Some of you veterans may recall Separation of Race and State I, which appeared over three years ago. It sketched out my argument (though at some length for a sketch), repeated in shorter form many times since, that the social reality that gave rise to the principle requiring the separation of church and state ought also require the separation of race and state.
Although everyone today takes it as an article of faith (if you’ll pardon the expression) that the wall separating church and state was built by Puritans fleeing to the new world to establish religious freedom, that is not quite how it happened. (Again, read Separation I linked above.) In fact, the First Amendment’s prohibition against the establishment of religion was a bar against Congress or, arguably by extension, the federal government. It quite purposefully left the states free to establish religion if they chose, as Massachusetts did until 1833. The 14th Amendment, insofar as it applied the Bill of Rights to the states, changed that.
Most of you will also recall that I’ve noted, too many times to cite, that anyone who believes “diversity” justifies racial preferences also must, logically, believe that it would justify religious preferences as well, although most diversiphiles studiously avoid that implication of their argument.
With that background out of the way, let me now point to an article in today’s UVa Cavalier Daily, “God on Grounds,” that, to its credit, recognizes the issue of religious diversity and its importance. Neither the author nor the scholars he quotes, however, confront the tension between the assumed legitimacy of promoting racial diversity and the equally assumed illegitimacy of promoting religious diversity.
Thus, noted First Amendment Scholar Robert O’Neil, formerly president of UVa and now director of its Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression,
There is a wide range of religious views to be found in the student body, but on the other hand, a public university has no business promoting or inhibiting religious diversity.
….
[History Prof. Maya] Jasanoff and O’Neil both agreed the University should not actively promote certain religious activities because doing so would violate the doctrine of the separation between church and state.
Many of us believe that a public university also has no business promoting racial diversity, except to the degree it can be done without engaging in racial discrimination.
The judge who mentioned diversity in the Bakke case opened a can of worms, didn’t he?
Til he injected this into the debate, racial preferences were pretty straightfoward. The goal was to admit more blacks to colleges. The legacy of slavery and segregation had produced a disadvantaged race. Members of that race were given preferences.
Good or bad public policy? Debatable. Legal? Debatable. But at least this was intellectually honest.
Now we are faced daily with ludicrous arguments about the value of diversity. We have to admit more blacks to college not only to help black students but also to help the white students, who, if deprived of a diverse learning environment, cannot receive a good education.
We are no longer talking about helping descendants of slaves, but about promoting diversity.
Hispanics contribute to diversity, so anyone with a Spanish surname suddenly count. (So do people who do not have a Spanish surname but whose grandparents do. You can be named Smith or Jones and still be Hispanic.)
Of course, non-American blacks count too, so African immigrants and West Indians get a chit in the diversity game, even though neither they nor their ancestors were slaves or second class citizens under Jim Crow.
Opponents of racial discrimination point to the flaws in the diversity argument by citing the value of intellectual diversity and (now) religious diversity.
I long for the good old days, when descendants of slaves got the preferences abd the rest of Americans paid for the sins of (some of) their fathers. Rough and imperfect justice, but it had the advantage of intellectual coherence.