Keller @ Large: Supreme Court affirmative action ruling is the new 'Don't ask, don't tell'
BOSTON - Leave it to this retrograde Supreme Court to resurrect a moldy oldie from the 1990s - the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that forced gay, lesbian and bisexual people to hide their sexual orientation if they wanted to serve in the military.
That backwards policy, instituted by President Bill Clinton in 1993, was scrapped in 2010. But that ridiculous game of dodgeball is essentially what the Court has initiated with its ruling Thursday that the race-based admissions policies of Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional.
As a matter of law, the six-member majority may be right. (Read the ruling for yourself here.) The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment banning racial discrimination is pretty explicit (read it here); ignoring it has led to some of the most grotesque episodes in American history such as the travesty of "separate but equal" public accomodations based on race.
And the court found little doubt that's the game these universities were playing. At the tail end of the admissions process, the majority ruling notes, "applicants that Harvard considers cutting at this stage are placed on the 'lop list,' which contains only four pieces of information: legacy status, recruited athlete status, financial aid eligibility, and race. In the Harvard admissions process, 'race is a determinative tip for' a significant percentage 'of all admitted African American and Hispanic applicants.' UNC has a similar admissions process."
In order to maintain their desired diversity levels, the academic bureaucrats will now have to work harder to pretend they're color blind. They could do what the Boston Latin School did recently when their plan for diversifying admissions was challenged - use zip codes instead as a way to grant more access to students of color. Or they could start contributing their considerable resources to finally addressing the real issue underlying lack of diversity in elite colleges - public school systems that too often can't properly prepare minority students to meet race-neutral admissions criteria.
Conservatives who've been pushing for an end to explicit affirmative action for decades may be popping the champagne today, just as they did one year ago when the same court threw out the right to an abortion. But they may want to ponder the political consequences of that move, credited with fueling the surprisingly-strong Democratic showing in last fall's midterm election.
For Black and Latino citizens who've seen affirmative action as the least the white establishment can do to atone for centuries of discrimination, voting for Joe Biden is suddenly looking like a much more attractive option than it might have been yesterday.