Repeal of race preference programs: Effects onAsiansandpublicreactions

[Barksdale, Yvette]

Rick Duncan writes: 

 

"I don't know whether my ancestors benefitted from racial
discrimination. Maybe Yvette knows something about my family that I
don't know." 

 

Do you deny Rick that your families situation would have been even worse
had you also been African-American. 

 

Again, the problem here is class, not race. Poor whites and poor blacks
had a hard time. But poor blacks had it worse because of race.

 

As to poor whites - they need a class remedy. Depriving blacks of a race
remedy, doesn't help whites one whit.  It is the classic formal
lose-lose equal protection remedy - remedy disadvantage by making
everyone worse off. 

 

yb

***/////////////////////////////////////////***

 

Professor Yvette M. Barksdale

The John Marshall Law School

315 S. Plymouth Ct. 

Chicago, IL 60604

(312) 427-2737 (phone)

(312) 427-9974 (fax)

 

***/////////////////////////////////////////***

-----Original Message-----
From: conlawprof-bounces at lists.ucla.edu
[mailto:conlawprof-bounces at lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Rick Duncan
Sent: Monday, November 27, 2006 11:22 PM
To: conlawprof at lists.ucla.edu
Subject: RE: Repeal of race preference programs: Effects
onAsiansandpublicreactions

 

I think Eugene's response to Yvette is excellent, and so I won't add
very much.

 

The problem with the "historical discrimination" argument is it uses
race as a proxy for something that cannot be proven (and may be false)
in the particular case.

 

I don't know whether my ancestors benefitted from racial discrimination.
Maybe Yvette knows something about my family that I don't know. And if
so, I would love to see documented evidence of my family's gains from
racial discrimination. Since I was the first in my family to get through
college, and my mother grew up on widow's relief and quit school after
the 5th grade to help her mother raise her family of 10 children in a
single-parent family, my ancestors certainly did a lousy job of
investing their ill-gotten gains, if any they had. 

 

The bottom line for me is that it is never appropriate for government to
discriminate on the basis of race. When it did so in the past it was
wrong. When it does so today, in the cause of "diversity," it is wrong.
Two wrongs do not make a right. Scalia is correct. There can be no
debtor race, nor creditor race. There are only individuals--each of them
unique, each of them part of the "diversity" of the community, and each
of them entitled to the equal protection of the law. 

 

Rick

 


 

 

Rick Duncan 
Welpton Professor of Law 
University of Nebraska College of Law 
Lincoln, NE 68583-0902

 


"It's a funny thing about us human beings: not many of us doubt God's
existence and then start sinning. Most of us sin and then start doubting
His existence."  --J. Budziszewski (The Revenge of Conscience)

 

"Once again the ancient maxim is vindicated, that the perversion of the
best is the worst." -- Id.

  

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