Anyone who wonders why the people of Michigan concluded they needed a state constitutional amendment to ensure their public schools didn’t discriminate against people on account of race needs only to look at some of the race-baiting on our university campuses.
In Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, the Supreme Court recently declined to rule on the constitutionality of race-based admissions at public universities. But it did uphold the democratic right of the American people to use the lawful process in their states to pass restrictions banning the practice.
Sounds reasonable. And it is in sharp contrast to two recent, high-profile incidents at two different public universities. The day before the Supreme Court decision was handed down, Brent Terry at Eastern Connecticut State University cautioned his students that “colleges will start closing up” and revert back to the 1800s if the “racist, misogynist, money-grubbing” GOP has control of both the House and Senate in 2014.
“There are a lot of people out there that do not want black people to vote, do not want Latinos to vote,” Terry said. “Do not want old people to vote, or young people to vote. Because, generally, people like you are liberal. You want equality. You want racial equality. You want financial equality.”
Now, Terry’s rant was directed at the GOP and not the Supreme Court. But the principle he exposed was the same: Americans who believe we shouldn’t discriminate on the basis of race — as the 14th amendment to the Constitution plainly requires — perversely find themselves deemed the racists these days.
Terry’s not the only one obsessing about race on campus. Just a few weeks earlier, students at Western Washington University were asked this in a questionnaire distributed schoolwide: “How do we make sure that in future years ‘we are not as white as we are today?’ ”
The question is no slip-up. It comes a year after WWU President Bruce Shepard delivered a speech in which he said essentially the same thing: “Every year, from this stage and at this time, you have heard me say that, if in decades ahead, we are as white as we are today, we will have failed as a university.”
When you hear what professors say these days, it’s not hard to see why people in Michigan would want to clarify that, in their state, citizens will be judged by merit and the content of their character — not the color of their skins.