First read this: http://legalinsurrection.com/2015/12/supreme-court-preview-will-affirmative-action-survive/.
This blog considers the mistaken view of “diversity” that is virtually hegemonic in our society, thanks to the “moderate” strategy that prefers “social cohesion” over individual intellectual and emotional development to achieve some semblance of “authenticity.” (My focus is on “racial” diversity.)
At stake are contending views of “fairness” shaped by cultural nationalist threats during the late 1960s, to which liberals, leftists, and “moderate conservatives” simply caved, even though they should have known better. (For “moderate conservative” attitudes consider such outposts of mild dissent as Fox News Channel and the Wall Street Journal.)
The current case before the Supreme Court deals with the “diversity” or “affirmative action” policies that have almost erased prior notions of scholarship: i.e., that competition, not racial, gender, or sexual preference bean counting, would be the criterion to be protected in college admissions.
By the time that students are in the application process for college entrance, it is simply too late to compensate for parental neglect/anti-intellectualism/indifference in the early years, including childhood, elementary school, and high school. But in the interest of “social peace” liberals (ever attuned to teacher unions and their versions of child psychology) have made the argument that “racial” diversity is indispensable to a proper education.
Forget the fact that the Left once opposed the very notion of “race”; those days are gone forever. What is surprising is that so many “moderates” fail to support scholastic achievement against the assumptions of multiculturalism—that ethnicity (or “race”) should be “balanced” in the interest of their versions of “social justice.” Need I remind the reader that multiculturalism depends on views of “national character” that should have been discredited after two world wars, but were not? See https://clarespark.com/2014/07/20/national-character-does-it-exist/.
Hence the claims of [inherently oppressive] “white supremacy” are out of bounds in our universities. The aim of good liberals and many hard leftists is clearly the supremacy of “persons of color,” following, they say, demographic changes in the [uncontrollable] big cities. Such feckless pandering should be beneath ostensibly deep thinkers, but is not.
That it is obviously racist to enforce different intellectual criteria for college entrance, depending on “race,” should be obvious. Can the US remain competitive in such a dumbed-down society?
Similar quotas were common in the 1920s and 1930s, directed then against [over-represented] Jews, whose religion upholds scholarship above all other values. We can see how well that turned out.
The Clare Spark Blog 
The outcome of diversity politics in the long run might well be civil strife, which seems to run counter to a “moderate” strategy.
Comment by wien1938 — April 23, 2017 @ 9:56 am |
I have long contended that justice based on identity is a perversion of actual justice. Justice based on identity removes the blindfold just as justice without enforcement removes the sword.
Comment by Terbreugghen — December 9, 2015 @ 6:25 pm |