Dishonest on diversity

The Washington Post makes an unanswerable point about the Bush administration’s ambiguous stand against race preferences at the University of Michigan. If achieving proportional racial diversity at institutions of higher education so that they will “look like America” is a vital societal goal, as both the Post and President Bush agree, then why (as Bush argues) is the outright use of race to achieve such diversity not acceptable, but the use of transparently obvious proxies for race (such as attendance at high schools located in all black neighborhoods) is acceptable?

In familiar Republican/conservative mode, Bush subscribes to leftist goals, while loudly quibbling about the manner in which leftists seek to achieve them. The loudness makes the quibbles sound like principled confrontation and attracts the support and gratitude of naïve conservatives; but the emptiness and fraudulence of the position cannot be concealed for long.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 19, 2003 01:32 AM | Send