{"id":7258,"date":"2014-04-29T10:45:10","date_gmt":"2014-04-29T17:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=7258"},"modified":"2014-04-29T10:45:10","modified_gmt":"2014-04-29T17:45:10","slug":"one-cheer-for-the-schuette-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/one-cheer-for-the-schuette-decision\/","title":{"rendered":"One Cheer for the Schuette Decision"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0Front Page Magazine<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Many conservatives are applauding the recent Supreme Court\u00a0Schuette<\/i>\u00a0decision upholding the right of the citizens of Michigan to ban racial preferences. As Charles Krauthammer\u00a0writes<\/a>, the 2003\u00a0Grutter<\/i>\u00a0decision, which like\u00a0Schuette<\/i>\u00a0did not ban racial preferences altogether, was correct: \u201cThe people should decide.\u00a0The people responded accordingly. Three years later, they crafted a referendum to abolish race consciousness in government action. It passed overwhelmingly, 58 percent to 42 percent.\u00a0Schuette<\/i>\u00a0completes the circle by respecting the constitutionality of that democratic decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

This approval of\u00a0Schuette<\/i>, however, ignores 2 problems. The first is that a state\u2019s ban on racial preferences doesn\u2019t end racial preferences; it just spurs universities to find more creative and subtle ways to take race into account. Second, it leaves in place the duplicitous, ideological, and incoherent doctrine of \u201cdiversity\u201d that ever since the 1978\u00a0Bakke\u00a0<\/i>decision has been the \u201ccompelling state interest\u201d justifying taking race or sex into account.<\/p>\n

In November of 1996 the voters of California passed Proposition 209, the Civil Rights Initiative, which amended the state constitution to forbid the state from \u201cdiscriminat[ing] against or grant[ing] preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.\u201d Yet despite the clear-cut legal prohibition, race-based preferences and policies live on in California higher education.<\/p>\n

Take, for example, the process of hiring faculty in the California State University system. Despite the \u201cend of affirmative action,\u201d every hiring committee still must have an \u201caffirmative action\u201d representative, which after Proposition 209\u00a0was renamed the \u201cEqual Employment Opportunity designee.\u201d Despite the name change, the EEO designee performs the same function based on the same assumptions the voters supposedly rejected. The purpose of this representative is not to make sure the most qualified and suitable person is chosen for the position regardless of race, sex, or any factor forbidden by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The EEO designee can be from any department on campus, and so in most cases will not have much\u00a0awareness of the qualifications required for the position. Yet despite this lack of knowledge, no hire can go forward without the EEO representative\u2019s approving signature at every step of the process, in order to make sure no qualified minority candidate has been unjustly passed over. But by definition the only \u201cqualification\u201d that matters to the EEO designee will be race or sex.<\/p>\n

Other race-based procedures in hiring are still in place. All the applicants in the pool are identified by race and sex, and this information is part of the hiring process. When finalists are invited for campus visits, their race and sex, and the race and sex of the hiring committee members, are identified and made part of the process as well. If \u201cpreferential treatment\u201d based on race or sex has been presumably outlawed in California, why is this information still being gathered and made part of the hiring process in a state-funded institution? Moreover, informal pressure can be brought to bear by deans and provosts to encourage taking race and sex into account. For example, a position can be approved, or an additional position granted, with the verbal proviso that a minority candidate is the finalist.<\/p>\n

Nor has Proposition 209 prevented race from being factored into admission decisions. Any applicant with a Hispanic surname \u2013 no matter how privileged, or even if he is a Caucasian from Spain or Latin America \u2013 will be assumed to add \u201cdiversity\u201d to the campus community and given an advantage over a better qualified white applicant. Universities also can add a proxy for race such as \u201covercoming challenges or difficulties\u201d or \u201cobstacles overcome,\u201d code for experiencing racism and prejudice, and weight those subjective factors enough to overcome any deficiencies in grades or test scores. This sort of \u201cholistic score\u201d is already in use, and some research indicates that it functions as a substitute for race. Richard Sander\u2019s study of UCLA\u2019s admissions procedures found that a higher percentage of blacks and Latinos are accepted than are whites and Asians with the same \u201cholistic score.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second, and more pernicious problem, is the idea itself of \u201cdiversity,\u201d the conceptual sleight-of-hand that allowed Justice Powell in the\u00a0Bakke<\/i>\u00a0case\u00a0to rationalize the continuing use of race in college admissions even as he was compelled to acknowledge that most affirmative action programs at that time were simply naked quota systems in clear violation of the Civil Rights Act. Powell argued that only a \u201ccompelling state interest\u201d could justify exceptions to the Civil Rights Act\u2019s ban on discrimination by race, and that \u201cdiversity\u201d and its presumed benefits to higher education\u00a0was indeed such a \u201cstate interest.\u201d\u00a0Schuette<\/i>\u00a0has left this dubious rationale in place, thus justifying the sort of trickery outlined above. But this \u201cdiversity\u201d is a dishonest and incoherent concept, masking an ideologically skewed interpretation of history in which the wicked white man has oppressed and excluded the dark-skinned \u201cother.\u201d<\/p>\n

Proponents of diversity hide this racialist and ideologically loaded idea by using the old-fashioned bait-and-switch. Diversity, they tell us, is just about acknowledging and respecting the ethnic and cultural differences that make up the wonderful mosaic of American society, and ensuring that the university campus represents and benefits from that diversity. But the call to respect the various cultures comprising American identity is nothing new, and existed long before \u201cdiversity\u201d became university dogma.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of this century, for example, the vast influx of immigrants from Slavic countries and the southern Mediterranean sharpened the debate between what was then called \u201cpluralism\u201d and \u201cassimilation.\u201d Nor were melting-pot assimilationists the only point of view heard. Pluralists at that time made the same argument the diversicrats make today, as can be seen in this statement from 1937: \u201cNo one culture contains all favorable elements, but each group that makes up the total American population has unique values, and . . . the nation will be richer and finer in its cultural make-up if it, the country, conserves the best that each group has brought.\u201d The writer goes on to argue that \u201cthe fundamentals of their heritages be preserved for generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

For most of this century, then, there were those who argued against completely assimilating away cultural differences that they recognized contributed to American identity. But if the call to acknowledge and \u201crespect cultural differences\u201d is nothing new, then what really characterizes current \u201cdiversity\u201d doctrine? It is the identity-politics melodrama of white Western oppression and intrinsic racism, which explains the various contradictions and incoherent assumptions of diversity as it is actually practiced.<\/p>\n

Real diversity is enormous in its variety, encompassing scores of ethnic groups, economic strata, regions, political views, and religions, to name a few, not to mention the various possible combinations of these categories. A poor, Catholic, Mexican-Indian immigrant farm worker from Oaxaca, for example, has a very different identity from that of a middle-class, secularized, suburban 3rd<\/sup>-generation mestizo Mexican-American from Menlo Park. The fact that\u00a0their surnames are \u201cHispanic\u201d doesn\u2019t tell us anything about what each can contribute to campus \u201cdiversity.\u201d The middle-class Mexican-American will probably have more in common with a middle-class white kid than with the Indian immigrant. Yet in the university, the second \u201cHispanic\u201d applicant will be courted and presumed to offer more \u201cdiversity\u201d than a poor rural white kid who resembles in many respects the Indian farm worker.<\/p>\n

Here is the illogic of most universities\u2019 idea of \u201cdiversity\u201d: it functions in terms of stereotypical, simplistic race-based categories that ignore all the other ways in which people are diverse, all the other benefits of those particular \u201cdiversities\u201d that could enrich the university. Certainly most universities today, dogmatically secular and philosophically materialist as they are, could use the diversity that more religious believers could bring. And given that faculties overwhelmingly comprise progressives and leftists, a concern with genuine diversity would demand active recruitment of conservative students and faculties.<\/p>\n

Moreover, of all the various categories of diversity, whether ethnic, economic, political, or religious, most universities are really interested in only a few, those minorities that the Civil Rights industry recognizes: Hispanic, black, and occasionally any Third-World \u201cperson of color\u201d (the disproportionate academic success of Asians has banished them from this select group). Less politically connected groups, however, simply don\u2019t count. Armenians were subjected to genocide in Turkey and discriminated against in California for decades, but they\u2019re not considered to be as \u201cdiverse\u201d as a black dentist\u2019s son who grew up in the suburbs. Many other ethnic groups, such as Portuguese, Italians, Russians, Sikhs, or Poles, are lumped together into the meaningless category \u201cwhite\u201d and thus are deemed irrelevant for increasing campus diversity. Finally, economic class doesn\u2019t count when it comes to campus diversity. Poor minority students, and poor white students, for that matter, are underrepresented on university campuses\u2013\u2013at the 200 most selective universities, only 5% come from the bottom 25% of the income scale. Indeed, 92% of blacks at elite colleges are from the top 50%.<\/p>\n

This brings us to the real basis for institutionalizing diversity: not to give voice to the actual variety of Americans in terms of culture, religion, politics, economic status, or region, and to enrich college campuses with that genuine diversity, but to privilege the anointed victims of white oppression, reinforce progressive ideology, and pressure governments and institutions to make reparations for that history. This ideology in turn serves the race industry and its parent company the Democratic Party, which implements policies that benefit that industry and big government bureaucracies, at the same time creating political clients for both.<\/p>\n

\u201cLetting the people choose,\u201d as\u00a0Schuette\u00a0<\/i>does, will not prevent universities from using race, or remove the rationale for discrimination that serves the ideology corrupting American universities. And it does not address the Supreme Court\u2019s inconsistent commitment to letting the people choose. The people of California chose traditional marriage when they passed Proposition 8, yet last year the Supreme Court by one vote refused to defend the right of the people to choose by invoking the litigants\u2019 lack of standing (see Anthony Kennedy\u2019s\u00a0dissent<\/a>). Given these problems, one cheer is all the approval the\u00a0Schuette<\/i>\u00a0decision deserves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0Front Page Magazine\u00a0 Many conservatives are applauding the recent Supreme Court\u00a0Schuette\u00a0decision upholding the right of the citizens of Michigan to ban racial preferences. As Charles Krauthammer\u00a0writes, the 2003\u00a0Grutter\u00a0decision, which like\u00a0Schuette\u00a0did not ban racial preferences altogether, was correct: \u201cThe people should decide.\u00a0The people responded accordingly. Three years later, they crafted a referendum […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,383,135],"tags":[215,84,570,1042,93,573],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1T4","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7623,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-language-of-despotism\/","url_meta":{"origin":7258,"position":0},"title":"The Language of Despotism","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 2, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine Long before\u00a01984\u00a0gave us the adjective \u201cOrwellian\u201d to describe the political corruption of language and thought, Thucydides observed how factional struggles for power make words their first victims. Describing the horrors of civil war on the island of Corcyra during the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The World"","block_context":{"text":"The World","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/war-is-peace-450x337.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3300,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-race-card\/","url_meta":{"origin":7258,"position":1},"title":"Obama’s Race Card","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 7, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers The liberal media are in full Captain Renault mode, \u201cshocked, shocked\u201d to find race injected into the presidential campaign by a \u201cSwift-boating\u201d John McCain. How shameless can you get? The Obama campaign\u2013\u2013indeed, the whole of Obama\u2019s public existence\u2013\u2013is about nothing other than his perceived\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":178,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-rise-of-faux-diversity\/","url_meta":{"origin":7258,"position":2},"title":"The Rise of Faux Diversity","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton Defining Ideas In\u00a0Fisher vs. University of Texas, the Supreme Court heard legal challenges to the University of Texas\u2019s admissions policies, which allow consideration of an applicant\u2019s race in order to promote \u201cdiversity\u201d among the school\u2019s students. Such racial preferences are widespread in university admissions. In 80 percent\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Education"","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":602,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-medias-racial-prison\/","url_meta":{"origin":7258,"position":3},"title":"The Media’s Racial Prison","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 31, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine Two incidents last week suggest once more that our confused, hypocritical, and politicized notions of race and relations will play a huge role in the presidential election. In the first, Virginia state senator L. Louise Lucas, part of Obama\u2019s \u201cTruth Team\u201d campaigning for the president\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1138,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/its-the-president-stupid-the-referendum-on-barack-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":7258,"position":4},"title":"It’s the President Stupid: The Referendum on Barack Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 10, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton RightNetwork.com The people have spoken, and what they have said concerns more than just the wrong-headed policies the Democrats have inflicted upon us in the past few years. This election was never just about policy \u2013\u2013 it was also about Barack Obama and the repudiation of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. 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