The San Francisco Examiner has a commentary piece today, “Will Court Put Integration On Hold?” that is about as good an example as you (or at least I) can find of how confused much of the chattering class is over race. The author, Patrick Mattimore, is a former prosecutor who now teaches in a private prep school in San Francisco.
Although I should be used to it by now, I was brought up short by this innocent-appearing sentence early on that reveals, unintentionally, how upside down the world of race has become:
School integration plans have been challenged over the years as students have been denied admission to one school or another based upon race.
At times, Mr. Mattimore seems to glimpse the irony of the reversal of the liberals: they used to object to assigning students to schools based on their race; now they support it. Thus he writes:
Initially, liberals sought to desegregate schools, citing as rationale the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. Increasingly, conservatives invoke the equal protection clause to support their argument that integration plans deny some students equal access.
At other times, though, he seems to be in a fog. Thus he describes the votes of California, Washington, and Michigan banning race preferences as “interesting permutations,” without explaining why he thinks they are either “interesting” or “permutations.”
He mentions the recent Ninth Circuit decision holding “that a private school in Hawaii could discriminate against children based on their racial ancestry,” but then he comments, now hopelessly confused:
Ironically, the judges who upheld the Hawaiian school’s segregation policy were all Democratic presidential appointments. All but one of the judges who dissented were appointed by Republicans.
There is nothing at all ironic about that. For over a generation now Democrats have supported, and Republicans have generally (but not, alas, always) opposed, assigning, admitting, hiring, promoting, etc., people based on their race in all areas of American life.
Finally, Mr. Mattimore concludes with a passage that got my hopes up:
The debate over diversity/racial preferences/affirmative action has obscured the true meaning of Brown v. Board of Education. Third-grader Linda Brown’s family sued the Topeka, Kan. school board so that their daughter could walk to a neighborhood school and get a quality education instead of being bused to a segregated school. Linda and her family wanted what every family wants, regardless of whether their child sits next to a Hispanic-American, a Caucasian-American or any other race.
This would be fine, if he said what is “the true meaning” of Brown, but he doesn’t say. Among the meanings that are possible, given what he’s written here, are a) the right — no, the obligation — to go to an integrated school, even if “integration” requires rigidly assigning students by race; b) the right to a “quality education” no matter whom you sit next to; or c) the right to be free from discrimination based on race.
The right answer, of course, is “c.”
