Where There’s A Will There’s A (Right) Way

Several eagle-eyed readers emailed me to recommend George Will’s column in the June 23 issue of Newsweek, “Race Norming in Michigan.” They were right. It is terrific, excellent, first-rate.

True, attentive DISCRIMINATIONS loyalists (and others who merely read) will have already seen a number of Will’s points, but he makes them much better.

Some examples:

• What makes the huge investment of ingenuity and resources in the defense of Michigan’s racial preferences disgusting is that the investment is grotesquely disproportionate to any good it will do the African-American community. But by the logic of the diversity rationale for preferences, doing good for African-Americans is an afterthought. The real purpose of socially engineered diversity is to somehow-there is scant evidence as to just how this supposedly works-improve the educational experience for all students attending elite institutions. Which means diversity preferences are intended primarily for the benefit of nonminorities.
• The preferred minorities-mainly African-Americans but also Hispanics-are being used as seasoning ingredients for elite institutions.
• … those institutions are violating the cardinal principle that people should be treated as ends in themselves, not as means to others’ ends. Those institutions are so serene in their moral smugness that they are not even conscious that they are using minorities as mere means for flavoring the ambiences of their campuses.

Read, as they say, the whole thing.

UPDATE – Boomshock has some interesting comments on Will’s argument.