It Is Probably Too Late for Mr. Bakke

For those who may not remember, California v. Bakke was the Supreme Court case that legitimized the principle of affirmative action in 1978.  It was another case of judicial activism.  I doubt though that Hubert Humphrey actually ate his hat as promised upon passage of the Civil Rights Act. While I support the act itself, which is intended to be colorblind, I have never agreed with affirmative action quotas.

Sultan Knish, aka Daniel Greenfield, writes about Harvard's Racist Diversity over at his blog. Harvard is being sued by 20,000 students who have been kept out of Harvard by a system of affirmative action. But as Greenfield points out:

The success of Asian students exposes the racist lie on which all the claims of white privilege are built. If America is a racist society that excludes non-whites, why do Asians succeed and thrive in it?

America is not a white supremacist society. It’s a fair and just society whose meritocracy has only been compromised by affirmative action. The lawsuit by Students for Fair Admissions reveals what racism in America really looks like. If you want to see institutional racism, skip the trailer parks where the last of the KKK wizards collect their food stamps, and look at Harvard’s affirmative action quotas.

Asian success represents a unique threat to the cult of diversity. Affirmative action is essentially a collectivist scheme for redistributing college admissions, jobs and business opportunities by race. To be in favor of it, and of any socialist scheme, you have to believe in your inability to succeed on your own.

...snip...

That’s the essential question of the old debate between capitalism and socialism through the lens of identity politics. Some groups are willing to suppress individual merit for collective privileges even though accepting them sharply caps their individual ability to succeed. Others want off the plantation.

Socialism offered to cap individual potential in exchange for collective security. Affirmative action offers racial groups the same poisoned gift. It claims to do this in the name of fighting white privilege and institutional white supremacy. But what better tool of white supremacy could there be than seducing racial minorities into abandoning their best and brightest by offering them racial quotas and caps.

In the end, maybe if you don't believe in your own success, why should the larger society?