Revisiting Affirmative Action

by Linda Chavez - June 7, 2006 - TownHall.com

In 2003, in a pair of cases involving the University of Michigan, the Court handed down decisions that pleased neither side in the debate. On the one hand, the Court sided with affirmative action proponents by allowing schools to use race as a "plus factor" in deciding whom to admit. But the Court also said efforts to achieve racial "diversity" had to be narrowly tailored and could not utilize rigid point systems like the one adopted by Michigan for undergraduate admissions.

As usual our courts seek perfect justice, and simply dispense stupidity instead. The essence of the rulings in these prior cases was simple. Michigan had no past discrimination to correct, however it was okay to grant special privileges to certain members of certain races to achieve "diversity" anyway. However you had to make sure that you only denied justice to a small number of whites in this search for diverstiy, and you had to hold your head at just the right angle while pretending that the person being denied justice was not being discriminated against as egregiously as back when subtle and hypocritical tests were used to exclude blacks from justice.

Our courts never seem to have heard the premise that you cannot be a little bit "pregnant". It is also impossible to dispense a little bit of injustice. Our government is not color blind, as Martin Luther King, Jr. sought. Our government is totally and completely color consumed, leaving everyone outraged no matter what the outcome. Blacks who do not get special privileges are angry that they missed the cut, and continue to feel it is discrimination anyway, even when there is no discrimination. Whites who would not have gotten into the schools anyway, are allowed to be outraged that they did not make it and can assume it is only because they are white.

We have not reduced racism with this idiocy of affirmative action. We have increased it.