That is the only way to sensibly interpret their landmark ruling this week.

The case in question essentially boils down to children in two school districts being denied access to particular government run schools on the basis of their race.  Any rational person might see a problem with that, but the school districts thought that discrimination was the best way to promote diversity, which itself is a goal that serves no useful purpose other than to make racial bean counters happy.

Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, summarized my idealistic view on race relations.  He wrote, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”  It’s kind of hard to argue with that one.

Roberts continued to spew even more of his vile common sense.

“Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on color of their skin. The school districts in these cases have not carried the heavy burden of demonstrating that we should allow this once again — even for very different reasons.”

The Left has reflexively proclaimed this decision to be the “upending” of Brown v. Board, which is a shaky argument at best.  The court ruled that schools couldn’t discriminate on the basis of race.  The Brown court ruled that schools couldn’t discriminate on the basis of race.  Seems pretty consistent to me.

What is lost in the argument is the absurdity of how much our society focuses on race rather than characteristics more meritous of such governmental meddling (if ever warranted).  Money and social circumstances (i.e. good parents) have a substantive impact on the odds of a child being able to obtain a good education.  In our government run, districted school system poor schools (fiscally speaking) follow poor people and the parents are powerless to seek out better opportunities due to their financial situation.  Supportive parents who instill the importance of education and adherence to the law are of incalculable value.  The problem is that the government cannot easily or accurately quantify who is “rich enough” or which parents are “good enough.”  Instead we carry with us the legacy of using a terrible proxy, skin tone, for those (and other) very real factors that affect educational success.

Governmental social engineering is not the key to improving race relations.  Constantly telling people that we’re all equal, but some deserve special privileges simply due to skin color defeats the intended goal.

My personal experience tells me that the free market (as we know it) is the best means to achieve racial harmony.  In a truly free market companies that choose not to hire the best talent available are ultimately punished by the market when competitors hire the spurned individuals.  Individuals and businesses who choose to discriminate against anyone for any reason (skin color, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) will lose to those who do not.  In the end bigots are marginalized or converted to tolerant people as they interact with others they might have previously chosen not to associate with.

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This entry was posted by Brian on Friday, June 29th, 2007 at 9:38 pm and is filed under Legal, Race Card. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.