Preferences for (Almost) All

CONSERVATIVES are used to losing, but at least they refrain from celebrating their defeats—except, perhaps, those conservatives who oppose race and gender preferences. They tell us that preferences are being uprooted throughout America and being replaced, in the words of Clint Bolick of the Institute for Justice, by “a positive-sum affirmative action that expands opportunities rather than the zero-sum race-based type that merely redistributes them.” Nice. But how true is it?

If we were indeed winning this battle, we could cite solid reasons for it. Preferences are legal privileges and thus incompatible with the founding American idea that all citizens should be equal before the law. Polls have consistently shown Americans to be opposed to preferences by about 2 to 1. Court decisions, which imposed preferences in the first place, have regularly found them constitutionally objectionable in recent years. And referenda in California and Washington State have overturned them at the state level.

About the Author

John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

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CONSERVATIVES are used to losing, but at least they refrain from celebrating their defeats—except, perhaps, those conservatives who oppose race and gender preferences. They tell us that preferences are being uprooted throughout America and being replaced, in the words of Clint Bolick of the Institute for Justice, by “a positive-sum affirmative action that expands opportunities rather than the zero-sum race-based type that merely redistributes them.” Nice. But how true is it?

If we were indeed winning this battle, we could cite solid reasons for it. Preferences are legal privileges and thus incompatible with the founding American idea that all citizens should be equal before the law. Polls have consistently shown Americans to be opposed to preferences by about 2 to 1. Court decisions, which imposed preferences in the first place, have regularly found them constitutionally objectionable in recent years. And referenda in California and Washington State have overturned them at the state level.