Additional Thoughts On Randall Kennedy, Equal Opportunity Discriminator

I was going to add the following points as another ADDENDUM to my recent post pointing to my review on Minding The Campus (“The Odd Career of Randall Kennedy”) of Randall Kennedy’s new book, For Discrimination in which he announced his no longer ambivalent support for race preferences (the first ADDENDUM was yesterday), but then decided to offer them as a separate post.

One of the strengths of the old principled, colorblind civil rights movement is that it was — to borrow a term misappropriated by the current unprincipled, race preference movement — “inclusive.” Its underlying and animating principle was that everyone — all persons, individual members of every racial and ethnic group — should be treated by the state “without regard” to race, creed, or color.

Correspondingly, one of the saddest things about the current “civil rights” arguments is not simply that they have discarded the principle that gave them birth and life but that they have descended into nothing more than a collection of race-based demands whose advocates seek preferential treatment the same way peanut farmers seek subsidies, unions demand closed shops, and “green” companies (at least the ones with friends in high places) suck up government funding.

That said, it follows that one of the saddest things about Kennedy’s book is that he positively, even enthusiastically, embraces this abandonment of the ideal and hence the principle of non-discriminatory colorblind equality. Indeed, so vigorously does he attempt to eradicate all vestiges of lingering attachment to the non-discrimination principle that he actually turns civil rights inside out or upside down, or both: where the old movement opposed discriminating against anyone on the basis of race, Kennedy now supports discriminating against everyone — not just Asians and whites but even blacks — if it will help the “black community.”

You can think I’m making this up only if you haven’t read the section of my review discussing his defense of the preferential admission of blacks to elite law schools even if Richard Sander’s “mismatch” argument is right and preferential treatment results in fewer black lawyers. Why is he willing to sacrifice black students to “mismatch”-induced failure?  Because, he asserts, “the cadre of black attorneys trained at the top-tier schools are more valuable to the black community than those trained at the lower-tier schools, and hence that, if necessary, maintaining the numbers at the higher-tier schools would be worth sacrificing marginal members or potential members of the black bar.”

In order to reject the equal opportunity non-discrimination principle in favor of an ill-defined, amorphous “racial justice,” Kennedy finds it necessary to become an equal opportunity discriminator.

Say What? (2)

  1. awwriting October 8, 2013 at 11:58 am | | Reply

    Speaking of affirmative action, the NYTimes has an interesting profile of Los Angeles’ new mayor, who is Jewish, of Italian and Russian decent, but his family came through Mexico.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/08/us/garcetti-new-los-angeles-mayor-reflects-changing-city.html

    Surprisingly, the Times fails to ask a few important questions:

    1) Why should the mayor, unlike other Italians, Jews, or Russians in the USA, receive affirmative action?

    2) Why does the mayor NOT identify as Italian? Why is that not an insult to other Italians?

    3) Or, taking a cue from race-conscious educators, the Times could ask how a white, European person with familial Mexican citizenship can identify with Mexicans “of color.”

  2. CaptDMO October 9, 2013 at 11:14 am | | Reply

    Add ANY “modifier” before the word justice(or “rights”), and you’re guilty of pre-judging, with lack of intellect…or something like that.

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