Tuesday, June 24, 2003

A little more on the Bollinger cases:

In Justice Thomas' dissent to the Grutter decision, he begins with this priceless quote from Frederick Douglass:

"What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us... . I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! ... And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! ... [Y]our interference is doing him positive injury."

Unfortunately, this great man never lived to see the 20th century. But can we not all agree that his words are sorely needed in the 21st?

The legal issues aside, it seems abhorrent to me that political and intellectual elites can socially engineer favored races in this country. Note that Asians, a minority for sure, were not beneficiaries of the racial spoils system in Ann Arbor. So are we to believe that blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, etc are discriminated against because of the color of their skin, but somehow Asians have escaped this discrimination? Or, are they discriminated against like the rest, but have figured out some way of succeeding in the face of it? The implications of either of these are many. Part of me calls for an articulate leader in the Asian-American community to speak out on the affirmative action ruling and their second-class status as an unfavored minority. But isn't that the real problem? Maybe the reason Asians succeed and do not require government jerryrig to attend top Universities is because they do not present the noxious notion that race equals ideology. There is no large Asian-American lobby group. I know of no Asian equivalent to the racial brigand Jesse Jackson. Could it be that Asians succeed because they are not vested to the notion that the white world is out to get them? When is the last time you heard an Asian blame their conducting a crime on whites or the system, etc?

It seems like the Asian-American community understand the words of Frederick Douglass. Unfortunately, some on the Supreme Court do not.

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