Roger Clegg has written the speech I would have written for President Bush to deliver explaining why his administration is asking the Supreme Court to outlaw racial discrimination in college admissions.
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It’s a very good speech, save for one brief portion:
Well, Xrlq, I agree with you here … and then I don’t. I certainly do agree that Jim Crow discrimination is worse than affirmative action/racial preferences discrimination. Although the latter may not be “benign,” as it was originally described, discrimination whose intent is to promote integration is definitely not the same as discrimination intended to promote segregation.
But having said that, I still believe that “discrimination is discrimination,” and that there is no such thing as “reverse discrimination.” Although we might evaluate the intent of the different discriminations quite differently, on one very important level they are the same: they both intend to, and do, use race as a basis of distributing burdens or benefits. Thus, in my view the “without regard” principle bars racial discrimination, whatever its purpose, even examples we regard as “benign.”
Xrig’s observations are to be commended as a display of mental gymnastics. The results of racial spoils systems are evident in Sri Lanka, India, and the former Yugoslavia (I have lived in each of them). The argument for affirmative action reminds me of a short story set in a future that had specific goals for results. In it over weight dancers were allowed an equal playing field by forcing talented dancers to wear 50 pound bags of cement chained to their legs. Isn’t the argument over this issue really about Liberals wanting to insure equal outcomes regardless of effort, talent, or any other consideration?