RIGHT SPEAK: An End to Racial Preferences at Last?

Brian Snyder/Reuters

The Supreme Court could be ready to rule that racial discrimination is illegal, even if it is purportedly done for a good cause.

America has a race problem. It has always had a race problem. Slavery, as many have observed, is America’s original sin. The challenge that will confront the new Roberts Court is how far it will allow government to make amends for that sin, while preventing a new elite of social engineers from jury-rigging the right racial balances — all in the name of a racial diversity that has suddenly became an end of a just society, rather than merely a means. As with its passages on religion, the Second Amendment, or the role of the courts, the Constitution’s command is relatively clear. It is the Court’s past failures to live up to principle that has kept the issue in doubt, but the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh may finally put it to rest.

More than 150 years after the end of slavery, 60 years after the end of public-school segregation, and two years after America’s first black president left the Oval Office, accusations of racism fill our airwaves and screens. Democrats fresh off a solid midterm victory in Congress still claim that the suppression of minority voting cost them governorships and Senate seats, despite voter turnout that reached heights not seen since 1914. On the other hand, those same Democrats argue that governments should use racial data to draw voter districts and hand out government contracts, and argue that state and local police harbor such racial animus against minorities as to shoot them at high rates.

Meanwhile, Asian students have uncovered evidence that Harvard University has used ridiculous stereotypes to engineer the right racial balances in its admissions process. As a recent lawsuit against the Ivy League school has revealed, Asian Americans consistently make up just 19 percent of the student body, despite an increasing percentage of Asian-American college students nationwide. Asians score higher than any other group on academic criteria and extracurricular activities. If academic merit alone determined admissions, the university admitted that Asians would make up 43 percent of the student body, about the same level reached at the University of California at Berkeley after California ended affirmative action by popular initiative.