Last Friday I explained the Sixth Circuit’s embarrassing decision to strike down Michigan’s Proposal 2. President of the National Association of Scholars (and longtime PLF friend) Peter Wood, has been assembling similar reactions to the Sixth Circuit’s decision. For example, here is what Ward Connerly had to say:
There is no way to make sense of the decision handed down by the Sixth Circuit, except to say that elections have consequences. Unfortunately, in this case, the consequence is that eight judicial activists have defied the will of 58% of the Michigan electorate to embrace the continuation of race preferences – a paradigm that is being discredited with every passing day, except in the eyes of die-hard preference proponents. And, if our study of race in America teaches any lesson at all it is that justice cannot be denied forever. The ghost of George Wallace, who said “segregation now, segregation forever,” can certainly confirm this fact.
Peter Wood, who also authored Diversity: The Invention of a Concept, has written his own response to the Sixth Circuit’s decision. Here’s a snippet:
Under this logic, of course, wherever a racial preference now exists, it must continue to exist. Perhaps preferences can be retired after the racial group has vanished into the mists of demographic mixing, but even that is uncertain. The Pequots of Connecticut vanished from history in the 1635 Pequot War but were resurrected in 1986 to take advantage of a legal loophole that permitted a Native American group to run a bingo parlor. Today they are a thriving “people” in charge of the Foxwoods Resort Casino. Create incentives for racial group identity and chances are pretty good you will get more racial group identity. If the logic of the Sixth Circuit’s decision were to become the law of the land, we would be quite effectively writing a Racial Spoils Amendment into the U.S. Constitution.
Peter, also makes the very important point that we should not take victory in the Supreme Court for granted; we must vigorously fight for equality under the law.
But these are perilous times and those who expect the nation’s highest court to set things right had better be prepared to fight for that outcome. We need to pull together our best arguments and best resources, including public opinion, to prevent the establishment of a new rule of “racial preferences once, racial preferences always.”