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 ast
week, my old law firm won a spectacular court victory against my
law school, prohibiting it from engaging in racial
discrimination
in admissions. Thank heaven I've graduated. I don't think I could
take the piety and hysteria now engulfing the University of Michigan.
Explaining
the importance of discriminating against citizens on the basis of
their race, Michigan President Lee Bollinger told The New Yorker:
"I happen to be rereading 'Richard II.' ... There's an exchange
between Gaunt and Bolingbroke, father and son, just as the son is
being banished. The advice the father gives the son — how utterly,
utterly poignant and convincing it is. The father says, 'Just think
of it as a vacation.'"
And that, boys
and girls, is why Jennifer Gratz and Barbara Grutter had to be rejected
from the University of Michigan.
This is the
academic equivalent of "It depends on what the meaning of 'is'
is."
Q: Did
you have sexual relations with that woman?
A: As Polonius says, "I will go seek the king."
Of course,
Bollinger's "think of it as a vacation" argument is no
less compelling than the many — and I mean many — other
arguments for racial discrimination. It's a constantly changing
tableau of justifications for the unjustifiable. Just when you finally
defeat one liberal sophistry for "affirmative action,"
it drops it into the Orwellian memory hole and a new sophistry appears
in its place. We have always been at war with Eastasia.
About a decade
ago the argument for race discrimination was the role-model theory:
Blacks could only learn from other blacks. But that was no standard
at all — presumably everybody could use a role model. Even
the Supreme Court refused to endorse a "role model" exception
to the 14th Amendment.
That was displaced
with an argument that was almost its precise opposite: Blacks can
only learn if they are sitting next to whites. This was abandoned
when it turned out to be too embarrassing an argument for anyone
but federal judges to make.
Then the argument
was that discriminating against whites would put more doctors, lawyers
and bankers in black neighborhoods. But admission to college isn't
a commission with the Peace Corps, and black professionals wanted
to make money as much as the next guy.
Not only that,
but the "giving back to the community" theory suffered
a serious setback when it turned out the affirmative-action doctor
celebrated for taking Allen Bakke's place at medical school was
"giving back to the community" by maiming and killing
his black patients.
At one time,
discrimination against whites was said to be a remedy for 400 years
of slavery. Twenty years later, it was evident that this supposed
"remedy" was incapable of ever producing a cure.
Then it had
nothing to do with 400 years of slavery at all. Reverse discrimination
— or "discrimination" — was merely an offset
for bad schools in poor communities. (All white people are assumed
to have attended fancy schools in affluent neighborhoods.) This
was an obvious lie since the black beneficiaries of affirmative
action were often the children of doctors and lawyers, while poor
whites from Appalachia were still being excluded.
Defense of
the Indefensible, Argument No. 17: Racial discrimination against
whites is intended to compensate blacks for general societal discrimination.
That argument disappeared under the specter of a flood of Asians
who presumably face discrimination, too.
A perennial
favorite was: "Suppose you have two equally qualified applicants
..." That bubble burst when it was revealed that universities
were admitting blacks with scores about three standard deviations
below the whites who were rejected.
Then it was
claimed that racial preferences were no different from preferences
for the children of alumni. In undergraduate admissions at Michigan
(we also sued them), four points are awarded for being the child
of an alumnus, three points for a good essay, and a hefty 12 points
for a perfect SAT score.
Being born
black is worth 20 points.
Thus, an applicant
with perfect SATs, an excellent essay and alumni parents gets fewer
points for all that than simply for being black. So the Washington
Post was not being precisely accurate when it described Michigan's
affirmative action program as merely "giving an edge"
to minorities — "as it does to the children of alumni."
Finally —
the rationalization that won't go away--racial discrimination against
whites is necessary to promote "diversity." Stipulating
to the incredibly racist assumption that skin color predetermines
opinions, 20 years of affirmative action has produced college campuses
with more uniformity of opinion than a Stalinist re-education camp.
After a student
protester at Michigan denounced the recent prohibition on race discrimination
at the law school ("Diversity is a good thing for everybody"!),
someone offered a counterargument. The protester cut him off, saying
"I hate devils." That's "diversity" in action.
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