Race and education.

As an alternative to race-based affirmative action, Texas lawmakers several years ago outlawed the use of race in the admissions policies of the state's public universities and, instead, passed a law guaranteeing admission to the top 10 percent of the graduating class from any public or private high school. After a few years, diversity was restored and states like California and Florida adopted similar approaches. Wealthy parents who feel their children are not being treated fairly, however, are now challenging this 10 percent rule. The argument contends that staying in the top 25 percent at the better high schools is more challenging than staying in the top 10 percent at less rigorous schools (The New York Times, June 13, 2004).

In a March 2004 rally held at UCLA, David Horowitz as featured speaker joined white Republicans making their case for white minority politics, a "new politics of fear ... cropping up across the country as its promoters redefine who is racial victim and who is racial oppressor, neatly inverting--and co-opting--the arguments and terms of the civil rights movement." The UCLA rally promoted a campaign against the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, know as Mecha, a national Chicano student group of the early 1970s. Seeing Mecha's racial solidarity as an ideology of racial supremacy, UCLA'S Republicans raised more than $28,000 to cut off Mecha's funding, just as Stanford University's Republicans had already done. At the same time, Mecha in universities in Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico is facing similar challenges (The Nation, June 28, 2004).