A day in court - for all of us
I've been looking for something insightful to say in the aftermath of the Supreme Court oral arguments in the University of Michigan case. John Fund was the best I came up with to start with.
How can one square Michigan's program with the Constitution's prohibition against racial discrimination? Aggressive outreach to find quality minority candidates is important, but pushing minority candidates into schools they're not ready for doesn't do them or the school any favors. Ultimately, the damage a poor education does to a kid in the lower grades can't be remedied by diversity intervention in his or her teenage years. That's why school-choice programs that provide real alternatives to help students in failing public schools may be the best and most effective affirmative action around.Justice Scalia, as usual, was the most outspoken and effective Justice in the arguments. His near-harrassment of the lawyers for UM brought the reality of the Constitutional violations into sharp focus. Still, I fear we might see O'Connor (no relation, btw) side with the more liberal members of the court to whitewash the whole affair and claim diversity is a "compelling" reason to trample all over the equal protection clause.
Don't get me wrong. I want to see more blacks in college. I want to see more qualified blacks in college. I want to see more well-educated blacks graduate from college so they can conquer the workplace. I'm not against vigorous enforcement of remedies when illegal discrimination is found. But this case isn't a choice between the Civil Rights movement and Jim Crow. This is a choice between appeasement of those who perpetuate the myth of never-ending racism and the rule of law. This is a choice between Jesse Jackson's opportunistic blackmail of Wall Street in the name of The Cause, and Martin Luther King's Dream. Like Fund suggests, rather than perpetuate UM's unconstitutional mistake, let's solve the underlying problems in the black community and let black students get into college on their merits.
