One of the great things about being a “liberal” is that you get to choose what to believe in. Oh, I know: in the ’60’s and ’70’s, many liberals didn’t like other liberals making up their own minds about key issues. The embrace of “choice” often didn’t include unorthodox beliefs.
Affirmative action may one of the hangovers of that era. Coming back to America from a long stretch living overseas, I thought affirmative action was patronizing. I still do, though I understand the other side of the issue and have a lot of sympathy with it as a short-term partial solution.
Long term racism demands more personal than institutional change. We all know people on both right and left who publicly embrace the institutional change while still whispering little racist remarks or jokes.
John Cassidy bemoans the Supreme Court’s decision to fall in line with racist retrenchers. Me, too. But I still have trouble with affirmative action as another kind of discrimination. Cassidy quotes from the statements of both Justice Kennedy (majority) and Justice Sotomayor (minority).
Kennedy:
In a society in which those lines are becoming more blurred, the attempt to define race based categories also raises serious questions of its own. Government action that classifies individuals on the basis of race is inherently suspect and carries the danger of perpetuating the very racial divisions the polity seeks to transcend.
Sotomayor:
The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination.
Kennedy keeps lousy company, but he’s not wrong in worrying about the classification of “individuals on the basis of race” as something that is “inherently suspect and carries the danger of perpetuating the very racial divisions the polity seeks to transcend…”
Sotomayor talks about applying the Constitution which seems quite distinct from the Court’s job of interpreting the Constitution. Actively applying the Constitution is something we depend on the Justice Department to do. Actively and regularly. But has Justice been doing its job? Maybe. Now and then. Sort of. Yawn: “These things take time…” or “There are budgetary concerns…” It seems to me that for at least thirty years DOJ has been, at best, sluggish while most of the time appearing to be corrupt and lazy.
In the end racism will be overcome by active individuals with the assistance of active legal arm of their government, not Fox couch potatoes and not blogger couch potatoes and not a ne’er-do-well, dusty Justice Department.
We aren’t out of the civil rights era if we still allow any citizens to be cheated of equal-opportunity education. And if we’re not out of the civil rights era, we need to be back in the streets along with federal marshals, not stuck at home, sitting on the couch and criticizing a moribund justice system and four repellent Supreme Court justices.
Cross-posted from Prairie Weather
graphic via shutterstock.com