Even if the percentage of Hispanics receiving preferences is half that for blacks, it is still a violation of principle and further, as the Hispanic proportion of the population grows, so will the number entitled to preferences in colleges and professional schools.
I understand that Chavez had had to deal with racism, but there are critics of her ideas who are not racists. The charge or imputation of racism has been a rhetorical device that for far too long has been used to silence debate on this difficult issue.
Regarding Grutter and admissions to the University of Michigan Law School, it is true that the admitted Hispanics were held to a higher standard than blacks, but they were also held to a lower standard than whites and Asians. Each underperforming minority group was held to whatever standard necessary to admit a percentage of that minority roughly proportional to its percentage of the applicant pool. But I was wrong in saying that Hispanics and blacks each received five percent of the admissions. From 1995 to 2000, blacks were from 9.4 percent to 7.3 percent of the admissions, while Hispanics were from 5.0 percent to 4.2 percent in those same years, again roughly proportional to each group’s share of the applicant pool.