ON JUNE 14, PRESIDENT CLINTON will deliver the commencement address at the University of California at San Diego. His topic will be race relations and the importance of diversity. The speech is being hyped as one of the president’s moves to engage us all in a “national discussion about race,” along with his reported plans for town-hall meetings and a new advisory panel on race, his apology to the victims of the infamous Tuskegee experiment, and his literally grandstanding appearance at the Jackie Robinson celebration at Shea Stadium.
Another man who is concerned about the race issue, Ward Connerly, chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, begins running radio ads this week calling on Clinton to make the administration’s policies colorblind. Good luck. Herewith a skeptic’s forecast of what the president will say in San Diego.
The choice of a University of California campus was deliberate. It gives the president an opportunity to attack Proposition 209, the referendum passed by California voters last November with Connerly’s heroic leadership. The referendum amended the state constitution to bar state government from granting preferences based on race, ethnicity, or sex in contracting, employment, or education. Prop. 209 was struck down as a denial of”equal protection” by a Carter-appointed trial judge but was upheld on appeal, over the objections of the Clinton administration.
Accordingly, Clinton’s speech to a group of California graduates will probably address why race and ethnicity should remain factors in deciding who gets into college. All the more so since recent figures released by California’s law schools — the first to feel the impact of the university system’s new colorblind admissions policy — show a sharp drop in the number of blacks and Hispanics admitted. But look for the president to defend the use of racial and ethnic preferences not by admitting that he favors discrimination, but by using the Four Rhetorical Tricks that apologists for the new discrimination always use.
First, he will declare himself “opposed to the use of quotas.” This is a dodge, because liberals define quotas very narrowly. What he will not say is that he opposes discriminating on the basis of race and ethnicity, which is precisely what makes quotas offensive.
Second, he will say that he believes that race or ethnicity should be “only one factor” in deciding who gets admitted. But he will not acknowledge that, to the extent that this factor makes a difference, it is discrimination, causing some applicants to get in, and others to be excluded, on account of the color of their skin.
Nor are such cases rare. A study of undergraduate admissions by the Center for Equal Opportunity, for example, concluded that in 1993-95 “a massive degree of racial preference in admission policy” existed at Berkeley, another campus of the University of California. A forthcoming study by the center will document the use of preferences at the San Diego campus where Clinton will be speaking.
Third, the president will assert that he “does not favor the admission of unqualified students.” This is another slick dodge. The question should be, Does he favor the admission of the most qualified students? The answer is no, since that would stand in the way of the “diversity” he wants.
And fourth, he will say that there is nothing wrong with considering an individual’s race or ethnicity, since “schools already consider factors” like whether the applicant’s father is an alumnus and how well the applicant can play football. But those factors boil down to money — not the noblest of considerations, but not intrinsically offensive in the way that racial discrimination is. The president will not mention this interesting development: Governor George Bush of Texas announced on June 2 that he will sign a bill making it illegal for his state’s schools — which have also been forced to adopt nondiscriminatory admissions criteria — to give athletes special treatment in admissions.
Then the president will talk about the importance of “diversity” to our nation and to our colleges. Diversity might be valuable in a student body for two reasons: because it helps students learn that, deep inside, people are not so different, or because the truth is that, deep inside, people are in fact different. Let’s consider both.
In the former case, a diversity strategy succeeds in enlightening the potentially bigoted student only if the student is surrounded by others of different race and ethnicity who are as well qualified as he is. If they are less qualified, the strategy can easily backfire.
So the proponents of diversity must believe instead that there are fundamental differences between people depending on our melanin content and the birthplace of our ancestors. This, indeed, is now the party line. But how likely is it that these distinctive characteristics (they used to be called stereotypes) are (a) real, (b) relevant to the study of, say, mathematics, (c) more relevant to achieving an intellectually diverse student body than individuals’ actual ideas and specific life histories, and (d) worth the price of discrimination?
The president will mention none of this as he extols the value of diversity. Expect instead a discussion of the national mosaic, and how this mosaic will unravel — there will be plenty of mixed metaphors — under Proposition 209, which threatens to turn back the clock to the day of lily-white universities, if you count Asians as white. Then look for the president to cite the new figures on plummeting minority admissions.
At this point, do not expect the president to draw the obvious conclusion: that black students, in particular, are disproportionately uncompetitive for slots at our nation’s top schools because they suffered disproportionately from bad public schools and broken families. Do not expect him to acknowledge that these are failures — of the educational establishment and of Great Society programs — that conservatives have complained of for years. Do not expect him to call for vouchers or any other educational reform that might actually do some good. Instead expect him to advocate the use of lower standards and racial quotas to sweep academic failure under the rug.
The most intriguing thing to look for in the president’s speech will be its characterization of his administration’s civil-rights record. For a time, President Clinton actually claimed that his appointees and bureaucrats were not unalterably wedded to preferences based on race, ethnicity, and sex. It will be interesting to see whether he has the gall to make this claim again.
This is, after all, the administration that: promised a cabinet that “looks like America” and openly used its EGG criteria (ethnicity, gender, and geography) in making all appointments, no matter how much this slowed down the process; vowed, through the nominations of Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood all the way to Janet Reno, that the next attorney general would be someone ” wearing a skirt”; repeatedly nominated figures from the civil-rights establishment, diehard defenders of preferences; included racial and ethnic quotas in its ill-fated health plan; reversed the Bush administration’s policy of limiting the use of racially exclusive scholarships; defended the quota policies of the city of Birmingham, Alabama; nominated “quota queen” Lani Guinier to head the Justice Department’s civil-rights division; adamantly defended the use of racial gerrymandering, both before and after the Supreme Court struck down the practice; issued a series of internal orders to ensure that career civil-service positions would be quota-correct; used the Justice Department, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs to pressure employers into meeting numerical goals for women and minorities; switched sides in the Piscataway, New Jersey, litigation in order to defend a race-based layoff; defended the use of the Department of Transportation’s preference program for minority subcontractors all the way to the Supreme Court in the Adarand case, where it was struck down, then steadfastly resisted changing any other contracting preferences in the face of this Supreme Court ruling; defended the University of Texas Law School’s use of racial and ethnic preferences and pressured schools to ignore the court decision rejecting those preferences (until, under fire, the administration reversed itself); and finally, as noted above, attacked Prop. 209 in federal court.
It might seem improbable that with this record a president would claim to be anything other than a staunch defender of affirmative discrimination. But never underestimate the infinitely flexible Bill Clinton. All in all, expect an entertaining spectacle on June 14.
Roger Clegg is general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity in Washington, D.C.
