I’ve recently posted two items (here and here) on the attempt of Democratic Governor Gary Locke of Washington state to reverse the results of initiative I-200, passed by 58% of the voters in 1998, which barred racial preferences.
Locke has attempted to justify his disregard for public opinion by claiming that his effort is required to bring the state into compliance with the recent Supreme Court ruling, a claim that is so completely unjustifiable that Locke must know it is false. (The Supremes allowed preferences in certain circumstances; it didn’t require them.)
Now Roger Clegg and Edward Blum of the Center for Equal Opportunity convincingly argue that in addition to being legally unnecessary, “divisive, unfair and morally wrong,” it is “wrongheaded for another reason as well.”
If his proposal were passed, the court’s decision nonetheless would actually bar the University of Washington from abandoning its colorblind admission polices and starting to use racial and ethnic preferences again.
This is because the court specifically stated that admissions preferences may not be used if race-neutral means have not been given “serious, good-faith consideration.”
UW has not only considered such race-neutral alternatives since I-200 was passed in 1998, it has actually employed them – and it has done so with abundant success. As a result of the school’s outreach, recruitment and retention programs, the number of “underrepresented minorities” at UW is back to where it was when the school was using preferences.
Therefore, it would be illegal for UW to use racial preferences. Colorblind admissions policies at UW are working well for everyone.
….
The Supreme Court made clear last summer that racial and ethnic preferences can be used only as a last resort, only if there is no other way to achieve diversity. We know that UW cannot meet this test, because it has achieved the same level of diversity without preferences that it was achieving with them.
If Gov. Locke succeeds in gutting I-200 and re-instituting preferences, he is also guaranteed to achieve one other result:
Without a single doubt, therefore, if the University of Washington begins using race and ethnicity in admissions after being given a green light by the Legislature, a costly lawsuit will be filed (as it was against the University of Washington Law School a few years ago). The state will lose, and the taxpayers will foot the bill.
Locke’s disdain for majority values has, alas, become a staple of contemporary liberalism. For one other example, consider the remarks of Christopher Edley, a former Harvard law professor (and advisor to Clinton and then Gore on racial matters) who was recently named dean of the Boalt Hall law school of the University of California at Berkeley. Speaking at the University of Michigan as part of a convocation on the Brown v. Board of Education decision,
Edley said the ruling proved the Supreme Court has the power to make social revolution and to force dramatic social change, even against majority opposition. The case also showed effective advocacy within the law need not have popular legitimacy, he said.
On the contrary, I believe that Brown’s appeal to the principle that people should not be burdened or benefited because of race did in fact have both majority support and popular legitimacy, except in the South.
UPDATE
In an editorial the Seattle Times supports the gutting of I-200 “[n]ot because it will make a major difference in practice, but because the current policy is embarrassing and shortsighted.”
Although the admission of minority students dropped initially after passage of I-200, the editorial acknowledges that “the proportion of minority students to the whole student body is about what it was in 1998 at several schools.”
Why, then, disregard the desire of 58% of the voters to amend their constitution so that it bars racial discrimination in university admissions? Here’s why:
Initiative 200 remains an embarrassment and was mentioned by observers as a troublesome issue in the recent search for a new University of Washington president.
So, the constitutional values of a significant majority of Washington voters should be disregarded because they are an “embarrassment” to Seattle liberals? Well, we can’t have any embarrassed liberals, can we?
And the University of Washington had some trouble locating a candidate for president who believes in treating all students without regard to their race? I wonder how hard it looked.
What should be embarrassing is this editorial, and the sensibility it embodies.
