Race to the Bottom

The high priests of racial grievance were out in full force yesterday as the Supreme Court considered a challenge to the University of Michigan's use of racial preferences in admissions. If you have any doubt about which side The Washington Post is on, you need go no further than this breathless salute to the noble forces of diversity gathered outside the Court's walls. Having successfully hidden the extent of its racial discrimination for years, the University of Michigan now celebrates it, and one would think that we are on the verge of color-specific bathrooms once again should the Supreme Court decide for white Michiganders denied entrance to the state-sponsored college because of their skin color.

According to the Post, protestors chanted catchy slogans like "Jim Crow, hell no!" and "Two, four, six, eight, we don't want to segregate!" The latter cheer is odd given the University of Michigan's subtle enforcement of segregation, which begins before students arrive, via a separate admissions track for minorities, continues with the segregation of prospective minority students into separate pre-admission functions and interviews with black faculty specializing in Victimology (because we all know that no black student would want to meet with a white math professor, right?), and extends all the way to support of segregated student organizations, fraternities, and disciplines.

Because this is the "good" kind of segregation, however, polite people call it something that emphasizes imaginary ends rather than vile means. We bring kids to school and build up in them a sense of separateness, so that the excruciatingly liberal (and overwhelmingly white) elites associated with the school can congratulate themselves on "celebrating diversity" without ever having to interact with people who think differently. It is the liberal academic method: reshape the lives of others in order to pursue one's utopia with minimal personal inconvenience.

Al Sharpton, of all people, was willing to be honest about what racial preferences are. "The reason we need special treatment," he intoned, "is because we had special mistreatment."

Thank you, Al, for calling it by its right name. More than once I've wondered how quickly public tolerance of racial preferences would dry up completely if newspapers were as diligent about phraseology here as they are about using "anti-abortion" instead of "pro-life" and "late-term" instead of "partial-birth" abortion. I guess the attendance to rhetorical precision is only important in some arenas, and so the term "affirmative action" is prominent in the Post's lexicon.

Unfortunately the level of discourse and analysis has sunk so low in this area that even politically correct nomenclature cannot hide the reality, which is that this debate has degenerated, for the pro-discrimination side, into tribalism. According to one demonstrator who brought her children to the courthouse steps, she was there "So our kids will be provided the opportunity to go to any school they want."

In other words, this is about a free ticket. The KKK couldn't come up with a more devastating scheme for minority kids than to pull them into institutions in which they are unprepared to excel. Minority dropout rates skyrocket, and racial strife is elevated as blacks and Hispanics are viewed with suspicion -- did he earn his way in, or did they let him in the back door?

The solution is to fix the awful public schools that cripple minority children. Rather than engage in this exercise, however, the University of Michigan's well-ranked School of Education has been an non-player, and was so incompetent at developing a statewide curriculum that Michigan yanked a multi-million dollar contract from its hands in the 1990's. But that's all water under the bridge, because the blue and gold mandarins support racial diversity.

All can be forgiven so long as one is on the right side. That's what this is all about, after all -- sentiment. So long as educated elites feel good about themselves, who cares if thousands of minority kids are doomed to fail, or if white kids are left to nurture racial resentment? You have to break some eggs to make a cake. This is utopia we're building.