After the Supreme Court’s recent ruling to keep affirmative action alive for another 25 years, I thought of changing my name to Clarence, Karl or Kobe. OK, maybe not Kobe, but at least my chances of getting into law school would improve. Swing voter Justice Sandra Day O’Connor would be the first to admit this to be true. After all, it was her vote that, unfortunately, kept the door open for “this cruel farce of racial discrimination,” according to Justice Clarence Thomas in his dissenting opinion from the recent controversial case Grutter v. Bollinger.
The petitioner, Barbara Grutter, is a white Michigan resident who applied to Michigan Law School in 1996 with a 3.8 GPA and 161 LSAT score. She claimed that her application was rejected because the law school gives minorities “a significantly greater chance of admission than students with similar credentials from disfavored racial groups.”
There are several reasons why the court should have eradicated affirmative action or racial discrimination, whatever you choose to call it. Chief among them is that the use of race in school admissions violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which states in part that “no state shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
In 1986, the court found unconstitutional the use of race in hiring minority teachers on the grounds that a racially “diverse” faculty could improve students’ education and that they could provide “role models” for students. The court determined that the use of race violated the Equal Protection Clause.
In Grutter v. Bollinger, Thomas wrote, “The Constitution abhors classification based on race…because every time the government places citizens on racial registers and makes race relevant to the provision of burdens or benefits, it demeans us all.”
Affirmative action is demeaning to blacks and other minorities because they will always wonder if they were accepted into a school based on their own merits rather than the color of their skin. In the case at hand, a substantial portion of blacks are admitted to the law school because of discrimination and are consequently viewed as “undeserving.” Racial discrimination “stamp[s] minorities with a badge of inferiority,” Thomas writes.
It is especially demeaning to minorities who make it on their own.
“Who can differentiate between those who belong and those who do not?” Racial discrimination “unfairly marks those blacks who would succeed without discrimination,” Thomas says.
Affirmative action demeans whites or other more qualified candidates who would be admitted if they had dark skin, a factor over which they have no control. Marianne Jennings, professor of legal and ethical studies at Arizona State University, says that is why “merit in admission is the great equalizer, period.”
The Michigan Law School contends that race is a key factor in admissions because a “critical mass” of minority students could not be enrolled if undergraduate GPAs and LSAT scores were the deciding factors. But shouldn’t admission be based on factors of merit, not on biological factors? If any individual, regardless of race, religion or gender, has not performed well on an undergraduate level and fails to offer a competitive LSAT score, should he or she attend an elite law school?
Liberals on the bench say the law school has “a compelling interest in securing the educational benefits of a diverse student body.” Thomas cites a previous case where “pressing public necessity may sometimes justify the existence of [racial discrimination],” but argues that “only those measures the State must take to provide a bulwark against anarchy, or to prevent violence, will constitute a ‘pressing public necessity.'”
There is also no evidence to suggest that diversity on campus enhances the learning experience or provides the “educational benefit” the law school seeks to achieve.
Justice Antonin Scalia writes, “if properly considered an ‘educational benefit’ at all, it is surely not one that is either uniquely relevant to law school or uniquely ‘teachable’ in a formal educational setting.”
There is evidence to suggest that affirmative action, while perhaps well-intentioned, is actually detrimental to those it tries to help. If an individual is admitted to an elite institution of higher education such as Michigan primarily on the basis of the color of his or her skin, but lacks the ability to perform at a satisfactory level, what good has it done him?
Critics rightly contend that the problem must be addressed as early as grade school, not the college level. National reading exams recently revealed that 60 percent of low-income fourth graders are functionally illiterate and racial achievement gaps between white and minority students are widening.
In his dissenting opinion, Thomas quotes Frederick Douglass from an address to a group of abolitionists almost 140 years ago.
“What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us…I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us!…give [us] a chance to stand on [our] own legs!…Let [us] alone!”
In 25 years, the Constitution will mean the same thing it does today, and racial discrimination, as employed by the Michigan Law School, will still be in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. Justice O’Connor will be off of the bench and minorities will have a chance to “stand on [their] own legs.”
And I will have changed my name to Karl.