Ward Connerly has an eloquent appeal on NRO today for contributions to the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, which must gather 460,000 signatures in order to place the intiative banning race preferences in Michigan on the ballot. I am assured that all contributions will be used to support this worthy effort in Michigan.
Connerly says, with a good deal of force, that
[t]he people must seize the initiative to erase the stain of racial discrimination; we cannot rely on the president, the Congress, or the Supreme Court to do it for us. Whether the victim of racial discrimination is a black person denied admission to “Ole Miss” because of skin color or a white person denied admission to the University of Michigan owing to race preferences, the injustice is no less.
I myself would not have described the issue this way. A racial exclusion policy based on an official belief that members of the excluded race are inferior is, I think, more unjust (if comparisons here are possible) than a “diversity” policy (however hokey and hypocritical and disingenuous) that with no invidious or denigrating intent denies admission to some individuals because of their race. But it is nevertheless divisive (it inflames racial resentments), racialist (it encourages racial categorization), and wrong (the state should impose burdens on no individual on the basis of race). The injustice, in short, need not be as great as the injustice of slavery or segregation in order to be unjust.
Right as usual John. I agree with you that racial discrimination is wrong regardless of motive or victiom, but also like you I can at least appreciate the desire to use it to mitigate rather than perpetuate inequality. Discrimination meant to reinforce inequality is simply beyond the pale. To refer to your earlier post, South Africa has pretty severe and poorly implemented affirmative action which is stimulating human capital flight, but this is still better than apartheid. Fortunately, as John consistently argues, one needn’t choose the (far) lesser of two evils between Jim Crow and the University of Michigan since one can simply not discriminate against anyone.