What do you make of today’s oddest story?
A fresh twist on affirmative action:
Georgetown University, one of the most leftist campuses in the country, says it soon will give admission preferences to descendants of slaves.
Why?
To supposedly soothe the politically astute souls of the liberal Jesuit priests and profs who flood the Washington campus.
Sounds like a PR gimmick, show biz. More like politically correct posturing than restructuring of an admissions policy.
In the university president’s announcement, he said nothing about the qualifications of the descendants.
Two critical questions:
• Do the descendants have to be academically qualified, once, but no longer, a given?
• Do they have to prove their ancestry?
Somebody around Georgetown figured out that 178 years ago, in 1838, two Irish priests sold 272 slaves to a Louisiana entrepreneur for $115,000 to boost the Georgetown coffers. Reportedly, none of the profit was channeled to the Clinton Foundation.
To complete this flashy news, it has been suggested that priests and profs born 100 years after the slave sale deliver an apology to the descendants of the 272 slaves.
Again, to what end?
How do you track down legitimate descendants of slaves to form an audience to serve as a target for the mea culpa?
Will the descendants accept the apology?
If not, this whole bulky scenario can be converted into a television series, and stream the profits to families of slave descendants.
