The immigration and affirmative action decisions in the just-concluded Supreme Court term attracted much attention independently. Few seem to have noticed, however, how tied they are to one another — how much racial preferences may affect feelings about immigration and vice versa.
President Obama himself missed the inherent irony when he celebrated the decision that upheld racial preferences, then decried the one that blocked him from giving legal protection to millions of illegal immigrants.
“I am pleased that the Supreme Court upheld the basic notion that diversity is an important value in our society,” the president said, praising the 4-3 ruling in Fisher v. the University of Texas that a race-conscious admissions program does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.
A few minutes later, lecturing from the same podium, he criticized the 4-4 court split that in effect blocked him from giving legal status to some five million illegal immigrants. “It is my firm belief that immigration is not something to fear,” he intoned.
Never mind the obvious fact that if you say, “yes, let in more people so their children may be given preference over yours at university admissions, government loans or employment opportunities,” John Q. Public may understandably balk at the notion.
But even more high-minded, selfless and public-spirited citizens may reasonably reach the conclusion that race-conscious considerations deepen the boundaries that separate Americans, and therefore conclude that their continuation argues against further more immigration.
The concept that there are “educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body,” in the language of Supreme Court decisions since 2003, ultimately rests on the notion that one has an “ascribed status” (or values or beliefs) that come from one’s membership in a group.
If students or workers benefit from the inclusion of a person from Group A in a classroom or work environment, then this person must have qualities that only members of her group share. A member of Group A must be present because members of Group B through Z lack these qualities.
America since its Founding has relied on the rival understanding that people have an “achieved status” (or values or beliefs) that all Americans can attain by dint of effort or adherence to a set of beliefs. You have agency and are not bound by the circumstances of your birth, whether mean or high, or the ethnicity or race in your culture or DNA.
At a campaign stop in 1858, Lincoln put it best when he said (to sustained applause) that when immigrants looked back at the Founders “to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none.” Yet, when they internalized the creed that “All men are created equal,” immigrants, “have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are.”
In Galatians, Paul says something similar when he says that through belief, “there is neither Jew nor Greek … if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
In effect, all of liberal society rests on this universalist approach. This is why Justice Clarence Thomas argued in his dissent from the Fisher case that that the Constitution “abhors classifications based on race,” and that “does not change in the face of a ‘faddish theory’ that racial discrimination may produce ‘educational benefits’.”
Racial preferences further entrench ethnic divisions by giving Americans a material incentive to “check the box” and identify as members of an ethnic subgroup rather than as citizens of a unified nation. They therefore work to preserve the splits in our society, and drive us further from Lincoln’s and the Founders’ vision.
Study after study on ethnic and linguistic stratification (from Robert Putnam to Alberto Alesina) show that fractured societies have disadvantages and dysfunctions — including civil wars at times — that most normal individuals would rather do without.
So if you’d rather not have the model on which the United States is based transformed into something that resembles the Ottoman empire, then you might be fearful of immigration, yes. Jane Q. Public, even if she doesn’t have children applying to Princeton, would fear immigration if she thought it would harm her society.
Why Obama and other liberals can’t see that assimilation is the indispensable condition of remaining a land that welcomes immigrants — indeed, to remaining a nation-state — and that affirmative action will discourage voters from keeping the doors open, is indeed baffling
Mike Gonzalez is a senior fellow at the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
