Why the Waw-Uh Never Will End
The Waw-uh, as some in my neck of the woods probably still call the Late Unpleasantness of 1861 to 1865 may be over officially but depend on the federal government to keep the action going for as long as possible. The U. S. Supreme Court’s decision Monday to kick a college affirmative action case back to the lower courts for more intensive review reminds us of the interminableness of the issue known roughly as what’s-your-race-where-do-you-want-to-go-to-college. Neither the white student, Abigail Fisher, who filed the suit originally, nor the University of Texas, which rejected her application, finds repose in the court’s 7 to 1 judgment that the same legal ground long trodden down over needs some more treading.
The Waw-uh, as some in my neck of the woods probably still call the Late Unpleasantness of 1861 to 1865 may be over officially but depend on the federal government to keep the action going for as long as possible.
The U. S. Supreme Court’s decision Monday to kick a college affirmative action case back to the lower courts for more intensive review reminds us of the interminableness of the issue known roughly as what’s-your-race-where-do-you-want-to-go-to-college. Neither the white student, Abigail Fisher, who filed the suit originally, nor the University of Texas, which rejected her application, finds repose in the court’s 7 to 1 judgment that the same legal ground long trodden down over needs some more treading.
Can a university not just accept but actually prefer students of a particular race, is the question at hand. What’s the right racial ratio for a student body? How do we get there?
Note: Not the right ratio of the motivated to the plodding; the serious to the party-going; the middle class to the lower class to the upper class; or other such peripherally important stuff. We have to get the racial ratio right, whatever “right” means, or draw the unwanted attention of the federal courts, and a federal bureaucracy charged with the mission of wiping out the legacy of slavery, whatever wiping out a legacy means.
The University of Texas, which denied Abigail Fisher admission while opting to let in less qualified candidates, is a non-federal enterprise, to be sure. But the whole world, it sometimes seems, operates to some degree under federal jurisdiction: in the present instance, judicial interpretations of the 14th Amendment and the civil rights laws laying on local people – the sort who operate state universities - the obligation to achieve racial “balance.” Balance, as contrasted with opportunity or guarantees of impartiality.
The flag-wavingest, rebel-yellingest ex-Confederate you’d want to see, assuming you wanted to see one, would have to acknowledge in the year of grace 2013 the distinct justice and civic virtue of cutting away old legal barriers to individual achievement irrespective of race. The irony of the piece is the failure of the federal government to acknowledge that the job’s ultimate success rests with individual Americans’ figuring out for themselves how best to proceed henceforth.
So hung up, when it comes to racial policy, is the federal government on distrust of others that the government can’t seem to conceive of anyone’s doing the right thing without compulsion.
As with racial ratios, so with voting policy. The other big civil rights case on the Supreme Court’s docket this year – to be decided, possibly, before these words see print – concerns Congress’ insistence on overseeing elections in the Southern states, on the theory that you can’t trust these reformed Confederates. Any more maybe than you can trust South Chicago, but that’s, um, another story.
Nearly half a century after passage of the first Voting Rights Act, the federal government continues to make and enforce highly specific rules regarding polling places and ballot make-up – pretty trivial stuff against Jim Crow tactics like literacy tests and the all-white primary. Southern voting officials, marking this astounding progress, would appreciate the freedom, and the trust, to carry on unmolested from the present point.
The government, on the other hand, wants to keep the Waw-uh going just for the sake, it would seem, of keeping it going. Dig down a bit, of course, and you strike the real reason, hard. Declaring the war finally over, and leaving the management of local affairs largely to local people, would mean renouncing a central purpose of modern federal policy. To wit, signaling blacks and whites and everyone else that the local yokels can’t ever earn their government’s trust or indulgence, never mind how they behave.
The bigness of big government isn’t accidental. It stems from big government’s unwillingness ever – ever! – to lay aside a power or policy, once taken up. This is singularly bad news to impart. Worse, it’s not even news any more.
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