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Race preferences cannot be justified
By Scott Bushee
Published:
Monday, January 20, 2003
Scott Bushee -- Staff Column
Affirmative action is racism.
Let me repeat that: Affirmative action is racism.
What is affirmative action? In many cases, it is giving preference to a member of a certain race for being a member of that race. Sometimes this is done through quotas. At Michigan Law, it was done by rating potential undergraduates of certain races 20 points higher than those of other races on a 150-point admission test.
Regardless of how it is implemented, the cost of preferring some based on race is exclusion of others based on their race.
In other words, racism.
Therefore, support of affirmative action is support of government sponsored race-based discrimination.
So now we come to the crucial question: Under what circumstances is it proper for the government to create and enforce racist laws?
Objectors to affirmative action laws answer that it is never proper for a government, especially a government that claims to be based on individual rights, to implement racist laws. Racism is such a wrong, such an evil, that it should never be implemented by the government regardless of who benefits from it.
Instead, what we need is individualism and equal protection under the law.
Individualism does not have time for racism. It does not judge others by what group they happen to belong to. Its one criteria of worth is the content of each unique person's character.
We must strive for a colorblind society, and those of us who oppose affirmative action realize that we cannot go forward by going backward.
The supporters of affirmative action, most of whom also agree that we should strive for a colorblind community, disagree that the 14th Amendment's guarantee of the government to not "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," is the best way to get us there. They say that it is morally right to deny equal protection under the law for certain reasons.
Specifically, they make the claim that racism is good when it is done to make up for past racism or when it is done to create diversity on campus.
Their first claim is itself racist. White and Asian applicants, whom Michigan Law thinks it is OK to discriminate against, did not themselves discriminate against the people that affirmative action is set up to help. Therefore, this is race-based collective punishment, or racism.
The diversity argument is even weaker. Even if it can be shown that we can gain from diversity, is this a strong enough argument for violating the Constitution and enacting government sponsored racism? The answer is clearly no.
Affirmative action is wrong. Ends do not justify means. And even if they did, these ends are themselves unjustifiable.
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