NOT SEPARATE, NOT EQUAL (C)1997 Alan M. Schwartz Science does not have skin color; atoms do not care. The social engineering shibboleth of diversity has no more mystical impact than virginity. If you hire based on worth other than operational excellence (e.g., apocryphal ancestral slights) you will inherit the wind. California Proposition 209 bans all discrimination, by generous majority popular vote, because even nurturant idiots have come to recognize there is no such thing as "good" discrimination. God does not cut any slack for surgeon or pilot because it is Black or Spanish-surnamed, female, queer, or crippled in a cute and cuddly way. The text is straightforward, just 37 words, and even the ACLU was struck dumb: SEC. 31. (a) The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting. The nature of physical reality owes no obeisance to political exigency. Mediocrity is a vice of the doomed. The Bakke case (1978 US Supreme Court) dealt with a white man who was refused admission into medical school in favor of a Black minority socially reconstructive mercy hump with significantly lesser scores. Bakke entered an alternative medical school and is an anesthesiologist in Minnesota. The minority student who displaced Bakke in the University of California Medical School became Dr. Bernard Chavis. He made his mark as the obstetrics specialist who performed a liposuction on Yolanda Mukhalian, who thereafter died from the inept therapy of Dr. Chavis. Chavis was brought under medical review, homicide apparently being beyond the toleration of compensatory racial discrimination. Judge Samuel Reys acted on the recommendation of the Medical Board of California, stating that Dr. Chavis had "inability to perform some of the most basic duties required of a physician". The Administrative Law Judge found Chavis guilty of gross negligence and incompetence in the treatment of three patients, including Ms. Mukhalian whom he killed. In the 1978 Bakke decision the Supreme Court approved the system that put Bernard Chavis in medical school: lower academic standards for Black, Brown/Latino/Hispanic/Chicano, and American Indian students to promote racial diversity. The consequence is compensated Officially underprivileged minorities have been failing national medical boards - the uniform bench mark of medical school achievement - far more often than their intellectually qualified peers for 20 years, 51% vs 12% failure rate. Minority students admitted without regard to race rarely fail their boards. The disparity is caused by lower admission standards. Intelligence does exist, it can be measured, it does make a difference. The cost of medical affirmative action isn't theoretical. It is paid in human suffering, sometimes in human lives. Medicine, dentistry, management, engineering, and science - all compromised by admission of racially-qualified imbeciles and corresponding forcible exclusion of intellectually qualified "others" - are weaving shoddy cloth as you read this. Senator Edward Kennedy vigorously defended racial preferences to the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee on 30 April 1996. Senator Kennedy presciently asserted, "Dr. Bernard Chavis is a perfect example. He is the supposedly less-qualified African American student who allegedly 'displaced' Allen Bakke at the University of California/Davis, and triggered the landmark case. Today, Dr. Chavis is a successful ob-gyn in central Los Angeles serving a disadvantaged community and making a difference in the lives of scores of poor families." One presumes a Kennedy woman would not hesitate to avail herself of Dr. Chavis' skills in the manner that homeless and minorities are prevalent in Hyannisport. Less than two weeks later on 11 May 1996 Dr. Chavis performed a liposuction on Mukhalian and she died. Kennedy sure can pick them. Dr. Chavis had his California license to practice revoked by the court and California Medical Board for professional incompetence. It appears to this author that Chavis is indeed a "less-qualified African American student who" "'displaced' Allen Bakke at the University of California/Davis." Project Head Start has averaged more than a $billion each year for the past 25 years rescuing minority and Inner City preschoolers from their impoverished cultural and intellectual surroundings (not to be confused with their rich celebration of ethnic diversity). They are fed, intensively tutored, and personally empowered. According to the Department of Education, a Head Start child is utterly indistinguishable from standard Inner City issue by third grade. That $25 billion could have alternatively purchased 625,000 $10K/year four-year scholarships for qualified engineers, scientists, and mathematicians. It could have snared every severely gifted child in America, all 0.1% of them, and wrought them into entities of awe and majesty. We got Berny Chavis, and Senator Edward Kennedy is proud of it.