It’s an interesting insight into Slate’s liberal bias – to which it’s fully entitled and doesn’t really disclaim – that the two writers they pick to analyze the Supreme Court’s end-of-term decisions are both pro-racial discrimination liberals. The good news is that they’re both wonderful writers and smart as whips. Dahlia Lithwick’s strength, however, is not just her sense of humor but intellectual honesty. Here she weighs in on Sandra Day O’Connor’s complete incoherence:
Like you, I was terrified that today might have seen a thick dark cloud blot out all the good that affirmative action programs have achieved over the decades.
But intellectual honesty doesn’t let me accept O’Connor’s basic ends-justifies-the-means approach to upholding the principle. And so much of your analysis today suggests that this is what’s best about O’Connor’s opinion: She got it morally right, even where she’s logically wrong. As you put it: Powell’s opinion in Bakke is riddled with logical flaws but is nevertheless “wise.” Why? Because we need affirmative action. And so even if a program singles out only three traditionally underrepresented races, and offers them special advantages under the fiction of fostering “educational diversity,” we’ll laud it because the alternative – doing away with such programs – is intolerable to us. But then, let’s be honest. Justice Thomas is correct in his dissent when he argues that “diversity” means nothing and can’t be the cornerstone of affirmative action jurisprudence. And Justice Scalia is right when he says (or rather bellows … ) that today’s decisions in Gratz and Grutter will do nothing but further cloud and confuse the affirmative action debate for years to come.
She’s right. But why is a racially un-diverse but intellectually multi-faceted campus such a bad thing? Why is a world without racial discrimination so “intolerable”?
The Dish 