Harriet Miers supports Affirmative Action

So says this article from the Washington Post:

As president of the State Bar of Texas, Harriet Miers wrote that "our legal community must reflect our population as a whole," and under her leadership the organization embraced racial and gender set-asides and set numerical targets to achieve that goal.The S upreme Court nominee's words and actions from the early 1990s, when she held key leadership positions as president-elect and president of the state bar, provide the first window into her personal views on affirmative action, an area in which the Supreme Court is closely divided and where Miers could tip the court's balance.....To some conservatives, the types of policies pursued by the Texas bar association amount to reverse discrimination. ...

Miers, the first female president of the Texas bar, vowed in her first interview with the Texas Law Journal as president to "be inclusive of women and minorities." During her tenure, she championed the cause of increasing the number of female and minority lawyers in the bar's own leadership ranks and in law firms across the state, writing that "we are strongest capitalizing on the benefits of our diversity. "Miers was a believer in mentoring programs, but during her tenure she and the board of directors went further, passing a resolution urging Texas law firms to set a goal of hiring one qualified minority lawyer for every 10 new associates. The directors also reiterated support for a policy of setting aside a specific number of seats on the board for women and minorities..."Those are quotas," said Roger Clegg, the general counsel for the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative group opposed to affirmative action. The fact that Miers "did not create the quota systems but only perpetuated and endorsed it doesn't make it less disturbing," he said...

This should help Miers get more support from Democratic senators during her upcoming confirmation proceedings, but it'll obviously get right-wing conservatives already blasting the Miers pick even more riled at her.

What gets me most upset when I read about anyone who opposes affirmative action is that they always seem to dismiss 2 things in their reasonings: 1) how it benefits white women more than anyone else and 2) how it hasn't done anything to usurp advantages created by a white privilged society. Plus, critics continue to act like Blacks have made these huge gains via affrimative action, when that is so far from the truth as poverty, a lack of education, family dysfunction and crime continue to plague the Black community.

Affirmative action isn't "reverse discrimination", it promotes diversity and it makes sure that the same rules apply to everyone regardless of race or gender. The fact that white men still hold 95% of the managerial positions in this country (despite being only 43% of the population), further shows that AA is needed.

I'll be in full support of affirmative action as long as racism exists. The fact that she supports it as well makes me further know that I made the right choice in supporting Harriet Miers in the first place.

UPDATE: for purposes of N.Z. Bear's tracking:

I support the Miers nomination.