“Our Constitution is color-blind”
Justice John Marshall Harlan
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision declaring “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal”, the infrastructure which had sustained 165 years of American race-based social, political and economic institutions began to crumble. This process, which initially focused on American blacks, eventually encompassed other racial, ethnic, and gender groups whose members have been victims of officially-sanctioned and/or informal discrimination.
For people who had not suffered under the yoke of discrimination, these changes were often disturbing and revolutionary. However, for those victims of repression whose lives had been regulated and restricted by such institutionalized prejudice, progress was painfully slow.
As the civil rights movement gained momentum, activists adopted a strategy which assumed if enough laws were enacted, discrimination could be eradicated from the American landscape. Among their more popular remedies has been the concept of racial-, ethnic-, gender and sexual orientation-based preferences … based on the rationale such cures compensate current members of these groups for the inequities of past injustices. Where specific minorities were effectively excluded from basic social, economic and/or political opportunities, short-term preferential remedies became a realistic way to bring victims of discrimination into the American mainstream.
Unfortunately, as with most government programs, the size, scope, duration and cost of minority preference programs grew unchecked. The activists’ agenda now incorporates such concepts as workplace quotas, proportionality in legislative matters, fair racial cross-sections on juries, multiculturalism, politically correct speech and lower standards of performance for members of targeted racial/ethnic populations.
Their latent messages are clear and dangerous. On the one hand, they imply people of one racial or ethnic group are incapable of understanding, representing, judging or even treating fairly members of another group. It also suggests victims of discrimination may not be as competent as the population as a whole. Tragically, many minorities and non-minorities alike have accepted this nonsense as gospel. In truth, however, their class-divisive, enclave philosophy only exacerbates the problem its proponents seek to eliminate.
Unexpectedly, however, in its final opinion of its 1993 session, the Supreme Court may have abandoned the concept of providing preferential remedies to end or compensate for racial-, ethnic- and gender-based discrimination and/or inequities. In its Shaw v Reno ruling, the nation’s highest court struck down the gerrymandering which created a convoluted (black) Congressional district in North Carolina exclusively along racial lines.
Critics immediately denounced the decision as turning back the clock on civil rights. Vocally passionate, they decry the Court’s ruling as another symptom of the racial divisiveness which permeates our society.
Their fears are unfounded! Moreover, in their zeal to eliminate the prejudice and oppression which has been endured by some segments of our society, they have been quick to overlook the injustices which their remedies may, and often do, impose on others.
The Court has neither condoned nor encouraged discrimination of any sort! Rather, it has strengthened the Constitutional notion of equal protection, as well as similar ideals in the nation’s body of laws, both of which contain numerous prohibitions against all forms of discrimination, whether based on race, ethnicity, religion, or gender.
The Supreme Court’s ruling was wise and correct. There is no room in American society for discrimination or any nature … including the subtle discrimination which is an inevitable outgrowth of preference based remedies. Moreover, government sanctioned public policies based on race, ethnic background or gender is an anathema to the fundamental beliefs of most Americans who subscribe to the concepts of equity, fairness, equal protection and equal treatment for all.
Regretfully, prejudice and discrimination still exist in America. Its institutional vestiges can be purged from the nation’s laws by prudent legislative action or judicial review. However, the biases held by individuals can not be removed so easily. Their elimination will only come through education, interaction and a feeling our society is color-blind and ethnically neutral.
Only then will America become a land where its people be judged not “by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
