The Supreme Court, our
unelected and irrefutable legislature of nine, now ponders, or
pretends to ponder, the legitimacy of racial discrimination in
collegiate admissions. Oh good. One assumes of course that, with
unrebuttable presumptuousness, they will merely dress their
prejudices in constitutional-sounding awkward English. Still:
What is one to make of
racial preferences?
First, some de-twaddling.
The question before the Court is said to be whether race may be a
factor in admission. This is not at all the question—and we all
know it. The question is whether blacks should enjoy special
privilege in admission.
Suppose that a college,
using race as a factor, decided to give unqualified whites
preference over qualified blacks. The federal government would
bring its full punitive force to bear on the malfactorous
institution. No matter how one may try to disguise it, no matter
the weasel-wording and clouding and evasion, the issue, always, is
special privilege for a particular race.
I know it. You know it.
The Supreme Court knows it.
Second, the dispute has
nothing to do with racism against blacks. The white population
would, if polled, overwhelmingly support a policy of neutrality
with respect to color. The bone in contention is special
privilege. Nothing else.
Third, the prevalent
racism is not intended as a temporary measure. There is never any
talk among its advocates of phasing it out. They want it forever.
Regarding the Court,
remember that high office does not of itself confer high
competence or principled intention. I do not know how the Nine
think, whether they have any particular principles, or even have
real contact with the country they rule. One may wonder when any
of them last rode a subway or put air in his own tires. They may,
or may not, have any idea what they are doing.
Still, if I were among
them, I would reflect on affirmative action (can there be a phrase
more redolent of the used-car salesman?) thusly:
First, its continuance
would illuminate the awful truth that the government is not an
impartial institution of the people, but the special tool of some
people. To put it clearly: My own government discriminates against
me on grounds of race, and does so by law. It is a form of
corruption worse than nepotism or croneyism. Nepotism, though it
occurs, is disapproved. Racism is the legal bedrock of American
politics.
How much damage does
racialization do to the social fabric? I don’t know. Certainly
it gnaws at the loyalty to institutions that gives cohesion to a
nation. People decide, as commonly happens in corrupt countries of
the third world, to ignore the national government as being at
best unresponsive or, in the case of affirmative action, hostile.
They shift to local focus. They worry about friends, about their
own, but cease to feel attached to the nation, or at least to
Washington.
Come almost any election,
we have gnashing of hands and wringing of teeth because people
don’t vote. Why should they? They know that policy is decided
not according to the popular will, not according to cherished
principles of equal access and opportunity, but according to race,
creed, color, sex, and national origin. Resentment flows,
lubricated by a sense of futility.
Another result of racial
government is that blacks become—are—the focus of a
widespread, federally suppressed contempt of which they are quite
aware. The inevitable observation is that affirmative action is
for losers. If you are good enough, you don’t need it; if you
need it, you aren’t good enough. It’s that simple.
Whites know about the
large degree of racial privilege dispensed by the universities.
Blacks know they know. While some blacks gain, others lose. A
black doctor who has earned his degrees will find himself avoided
by white patients, not because he is black but because he may be a
Bakke case.
Racial preferences
inescapably imply inferiority: All blacks with degrees will be
presumed to have been given them because of pigmentation. It
isn’t fair. It is, however, reasonable, given that there is no
safe way to check credentials or, having checked them, to act on
the results. Might it not be better to hold blacks to normal
standards and thus hold them in normal respect?
And doesn’t racial
preference set blacks up for failure? Consider. Suppose that I, a
shiny white blue-eyed devil without too much hair, scored
reasonably well on the SATs. I would be accepted only at schools
with reasonably good SATs, not by Yale. If I were black, Yale
would affirmative-action me. I would then find myself over my
head, competing against far better students. The professors might
pass me because of racial compassion, or I might hide in Black
Studies, but the other students would know what was happening. So
would I.
Is this what we want?
The peddlers of
affirmative action make the point that universities engage in
“legacy” admissions—that is, they give preference to
children of alumni, especially those who have buildings named
after them. Usually these students are white. Is this different
from racial preference?
Yes. The country is not
wracked by division because an under-brained Rockefeller gets into
Yale. Nor, crucially, is there a vast federal mechanism working on
behalf of students named Rockefeller.
Of course another approach
to admissions is possible. One might, if one could not be fired,
ask why the government should meddle at all. Right now,
universities are mad to collect black students. Why not let them?
If a few universities chose to admit only highly qualified whites,
or only qualified students, why not also let them? The government
being incapable of impartiality, why not try something else? (We
could call it, say, “freedom.”)
Maybe we should stop
kidding ourselves. Little pretense remains that reason or morality
has much to do with government. Everything is done by groups. It
is said to be unconstitutional to burn a cross, yet constitutional
to burn a flag. Why? Because the first offends blacks; the second,
conservative whites. (Personally I couldn’t care less about
burning either.) Enormous pressure forced VMI to admit girls, yet
Wellesley, admitting only girls, gets nary a hard word. Are black
colleges forced to become 85% white? No. We believe in high
principle, but only for some people.
It never stops.
“Deadbeat dads” are persecuted, pilloried, denied passports,
imprisoned. Women who give birth to twelve illegitimate kids by
several dozen fathers, none of whose names they can remember, are
victims. Why? We all know. It is because we are a government not
of men, not of laws, not of principle, but of sacred cows.
