Since 1986, the third Monday in January has been a national holiday in honor of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. One wonders what this man, dead nearly 35 years, would think of the present status of race relations in the United States. Consider some contemporary issues.
Just a few days ago, the Bush administration filed two amicus curiae briefs with the US Supreme Court, asking the Court to declare unconstitutional certain race-preference undergraduate and law school admissions programs at the University of Michigan. Among the precepts: More points are awarded to the applicant for merely being a member of a preferred race, than for getting a perfect score on the SAT! Rejection letter and dubious acceptance stories are all over talk radio, including several in which wealthy White Anglo families adopt a Latino infant, who is raised with every advantage, but still garners a college admissions boost from their irrelevant ethnicity.
Assuming that diversity is such a desirable goal in itself–a position that many, including this writer, do not hold–then there are other, more equitable ways to achieve it. Solicitor General Theodore Olson noted that, “If the university genuinely seeks candidates with diverse experiences and viewpoints, it can focus on numerous race-neutral factors, including a history of overcoming disadvantage, geographic origin, socio-economic status, or other factors.”
Who can forget the infamous OJ Simpson acquittal of 1995? In a striking example of affirmative action jurisprudence, an obviously guilty defendant gets off, to send a message to the White establishment. Notwithstanding that Simpson was hardly an oppressed minority, it was never elucidated by the normally loquacious liberal/race baiting pundits how his incredible good fortune made the tiniest improvement in the lives of legitimate members of the Black underclass. But, if you’re looking for logic and reason in any discussion of American racial matters, you’re probably also waiting for the ghost of Hubert Humphrey to eat the very documents codifying Affirmative Action, way back in the early 1970’s. This he promised to do if quotas ever resulted from the new law.
Even though Humphrey died in 1978, he was undoubtedly aware that quotas, especially in college admissions and government employment opportunities, were already in place. His uncharacteristic silence would portent thirty years of race baiting from the Democratic party, and there is no end in sight. Or is there?
The social engineering started by Woodrow Wilson, and accelerated by FDR and the rest, played out amidst a virtual hallelujah chorus, sung in perfect harmony by a worshipping information mandarin class. It is comic, from a civil rights perspective, that Wilson, FDR, and probably Truman were inveterate racists, but they were Democrats, so all is forgiven. Nonetheless, there was precious little media dissent from 1912 until the surge in conservative talk radio, that happened in the mid-1990’s. It would take the popularization of the Internet to synergize this dissent to the point where it can now take on the nearly monolithic elite liberal media.
Following the super landslide 1972 presidential election, New Yorker movie critic Pauline Kael expressed disbelief that Richard Nixon could be the victor. After all, she said, she didn’t know anyone who voted for him. Her outrageously ignorant, inbred, and self-absorbed remarks pretty much went unchallenged.
Compare that to the present case of the nonsensical “Buying SUV’s aids the terrorists” TV spots. Proponents Arianna Huffington, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Norman Lear have been attacked without mercy in the new media.
What will the Dems do, now that they really have to compete in the marketplace of ideas? I hope they continue to lose, whine about it, and blame everyone but themselves. Perhaps then, at long last, those of us on the Right can turn the tide.