My mail tells me that Indians, like most Americans, are conflicted about affirmative action, but have little idea what it means.
The policy appears to have once more dodged a bullet in Fisher v. Texas.
On the technical legal side, I agree that race-based classifications by government must be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest.
I also agree that affirmative action as a present remedy for past discrimination has a limited shelf life, although the pervasiveness of the discrimination in my home state of Texas is still much more of an issue than the courts have been prepared to recognize.
I also agree that promoting diversity in higher education is a compelling governmental interest. Where I part company with the SCOTUS is the dictum in Grutter v. Bollinger that the diversity rationale also has a limited shelf life.
I teach criminal justice.
A conversation about stop and frisk is a different conversation when there are no black or brown faces in the room or there are so few that the pressure to keep one's head down is overwhelming.
A conversation about domestic violence is a different conversation when the class is all male or there are only a couple of women.
A conversation about anti-terrorism measures is a different conversation with no foreign students in the classroom.
Now, I confess that if you view teaching as a series of lectures rather than an ongoing conversation, then my remarks make no sense. I find it hard to believe the SCOTUS intends to make that value judgment about higher education.
Speaking from my bias about what should be happening in a university classroom, diversity is not a value to benefit minorities but rather a value to enrich the experience of kids who are leaving home for the first time and discovering the rest of the world is not just like their block, their neighborhood, their city, their country.
Minority kids know this at a tender age. Failure to take it into account can be a deadly mistake.
I have taught at a majority-minority school and at a flagship state campus where they beat the brush to bring in a few minority students. I firmly believe that the brush beating conferred as much benefit on my white students as on the non-white students who will have better lives and pass on better lives to their children as a result of their experience.
It should go without saying that everything I've said about race and sex also applies to class.
I cannot understand how, if we value meritocracy, the need to integrate all discrete communities in university classrooms where leaders of the future are educated will ever go away.