Unhappily, the authors fall into the same trap as many conservatives. They argue that diversity policies somehow trespass Martin Luther King’s professed “dream” of a “colorblind society.” The implicit suggestion is that King would oppose diversity ideology and the anti-white, anti-Asian racial discrimination that underpins it. In fact, King strongly supported not only such leftist social engineering but also monetary reparations for blacks to compensate for past discrimination.
Writing about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to review a discrimination lawsuit filed against the University of Texas, two conservatives argue that efforts to achieve racial “diversity” on college campuses are nothing more than reverse discrimination against whites and Asians.
Roger Clegg, general counsel for the neoconservative Center for Equal Opportunity, and John Rosenberg, who writes the “Discriminations” blog, also argue that diversity policies reinforce stereotypes about blacks, put many in a position where they are doomed to fail, and harm Asians by keeping them out of top flight schools.
In August, the high court agreed to hear the case of Fisher v. University of Texas. Abigail Fisher sued the school because it refused her admission while permitting minority students with lower grades to matriculate. She argued that the policy violates her rights under the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled against her, and she appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Why “Diversity” Is Racial Discrimination
Clegg and Rosenberg offer 10 reasons why the court should decide in favor of Fisher’s lawsuit against UT. Academic Questions, the journal of the conservative National Association of Scholars, published their article in its fall issue.
Tops among them is that arguments for diversity as part of a “holistic” approach to admissions, meaning it is one of many factors a university considers when considering an applicant, are nonsense. “Whether prosaically defined as affirmative action or disguised by the powdered and perfumed sophistry of supposedly ‘holistic’ admissions practices (where, it is claimed, race is ‘only one of many factors’ considered), ‘diversity’ is discrimination based on race and ethnicity,” the pair write.
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