symposium

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 14, 2001 | by Shirley Strum Kenny, | Ward Connerly

In essence, what the university argued is that any black student in a college class will bring a "black" perspective to the discussion and the learning experience; it doesn't matter if he attended an impoverished inner-city high school or a chic prep school -- black skin creates diversity.

By doing this, the University of Michigan has done little more than "profile" their applicants no differently than some law-enforcement officers who stop motorists for questioning because they are black or Hispanic. The American justice system doesn't allow a lawyer to use a prospective juror's race as a factor in jury selection, nor does it allow a jury to consider an individual's race during criminal sentencing. These race-based presumptions violate our sense of fairness and colorblind justice.

Achieving diversity by stereotyping students based on their skin color does not enhance anyone's educational experience -- it diminishes it. It belittles the mystery and the wonder and the dignity of each individual human being.

One cannot help but recognize also that Justice Powell's racial-diversity rationale for preferences coincided with the growth of racial separateness on campus. Ethnic dorms, black graduation ceremonies and race-based student-activity centers are the norm at elite schools today. When universities bow to the creed of racial diversity, perhaps that is when students start to notice -- and heed --skin color.

Fortunately, these cases are approaching the day of judicial reckoning. It would be tragic -- and dangerous -- if the Supreme Court allows a university to use race in admissions, even as a "tie-breaker" in a contest between qualified applicants. If it does, it will be endorsing the belief that skin color really does tell us something fundamental about an individual. This is hauntingly comparable to arguments made by former Birmingham, Ala., police commissioner Bull Connor 35 years ago.

And the wait for a resolution to this issue won't be a long one. Courts in Texas, Georgia, Washington state and Michigan are in various stages of litigation to sort out this legal confusion. Even if the high court rules in favor of colorblind principles and strikes down race-based admissions policies, the nation's real work will have just begun. Closing the academic-achievement gap between whites and Asians on the one hand, and blacks and Hispanics on the other, is the unspoken reason these policies exist in the first place.

Closing the gap is the real compelling governmental interest.

Connerly, author of Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preference, is founder and chairman of the American Rights Institute, a national, nonprofit organization.