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06/24/2003 Archived Entry: ""

BAKKE REDUX - FORCED TO CHOOSE BETWEEN EQUALITY AND QUOTAS, THE SUPREME COURT PUNTS: I agree with David Frum's take on the gobbledygook that was the Supreme Court's University of Michigan affirmative action decision: It failed to support true equality under the law by junking racial preferences and compounded this atrocity with ambiguity that makes it entirely unclear what would constitute a legal use of affirmative action in admissions.

I think having the government sanction racial discrimination against any group - whether overtly or covertly - and classify people by race is an inherently noxious thing. I agree with Steve Sailer that a more clandestine method of doling out racial preferences doesn't make the practice better. But Julian Sanchez does make a good point - there can be valid reasons for a college or university to want to capture the diversity of experiences represented by what he calls "lived race." This is something that doesn't neatly fall into those little check-off boxes that ask you if you are Caucasian or a Pacific Islander, but it is certainly a meaningful part of contemporary human experience.

However, this comes with a caveat - the pursuit of this kind of diversity can't lead to policies that blindly shut out qualified whites and Asians, and can't simply be put in place to paper over (as opposed to rectifying) the real skills gap that exists between many minority applicants and other American students. Too often, affirmative action as it exists today does both.