A case needn't be complicated to generate bad law.

Articles

David Allen Jared

A case needn't be complicated to generate bad law.
June 27, 2003

The United States Supreme Court amended the U.S. Constitution again this week--twice, and unilaterally. The two most glaring errors in interpretation in recent history took place in the Roe v. Wade decision in which Justice Brennan declared a non-existent right to "privacy" permitted a woman to kill her unborn child for any reason (or for no reason at all.) The second took place this week when Justice O'Conner declared "a compelling interest in providing a 'diverse' campus" gave universities the right to discriminate on the basis of race--a decision almost as bad as the old Plessy v. Ferguson which declared "separate but equal" to be constitutional--a decision which was later correctly overturned by the Brown v. Board of Education decision in the 50's. One would think that a Supreme Court Justice with 20 or so years on the bench would be smart enough to know that "diversity" is NOT a "compelling interest of the State" and, in fact, is never even referred to obliquely by our Constitution.

If anything, our Constitution specifically PROHIBITS the pursuit of "diversity" in the manner the SC found (by a vote of 5-4) to be "constitutional." Section 1 of the 14th Amendment says, in part, "...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." A university CANNOT provide "equal protection of the laws" if the university considers some persons, because of color or ethnicity, to "be more equal than others," which is what their pursuit of "diversity" has involved.

Abraham Lincoln once said, "You cannot cure evil by doing evil." Just as discrimination against people because they are black is a social and legal wrong, so is discrimination against people because they are white or Asian. To paraphrase President Lincoln, "You can't cure discrimination by discriminating!"

Having spent several years of my life ona college campus as a teacher, I can tell you that "diversity" isn't all it's cracked up to be. While I'll admit that there is some, small benefit to having a diverse student body in some classrooms, that's not universally true. In a chemistry classroom, of what possible value is a "diverse" student population? Science is science and having "diverse points of reference" is utterly irrelevant. My experience has been that OUTSIDE of the classrooms, students inevitably tend to self-segregate. Blacks socialize with other blacks, whites with whites, and Hispanics with other Hispanics. There is a BIT of co-mingling--particularly between the sexes--but not in any sense to be of value to the academic experience and THAT'S what we send our kids to university FOR--that academic experience.

Let it first be said that I consider the late Barbara Jordan to be one of the most well-spoken, articulate women of ANY race I've ever heard speak. However, I despair of our educational system when I listen to a black, college graduate talk about how he had to "ax permission" for something, or says, "We done it to 'em."

The Supreme Court has made another greivous error- -one that'll have to be corrected downstream somewhere, to be sure. If universities can give weight to a person's race when deciding on admissions, what's to say that someday otherwise well-qualified blacks will again be excluded from going to prestigious universities BECAUSE they're black. If we "bless" racial discrimination in ANY form, we leave the door OPEN to future discrimination in any form society chooses--even to the DETRIMENT of blacks, "native Americans" or Hispanics.

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