Liberal racism is permissible for at least another 25 years,
decreed the Supreme Court on Monday. To justify this racism, the
court invoked the same sophistry racist courts of the past favored
— the mischief-concealing “compelling state interest.”
Monday’s decision tells nonminorities — accept discrimination
for the sake of “diversity” — just as previous racist courts told
minorities to accept injustice because of “order” and other
faked-up “compelling state interests.”
Social engineering, according to the Supreme Court, entitles
liberals to blatant injustice. Under this regime of liberal
benevolence, Americans only enjoy rights to the extent that they
conform to the liberal dream-pattern of the moment. The court’s
25-year guesstimate nicely illustrates the utterly unprincipled and
willful character of modern liberalism.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, casting about for a rationale to
justify bald racial discrimination in the academic world, had to
invent a new “mission” for universities. A “diverse student body”
is at the “heart” of a school’s mission, she said. Really? This is
an interesting conclusion from a woman who supports women’s
colleges and all-black colleges. Somehow they manage to pursue an
educational mission without diversity. Should Howard University and
Grambling University close up shop? Or how about schools in states
without racial diversity? If O’Connor’s view is correct, students
at those schools are out of luck. Apparently they just can’t learn
the arts and sciences unless they are seated near members of other
races.
“Before I let you work on my heart, I would like to know if you
graduated from a racially diverse class,” Americans henceforth
should ask their surgeons. Or they should say to their lawyers: “I
will only let you represent me if you learned torts in the company
of blacks and Hispanics.” And how can Americans continue to trust
Asian scientists when so many of them learned Physics next to
fellow Asians?
What passes for thinking on America’s highest court is pretty
frightening. The feeblest of fallacies takes precedence over
obvious constitutional principles. Americans must swallow several
lies in O’Connor’s ruling: a color-blind society is achieved
through color-conscious policies; justice requires its suspension
from time to time; society’s “legitimacy” depends on illegitimate
standards; racial harmony results from racially polarizing
policies.
O’Connor’s ruling can only thwart its own goals. She says
society must “cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the
eyes of the citizenry.” How could racial favoritism possibly
advance this? It simply guarantees that the citizenry will view the
advancement of politically-favored minorities with suspicion and
resentment. She says diversity engineering will help universities
attain their mission. It guarantees that universities will stray
from it. Faced with forced diversity, schools can either fail out
the underperfoming students they took through minority quotas or
abandon their academic standards. They usually choose the latter
and thereby lose sight of their mission.
Notice that the elite schools cheering O’Connor’s ruling don’t
even construe their mission as mainly academic. Where they once
competed academically, now they compete politically: Who can create
the “most diverse” school? This quote from Michael Reese, a
University of California spokesman, after Monday’s ruling is
telling: “Our competitors, which are the Stanfords, the Harvards
and the Yales, have at their disposal a set of tools for creating
diverse classes of students that aren’t available to the University
of California.” Reese told
the Los Angeles Times that the UC system wants
California’s ban on racial preferences ended so as to “give us the
kind of clarity we need.”
Instead of letting unqualified students in through the back door
— which UC has done through various standards-busting strategies
since Proposition 209 passed — Reese would like the front door
opened again, lest UC lose underperforming minorities to the
Harvards. Evidently the race to the academic bottom can be quite
fierce.
Reese may get his wish now that O’Connor has torn the door off
the hinge. We are assured that the door is easily replaceable in 25
years. Until then a little injustice is okay. No new resentments,
no fresh cycles of grievances will exist, of course. Americans will
suddenly wake up and feel “legitimate.”
