WHO ARE THE RACISTS NOW?

The Mau-Mauing at Harvard (John H. McWhorter, Spring 2002, City-Journal)

The dustup between Summers and Harvard's black superstars provoked a flurry of articles and op-eds earlier this year, but most of the coverage missed its true import. In how it played out, the controversy cast a cold light on how today's black academic experience-for students and teachers alike-remains faithful to two destructive orthodoxies: that for blacks, victimhood is a moral duty; and that, because of their history of oppression, blacks should get an exemption from the standards that apply to others. If Summers really intends to stand down these truly disrespectful and insulting notions, he's Doing the Right Thing. [...]

What may first have raised the antennae of the university's black professors was Summers's inaugural address as Harvard?s president. On the face of it, the talk included a ringing endorsement of racial equality. 'A century ago this was an institution where New England gentlemen taught other New England gentlemen,' Summers intoned. 'Today, Harvard is open to men and women of all faiths, all races, all classes, all states, all nations. As a result we offer a better education to better students who make us a better university.' Summers urged that the university offer full scholarships to all students who needed them, as opposed to the more selective current policy-a change that would help many black students.

But Summers committed a big no-no in the eyes of diversity fans: he strongly defended the ideal of educational excellence. 'We will also need to assure that we do not compromise our high standards,' Summers said. 'Our goal will be to extend excellence without ever diluting it.' According to the diversity paradigm, any such talk of standards and excellence is elitist-and thus anti-black. The tacit belief underlying the racial preferences regime is that blacks just can't compete, regardless of class or circumstances.

Ward Connerly spoke to this notion in his excellent book, Creating Equal :

I celebrated July 4 1995 with a heightened awareness of the personal freedom at the core of nationhood. When the Founding Fathers said that we were all created equal, they were proposing an audacious theory that ultimately inflamed the rest of the world. By fits and starts, Americans had tried to make that theory into a reality, with abolitionism, the Emancipation Proclamation, and, of course, the civil rights movement, which instituted sweeping revisions of the law that have brought us ever closer to the fulfillment of the promise of our national life. I felt in my heart that race preferences--by whatever name--were not a continuation of that progress, but an obstacle in the road to freedom and equality. At best a diversion, and at worst a giant step backward, affirmative action preferences caused us to lose sight of the task we inherited from the Founders--creating equal as the only category that counts in America.

And two of the towering figures of the Civil Rights movement did as well--Thurgood Marshall in Brown v. Board of Ed (1954) :

Distinctions by race are so evil, so arbitrary and insidious that a state bound to defend the equal protection of the laws must not allow them in any public sphere.

and The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. in his I Have a Dream speech (Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963) :

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

How odd then that in this dispute between a college president who is white and one of the "leading" black professors in America, it is the president who remains committed to the dream and the professor who is the racialist. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 7, 2002 8:58 AM