Man, it doesn’t take much to get the New York tabloids to preach from the mountain.

Take for instance this story yesterday.

June 25, 2007 — A Brooklyn mother and father got the shock of their lives when school officials informed them their brilliant 11-year-old girl was denied admission to an elite public school - solely because she’s of Indian descent.

“I feel bad because I would have gotten in if I was white,” Nikita Rau lamented over her failed bid to attend the Mark Twain School, IS 239, in Coney Island, a magnet school for gifted students.

It turns out Mark Twain - unlike all but one other city public school - admits students according to racial quotas established in 1974 by a federal judge who ordered the school’s desegregation.

Under those quotas - which originally were intended to boost minority enrollment - 60 percent of Mark Twain’s student body is set aside for white students, while 40 percent is set aside for minorities.

Oh well. Case closed, right? I mean, the girl certainly isn’t white, and we’re certainly following right along the lines of quotas that were established 33 years ago, so this is certainly not racism. After all, when quotas are called affirmative action and they get black students into the University of Michigan ahead of people with better grades, that’s called increasing diversity!

When Nikita recently applied to Mark Twain, she took an admission test geared toward music students and scored a 79.

In May, the Education Department sent her parents a letter that said Nikita was not accepted - even though white students who scored lower on the same test were admitted.

Officials told the Raus that because Nikita is classified as a minority, she would need to score at least 84.4 to be accepted, while white students needed to score 77 or more.

Her mom, Dr. Kanchan Rau, said that when she discussed the disparate treatment with Schools Regional Enrollment Director Paul Helfman, “he said, ‘I agree with you: It’s not right; it’s not fair - but there’s nothing I can do.’ “

Heh… Powerless to overtake the crushing and demoralizing feeling you get when you get dumped because of a quota. I love it.

Mind you, I’m not in favor of quotas that work in any direction. For years I’ve written here against affirmative action and quotas because I believe that every system that involves competing for anything be it school admissions, job positions, or loans to start a business, should be done on the basis of merit not skin color. For years and years, New York has done things like this, and for years and years, white kids have been rejected from stuck-up “I’m better than you” schools like Mark Twain so some poor black or hispanic kid can get in. After all, if you aren’t white, you’re certainly more entitled to a good education.

Now, after 33 years, people are realizing how ridiculous the system is. Not because anything’s changed, mind you, but because the system that was designed to get Nikita Rau into the school has now kept her out of it.

The true shame here is that the system has always been unbalanced and unfair. What rubs me the wrong way is that it took a minority student being on the wrong side of that system for it to be deemed unfair.

Nothing has changed, people, save for the prism you see the story through.

With a little luck there will be a lawsuit, and the system will be abolished. Then the best, brightest, and most deserving students in the city will get into “I’m better than you” schools like Mark Twain based on their intelligence, their drive, and their skills, rather than their skin color.

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