Posted on 07/01/2003 5:37:52 AM PDT by SJackson
“WE EXPECT THAT 25 YEARS FROM NOW, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” Thus wrote Justice Sandra Day O’Connor for the 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court majority that on June 23 upheld use of reverse racism by the University of Michigan Law School in selecting which students it would admit.
But until then, a “compelling state interest” should for another generation transcend the Constitution’s 14th Amendment guarantee of “equal protection of the law,” wrote O’Connor. (The first female Justice, she is sometimes described as an “Affirmative Action” appointee.)
This state interest in “attaining a diverse student body” in our universities, she wrote, ought to take precedence over equality because diversity promotes "cross-racial understanding” and “helps to break down racial stereotypes.”
In a parallel ruling, however, the high court struck down the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions standards that used consistent numerical racial preferences and objectives. The Law School’s standards passed muster, oddly, precisely because they were much more imprecise, vague, un-numerical and subjective.
The June 2003 Supreme Court ruling does not quantify, but it clearly authorizes universities to define Jews, whites and Asian-Americans as LESS than otherwise-equal blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans, as the University of Michigan Law School has been doing….and as of Saturday the University of Texas announced it will quickly resume doing this, as well.
The court’s two oxymoronic rulings left those across the spectrum, from constitutional conservatives to sophistic southpaws like Michael Kinsley, bewildered by their fuzzy logic and internal contradictions.
Trying to make sense of these rulings, I turned to Webster’s New World Dictionary. “University,” says this dictionary, derives from the Medieval French and Medieval Latin word universitas, the whole, a society. Its roots, like that of "universe," include universum, from the Latin unus, “one,” and the past participle of the Latin verb vertere, to turn.
The “university” was originally to be a community of scholars who brought together all facets of knowledge. The student could turn from one to the next, acquiring a “rounded” education that integrated many realms of knowledge into a coherent understanding of the world and the cosmos, and one’s place in them.
A true University’s educational aim, like that of the motto of the United States, is E pluribus unum – no, not “out of one, many,” as then-Vice President Al Gore once told an audience, but “out of many, one.”
A student should emerge from university with an education that unites history and science, economics and language, art and literature, and many other learning experiences into a synergistic, bigger, brighter and more varied understanding of the world.
“Diversity,” by contrast, comes from the Latin via Old French divertere, the Latin roots of which are dis, “apart,” and vertere, “to turn.” Diversity is at root the same word as the verb “to divert,” which can mean to turn aside or deflect, or to amuse or entertain. Diversity is akin to disintegration.
"University," in other words, is at root not only different from "diversity" – but is also in important ways its polar opposite. Diversity is a centrifugal force pulling things apart. The University is a centripetal force bringing things into unity, connection and open-mindedness in the mind and heart of each individual student.
(Incidentally, "perversity" comes from the Latin intensifier per and vertere, “to turn.” Its meanings include the leading away from what is right and good; misdirection; corruption; misuse; misinterpretation or distortion; debasement; and persistence in error.)
It therefore would be more accurate to refer to certain leftist institutions as, e.g., the Diversity of Michigan in Ann Arbor or the Perversity of California at Berkeley. These places are intellectually as well as semantically unfit to be called universities.
A university brings people together. A diversity twists people apart. The University of Michigan Law School forces students into racial uniforms and then handicaps and pits them in competition against one another.
Boston University anthropologist Pete Wood, author of Diversity: The Invention of a Concept (Encounter Books), has wittily mocked such cookie cutter stereotyping. One of these collectivist categories given favored admission status at the University of Michigan, he notes, is “Native American.”
But, hints Wood in his reductio ad absurdum, Pueblos are as different from Shoshones as are Spaniards from Laplanders. Before the arrival of Columbus these Native Americans were 500 distinct nations, all now neatly forced into one Procrustean stereotype by University of Michigan gatekeepers.
The aim of such leftists, writes Wood, is not mutual understanding or integration but is what he calls “Diversity II,” a utopian, ideological vision in which different racial/ethic groups assert their own apartheid, “apartness,” from the larger society. They are indoctrinated to see themselves only as tribes, teams or armies fighting one another for a bigger group share of political power. It is the collectivist version of what they accuse capitalists of being: social Darwinists.
Universities used to be places of free speech, free thought and self-discovery. The Left has turned hundreds of them into ivy-walled prisons of restricted speech, ideological conformity, group-think authoritarianism and collectivist intimidation.
The last bastion of racism in America will be our college campuses.
This unscientific notion called “race” is both the root and residue of racism. It might
already have vanished – and racism with it – except for those academic leftists who have cultivated and nurtured racial thought and discrimination (the same way a few scientists have kept the killer plague disease Smallpox alive in certain laboratories) for their own power-hungry motives.
In the name of fighting racism, these college commissars have bred new generations of racism and made it more virulent. Perhaps this is why the University of Michigan has refused all requests to make public its own research into whether its “diversity” policies are making campus race relations better – or worse. Had the U.S. Supreme Court been allowed to see this secret research, it might have ruled differently.
Should students in higher education be exposed to a variety of people and views? Yes, and that is precisely why the University of Michigan’s racist policies should be ended. The greatest variety would come from admitting classes of 1,200 unique individuals, each encouraged to see themselves as individuals rather than members of rival groups, tribes or races.
The greatest variety would also come from selecting professors with a wide variety of social, political and other views. How much “diversity” exists in the typical university faculty that includes a Lesbian Marxist, an Hispanic Marxist, a transgender Marxist, a feminist Marxist and a black Marxist? The monolithic, leftist faculty on today’s campuses makes a mockery of what both “diversity” and the “university” are supposed to be.
When does diversity become a MAJORITY in the universities eyes?
After the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is established by the glorious People's Revolution.
In other words, this is a sore that the Left will pick at forever.
Not agreeing or disagreeing with him, because a) I haven't read the cases, and b) not being a lawyer, I probably wouldn't understand the fine points anyway, but he thought that the statement that race was only one of a myriad of factors to be used in admission was not that big an issue, and because the Court did NOT overturn state laws, it was a victory for federalism.
Proponents of affirmative action discrimination continually make this assertion but I have yet to see evidence that it is true, either in the form of a comprehensive, peer-reviewed scientific study which makes use of accepted and well-understood methodology, or even a preponderence of anecdotal evidence "from the trenches". I have been in the trenches of university education for going on 25 years now and I feel comfortable saying that this mantra of "diversity is good for learning" has no basis in reality. What does is the discipline a student brings to his/her studies in attending classes and completing assignments, and the effort said student is willing to put forth to master the material. Diversity of the class was totally irrelevant.
I'm not saying individuality is bad, or having pride in one's national or cultural heritage. Its just that it doesn't make any difference in a learning environment. Whatever benefit a person derives from their uniqueness as an individual, or sense of solidarity and unity they might derive from some notion of their group identity, must come from within, not imposed from without.
Accordingly, I will challenge at every opportunity this mindless diversity mantra. The press dares not challenge it. Conservative political leaders seem reluctant to challenge it, probably for fear of being branded with the "R" word. Until we base public policy on facts and reason instead of unchallenged, feel-good emotionalism, there will continue to be needless and harmful divisiveness.
Excellent point. But don't expect an answer. "Diversity" is just a code word anyway for racism in the world of colors and licentiousness in the world of morality (homosexuality).
The last bastion of racism in America will be our college campuses.
I guess Ponte doesn't know anything about urban welfare departments, public schools, transit authorities, prison authories, multinational corporations, ... or ...
The claim that higher ed is an island of intolerance in a sea of freedom, is a GOP cliche that is as dishonest as a New York Times editorial.
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