Defenders of racial preferences usually see themselves as defenders of the downtrodden, but Linda Greenhouse’s article in today’s New York Times “Week in Review” makes abundantly clear that if affirmative action is preserved by the Supreme Court, it will be because “an establishment tidal wave that rose up to claim the Supreme Court as its own.”
Fortune 500 companies, all the elite (and many not so elite) universities, generals and admirals … if ever there was an “Establishment,” it is those who have signed on to the defense of racial preferences.
True, racial preferences do seem to run afoul of the principle of non-discrimination, which has heretofore been thought to be fundamental. But not to worry. As Walter Dellinger, an acting solicitor general in the Clinton administistration and leading defender of racial preference, puts it hopefully, “the court, for all its boldness, tempers the application of principle to avoid unduly upsetting the status quo.”
It’s interesting that the last thing liberals like these days is a Supreme Court devoted to principle.
