ONLY DISCONNECT

'All the way through, we're seen as inferior' (Peronet Despeignes, June 30 2003, Financial Times)

Ms Pierre-Louis plans to go into immigration practice, where she expects to be busy fighting "the post-9/11 erosion of civil rights". Ms Oriental plans to work in criminal law. Mr Gibson will go into corporate law, a field where he can reasonably expect to make a six-figure income within the next five years. Any one of them could conceivably end up as a top US official one day.

Among all black people, one would think these three confident, well-educated, highly opinionated, upwardly mobile Americans would be optimistic about the course of US black-white relations. One would be wrong.

It was widely reported last week that the US Supreme Court upheld the core of affirmative action - consideration of race as a factor in college admissions. Not as widely reported was its hope that this practice would eventually no longer be needed, or that a large number of black people - including Ms Pierre-Louis, Ms Oriental and Mr Gibson - strongly disagree.

The court's majority decision said that "racial classifications, however compelling their goals, are potentially . . . dangerous", that "all government use of race must have a logical end point" and that "we expect 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary".

It expressed the hope that victory would eventually be declared in America's long, painful, awkward, halting, complex struggle toward a colour-blind meritocracy.

Ms Pierre-Louis laughs at the sentiment.

"That may be the ideal of Utopia America, but it's not the case . . . and will not be for the foreseeable future," she said. "You have to understand how the American mind has progressed: First it was . . . we weren't humans at all. Then it became, we're quasi-humans, maybe three-fifths. Then it became, well, they're human, but they're still not as intelligent. Now it's, they're human, they might be as intelligent, but their culture is somehow deficient, so they can't make it anyway. All the way through, we're still widely perceived as inferior."

Surely I must be misunderstanding this story in which these three young people complain that they are perceived as inferior but then insist that they be treated as if they are? Posted by Orrin Judd at July 1, 2003 5:58 PM