rejoice it the fact that there kids who go to the diverse schools Ford loves, schools that are 60 or 80 or 90 percent African American and latino. No, they want, more than anything, to send there kids to the least "diverse" schools possible, the whitest, most asian schools. They don't think there kids are suffering from any lack of black aka hip hop culture (which is the exact kind of "diversity" Ford is writing about whether he knows it or not). To the contrary, the parents of white children who have real knowledge of black (and latino hip hop) culture, who live in mostly minority neigborhoods, think there children are suffering from the presence of viscerally anti-academic black/hip hop culture, which Ford thinks Unviersitys must have as much as possible of.