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The reaction confirms a long-held political hypothesis of mine, which is that today in America it is the left in America that spurns the principle of a colorblind society and the right that embraces it. That is quite a reversal from 40 years ago. Many of the same groups and political leaders who applauded and worked for the end of racial discrimination through the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s, now trumpets the Court's latest decisions as a stroke for racial justice. One wonders whether Martin Luther King would. It was Dr. King's historic "I have a dream" speech at the civil-rights march in Washington, D.C. that envisioned a day sometime soon in America when children would be "judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Thanks to the Supreme Court's act of supreme unwisdom, King's dream is now legally prohibited from coming true anytime soon. In fact, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor argued in her incomprehensible "middle-ground" decision that racial quotas are likely to be with us for another 20 years or so, and only then, she says hopefully, we can get rid of them. That the Left does not even seem to struggle with the ethical ambiguities of racial preferences is mystifying. I have a hard time explaining to my sixth-grade son, who is an American-history buff, why it was unjust for whites to discriminate against blacks, but why it is now acceptable, even encouraged, for schools and employers to discriminate against whites. I have a hard time explaining how it is that two wrongs can ever make a right. He will have to parse through the logic of the Supreme Court decision in search for that answer. Now the Left in America thunderously protests what they view as racially charged terms like "quotas" and "reverse discrimination." The other day the Washington Post's political reporter David Broder lacerated Justice Antonin Scalia for suggesting that "affirmative action" leads to discrimination against whites. He writes that Scalia's dissenting opinion was tantamount to race baiting and reminded him unfavorably of the famous TV ad run by North Carolina senator Jesse Helms showing a white hand tearing up a job application because the position was given to a black. Does Broder live in a dream world? Why does the Left continue to believe in this fantasy that racial quotas are a victimless crime? This isn't complicated stuff: If a superior qualified Asian student is denied admission to the University of Michigan because she is Asian and the slot was filled by a lesser-qualified student because she is black, the Asian woman is a victim of point-blank discrimination. What other explanation is there? That happens thousands upon thousands of times in America today and the Supreme Court has decreed that it shall continue to occur. And yes, Broder, that does foster deep white resentment. I might add the obvious point — again one that the culturally correct Left refuses to acknowledge — which is that the single racial group in America most victimized by racial preferences is not whites. It is Asians. The Washington Post was particularly disingenuous here by plastering on the front page a picture of an Asian girl throwing her arms around another student in joyous celebration of the Supreme Court decision. This dimwitted woman (and the Post editors) either doesn't know or doesn't care that what the Supreme Court essentially declared was: there shall be less Asians and more blacks admitted in Ann Arbor. Now that the Supreme Court has effectively sanctioned discrimination, is there any way around this racially divisive decision, which, incidentally is only likely to foster deeper white resentment against blacks of the type that Broder decries. One way is for Congress to immediately abolish racial quotas legislatively. But Republicans crave the votes of minorities, so they're as likely to pander these days as the Democrats are. The only other answer is to take race out of the equation altogether. Since we simply as a society can't seem to get beyond race, why not make a person's race invisible? It turns out that Californians will decide on a ballot measure this year, which would facilitate a "colorblind" college-admissions process by prohibiting colleges from asking applicants their race on the application. Race could no longer be a factor in admissions — so that neither whites nor blacks could ever be discriminated against — because the admissions officer wouldn't know what the applicant's race is. Simple, but ingenious. Every state should adopt such a measure. Who do you think is opposed to that? The white-supremacy groups in America who want to keep minorities down? No. The civil-rights groups on the left. It turns out they WANT race to continue to be a factor in admissions. What a shame that the biggest obstacles to realizing the dream of a colorblind society in America today, other than the U.S. Supreme court, of course, are the very civil-rights groups that proclaim to be carrying on Martin Luther King's dream. — Stephen Moore is president of the Club for Growth. |
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ust as astonishing as the Supreme Court's dreadful decision to uphold
racial preferences in college admissions has been the intelligentsia's
reaction to it.
