One of the pleasures (?) of travel — we’ve just brought Jessie back to Philadelphia to begin her second semester (!) — is the “opportunity” to read in the flesh, if that’s what it is, papers I don’t normally see. Reading the Philadelphia Inquirer for a few days, I’m glad I don’t.
One of its columnists, Mark Bowden, had an article in its “Sunday Review” section that was so offensive I put off dealing with it till today. I don’t think it requires much of a discussion; I’ll just quote some excerpts and, if I can force myself to, comment.
How about I start with the very first sentence, after which it only gets worse:
The most confusing thing about arguments over affirmative action is the tendency of opponents to expropriate the language of civil rights….
Last week, conservative activist and columnist Linda Chavez said: “We would like to see the door shut on taking race into account.” She heads an organization opposed to racial preferences that calls itself Center for Equal Opportunity.
So, critics of racial discrimination such as Linda Chavez, who has the temerity to call her organization the Center for Equal Opportunity, are stealing language that doesn’t belong to them when they presume to talk about equality. These days only people who believe in treating races differently deserve to be called civil rights supporter.
Chavez acknowledges that we still don’t have a color-blind society, 140 years on, but opposes any program that awards preferences on the basis of skin color or ethnicity.
So how is a society supposed to undo centuries of racial discrimination without paying attention to race?
Imagine that! Someone who recognizes racial discrimination still exists yet opposes … racial discrimination. I bet she was one of those weirdos back during the Vietnam war who opposed destroying villages in order to save them.
Bush is trying to have it both ways. He opposes racial discrimination but also opposes most efforts to undo it.
What efforts would those be? Could it be the ones that employ racial discrimination that he opposes? Nah, that couldn’t be it. He’s a Republican and they all favor racial discrimination.
The issue of affirmative action is not simple. There are compelling arguments against racial preferences. They do, inherently, discriminate against whites. They tend to degrade the real achievements of minorities, tainting individual excellence with suspicions of racial favoritism. They foster continued racial animosity. All things being equal, we would be better off without them.
But all things are not yet equal….
Too bad discrimination does such bad things to everybody involved, but as long as discrimination exists we must continue to discriminate.
… Affirmative action is a tool to redress centuries of immoral exclusion….
True, but if Michigan and others admitted that they wouldn’t have a prayer in court. So they talk about “diversity.”
Racial diversity is a compelling social goal, one of the most enduring and important in our history.
Fine. Then let Michigan and others accept students by lottery from high school graduates. If diversity really is so compelling, it must be more important than assembling a bunch of students with high grades and test scores. There’s not mandate for that in the Constitution or laws. Inconveniently, there is a mandate against discriminating on the basis of race.
Bush announced his decision less than a week before the national holiday in memory of Dr. King. But don’t be confused. The great civil rights leader said, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.”
Right. I think what he meant by creed — but whatever he meant, what I mean — is that every American should be judged without regard to race, creed, or color. What do you mean by the American creed?
