Must Reads:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/us/23scotus.html?ref=global-home
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/22/AR2009042203621.html?hpid=topnews
The Court has before it an opportunity to fulfill the beautiful reasoning of the school desegregation cases that began with Brown v. Board. In Brown the Court rightly asserted that the use of race as a "proxy" or "variable" in decision making is inherently inappropriate. The Court explained that race is a lazy proxy because race has no logical connection to any meaningful differences between individuals (other than a different type of skin pigment), and accordingly race has no legitimate place in distinguishing between people. Any time someone attempts to use race to distinguish between people, there is always a better variable to use which gets at the desired effect more directly. For example, giving out social benefits (i.e. welfare, or school admissions, or promotions) based on race will always end up giving benefits to people who do not actually merit social aid. In other words, some minorities are better off than others (compare President Obama to his poor Aunt in NJ awaiting deportation) and giving social benefits to these well off minorities makes no sense. It's not the goal of the social spending to help the well off. So, a better proxy to use in doling out social benefits is, say, wealth or income. Groundbreaking isn't it? It sounds basic when laid out like that, but many people miss this nuance in our law.
Accordingly, the Court in Brown v. Board held that desegregation (and subsequently, affirmative action schemes) were only permissible as temporary tools to be used to remove the "vestiges of the old system." In other words, the government could temporarily use race as a proxy in order to correct the racial make-up of schools and social programs which were created during years of segregation and racism. This use of race in fixing the de facto segregation that existed in this country in the 70's and 80's (and yes even arguably still today in some places) was always intended to be rolled back and eventually stopped in favor of the basic rule that race is always illegitimate as a proxy. The Court now has a great chance to fulfill this mandate. Lets hope they do, because only when race is truly not used in making decisions about our people (either to promote of hinder a person) will racism truly be eradicated in this country.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Concerns about human rights and torture?
Anyone else find it a bit odd that the Whitehouse and most Congressional dems are fired up about the possibility of investigating the Bush administration's use of harsh interrogation tactics while that same crowd applauds overtures to known oppressors like Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Syria, and North Korea? Just a thought . . . http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/04/23/2009-04-23_pelosi_ups_pressure_for_truth_panel_on_torture.html
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