To the Editor:
Jason L. Riley’s good article, “The ‘Diversity’ Defense” [April], is incorrect in stating that in the Bakke case (1978) four Justices of the Supreme Court ruled that the race-preference program at the medical school of the University of California at Davis was unconstitutional. What they ruled was that the program clearly violated Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination by institutions, like the medical school, that receive federal funds. There was therefore no need or occasion to reach the question of whether the program was also unconstitutional.
This is important because although the constitutional question might be considered debatable, the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s prohibition of racial discrimination could not be more plain. The refusal of Lewis Powell and the other four Justices to abide by the statute was an act of judicial bad faith inconsistent with the requirement of “good behavior” that is a condition of tenure on the Court—a clear example of the belief that a good enough end justifies any means.
Further, Powell’s opinion was much worse than “indecisive,” to use Mr. Riley’s term. It was self-contradictory, a foolish attempt by a “moderate” to wish the problem away by answering it both ways. Powell insisted, on the one hand, that the plaintiff, Alan Bakke, had the right to be considered for admission to the school “without regard to his race,” and, on the other hand, that it was permissible for the school to give preference to non-whites. This sort of reasoning has been typical not only of Powell but of the other good lawyers on the Supreme Court who decide the most basic issues of social policy for the nation as a whole.
Lino A. Graglia
University of Texas School
of Law
Austin, Texas
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To the Editor:
In his excellent article, Jason L. Riley may be too generous toward his targets. The “diversity” cult insists that racial diversity implies diversity of ideas and opinions, and so benefits all students on campus. But if this is the purported justification, why not demand that at least 20 percent of the members of every academic department at every university be neither leftists nor liberals, or that conservatives be represented on the faculty in numbers similar to their proportion in the population at large? In fact, many of those demanding quotas to establish diversity sit in ideologically monolithic university departments.
Where is the evidence that race is associated with original ideas about chemistry or accounting or medicine? And besides, why is every diversity program designed to grant preferences to blacks and Hispanics? Why not demand greater numbers of students or faculty members who are Armenians, Hungarians, Finns, or Basques?
Steven Plaut
Haifa, Israel
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To the Editor:
Jason L. Riley notes that blacks and whites often do not take the same classes at our universities, a fact that should engender doubts about how much actual diversity there is in the classrooms of mixed-race schools. I have observed that the two races generally eat, socialize, and sleep apart as well. This is at the insistence of the black students, whose presence somehow is supposed to bring new perspective to the whites they shun.
Richard H. Shulman
New York City
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To the Editor:
Heartiest congratulations on “The ‘Diversity’ Defense.” One can only hope that the judges on the appeals court read this piece before issuing an opinion.
Jay Bergman
Central Connecticut State
University
New Britain, Connecticut
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Jason L. Riley writes:
Lino A. Graglia is correct, of course, about the grounds on which four Supreme Court justices in Bakke rejected the admissions policy of the University of California’s medical school. As Mr. Graglia notes, the program so plainly violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act that there was no need to address its constitutionality. Still, one wishes they had done so. As Steven Plaut’s amusing reductio ad absurdum illustrates, it is past time for the Court to clarify the matter.
Richard H. Shulman’s observation that “the two races generally eat, socialize, and sleep apart . . . at the insistence of black students” is too glib. To begin with, such self-segregating group behavior is hardly unusual, or limited to blacks, as a visit to the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn, where 40,000 Russian immigrants congregate, will readily confirm.
But Mr. Shulman’s history also fails him. From slavery’s demise to Reconstruction to Jim Crow, it was whites who insisted on separation, and black compliance was the only option. Nor was there anything “general” about it: under the umbrella of the Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision, the highly specific precepts of segregation called for separate schools, separate bathrooms, separate restaurants and water fountains and swimming pools, and so on.
True, these restrictions were officially repealed in the 1950’s and 60’s, and the Supreme Court finally struck down miscegenation laws in 1967. But at least in some quarters of our society, old attitudes linger. Just this past July, a Washington Port/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard University national poll reported that 46 percent of white Americans believe people should marry within their race, while only 21 percent of blacks share this view. When whites were asked, “How would you feel if someone in your family married a black?,” 55 percent said they would approve. When blacks were asked the same question with regard to whites, 86 percent said they would approve. Such figures do not suggest that it is blacks who are resisting integration.
Certainly, black separatism exists, and is as deserving or undeserving of fair comment as its counterpart among other races and ethnic groups, past and present. And yes, given a choice, many black students do choose to “eat, socialize, and sleep” with other blacks. But frankly, unless their college has a policy to the contrary, that is their business.
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