Month: November 2022

Benjamin Disraeli (19th century British politician, Prime Minister, and writer/philosopher) in his book “Sybil, Or the Two Nations” wrote of the deep split of a people into two camps, almost nations, each completely estranged from the other:

“Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws . . . .  THE RICH AND THE POOR.”

For him, the divide was between the rich and the poor, an artifact of a time of much greater hardship.  For us, it is between the blue silos of a radical Left cultural ethos and the red hinterlands of the traditions of standards, faith, the rule of law, equality before the law, and popular sovereignty under constitutional checks.  The former wishes to overthrow the latter.

In these isolated little blue enclaves, overwhelmingly inner cities and college campuses, the hyper-wealthy and academics can entertain ideological fancies far afield from the lives of the vast majority of people living outside, people who are actually struggling with the daily realities of living and not secure from them by walls, money, and tenured academic freedom.

How could the corporate boardroom – in the past immune – become so enthralled by this revolutionary ethos?  The answer lies in the social realities of living in a narrowly confined space of limited interactions.  A homogeneous mind incubates in a scene of intermarriage, secluded social engagements in a protective cocoon, and an upbringing that transmits the same campus cultural revolution in these secluded social petri dishes.

Adapting Mao’s Long March mythology, Rudy Dutschke, a leader of the German radical Left of the 1960s, advocated a long march through institutions in that 1967 time of troubles of strikes, riots, and massive protests in the West.  Rather than tear the institution down, take them over, he said. Well, it happened.  Yesteryear’s student radical is today’s tenured college faculty with matriculated mental offspring littered throughout the Fortune 500.

What brings this to mind?  Eighty-two American companies expressed their official support for race-based college admissions, loosely referred to as affirmative action, in two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court involving the University of North Carolina and Harvard (see their briefs below).  Big corporate players such as Google, Apple, JetBlue, and General Electric produced briefs utilizing the same old neo-Marxist rhetoric of group-conscious oppression.  Rhetorically, the table is set for the talisman of “diversity”.  Merit is redefined as being a member of the proper race or possessing the proper genitalia and calling it “diversity”.  No, this isn’t diversity of opinion.  It’s the diversity of immutable characteristics.  Competence and a special gnosis, it is assumed, emanates from melanin count and genitalia, not from observable qualifications.  It’s preposterous.

The pretzel logic required to make this scheme marketable boggles the mind.  In Monday’s hearing before the Supreme Court, defense counsel emphasized the gambit of race as one among many factors but couldn’t escape withering cross examination from Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito and Barrett.  The inescapable fact is that at least some admissions will be based on race, and thusly a violation of statute and the Constitutional guarantees of equal protection.  Trying to hide race among the weeds doesn’t eliminate the fact that race will be determinative to award advantages to some to the detriment of others not so privileged with the right skin color and genital comportment.

How could they get away with this after a Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment, Brown v. Board of Education, and the various Civil Rights Acts in the long campaign to end the award of benefits and/or disabilities based on race or other immutable factors?  The whole enterprise relies on rhetorical legerdemain and a mountain of verbiage in bastardized “studies” to the point that “studies have shown” has gained the reputation as a tipoff for ideological skullduggery.  It’s a new Jim Crow favoring the radical Left’s “oppressed”.

And an afront to most people’s practical sense of fairness.  There’s a reason why lady justice wears a blindfold.

Not surprisingly given their backgrounds, corporate titans have bought into it.  Read the briefs and you’ll find the ritual abuse of “diversity” and “qualified”, as in “Classroom diversity is crucial to producing employable, productive, value-adding citizens in business.”  Or, how about the claim that the favoritism produces “a pipeline of highly qualified future workers and business leaders”?  “Highly qualified” just became an oxymoron.  “Qualification” now means the right melanin count and genitalia.

The whole thing is a legal, moral, and rational trainwreck.  To borrow a movie line, “Yes, Virginia, there is institutional racism”, but it’s coming from the folks who brought you The 1619 Project, CRT, the 2020 summer of BLM riots, home appliances, and annual college admission letters.  Amazing, the campaign against institution racism was always about furthering institutional racism.

RogerG

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* The corporate briefs in Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, and Harvard, can be found at https://www.naacpldf.org/wp-content/uploads/Brief-for-Major-American-Business-Enterprises-Supporting-Respondents-FINAL.pdf .

* An excellent synopsis of the case by Brittany Bernstein can be found at https://www.nationalreview.com/news/dozens-of-major-u-s-companies-urge-supreme-court-to-uphold-race-based-college-admissions/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=next-article&utm_term=first