Wendy takes on...

...the blopic of the day and wins! (or just muses)

Monday, June 23, 2003

 
...the U.S. Supreme Court

Great. The Supreme Court ruled that the government has a compelling interest in promoting racial diversity on campus.

What compelling interest? Why should any thinking, rational person care what color his classmates' skin is? Right, I see where this is headed. I must eliminate the thinking, rational part of my equation, because we're dealing with the government and the institution of higher education in the United States of America.

No one would argue with this part of O'Connor's argument:

...the diffusion of knowledge and opportunity through public institutions of higher education must be accessible to all individuals regardless of race or ethnicity. Effective participation by members of all racial and ethnic groups in the civic life of our nation is essential if the dream of one nation, indivisible, is to be realized.

What I'm arguing is that higher education is accessible to all and it should not be more accessible to people of some specific skin colors than it is to people of other skin colors. Racial preferences completely and totally violate the Equal Protection clause.

It's not a foreign concept: two wrongs don't make a right.

After a few decades of entitlements, which if you listen to affirmative-action supporters, have not worked, wouldn't it make sense to try something new and different?

And why should my black neighbor, whose family has lived here for several generations, be granted admission before my Belorussian neighbor, whose family moved here seven years ago to escape a brutal dictatorship and is still learning English? If the born-American candidate and the Belorussian-naturalized-American candidate have the same grades and test scores and wrote equally good essays, shouldn't we give the edge to the Belorussian-American who has worked harder by having to learn English and navigate the waters of testing and admissions alone (because his parents aren't familiar with the process and don't speak English)? Wouldn't it be safer to assume that the Belorussian-American would bring more diversity of thought and opinion to the classroom, having been raised under another form of government, in another country, on another continent, speaking another language?

Oh, there I go again, it's not about diversity of thought and opinion, because the "reason" people aren't happy with the "progress" that affirmative action has made, is that there are still people who disagree with them. Here is where I could delve into political correctness and how it is an evil attempt at thought control, but I will resist my usual urge to get too tangential on my readers.

In any case, there are a thousand other factors to be taken into consideration: income, high school, hours worked outside the home, language spoken at home, etc. I see absolutely no reason to include skin color as a deciding factor for college admissions. For a beauty pageant, maybe, where we're thinking about what the candidate looks like, but not for school, where we should be thinking about how well the person retains and processes information.

And on the semantic tangent: honest people will not use the word "diverse" when they should be using the word "multicolored". At least the Supreme Court took the honest route, using the phrase "racial diversity."
Wendy 11:18 AM