“I heard him; I was like, ‘let me read it again … Whoa.’ ” This magisterial analysis was Donald Trump’s response to a point Justice Antonin Scalia voiced last week during arguments in the Supreme Court affirmative action case Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin.
Scalia, citing a brief, said: “There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school — a slower-track school where they do well.”
Racial preferences may have a knock-on effect throughout the college system that harms those minorities whom it is supposed to help. If top colleges lower standards, as they do, to admit more minority students, those students often fare poorly, fall behind their better-prepared peers and drop out at higher rates. By admitting them, top-tier colleges take them away from second-tier colleges, where they would have excelled, and force those colleges in turn to lower standards to recruit minorities. And so on down the line.
Racial preferences, according “Mismatch,” a brave 2012 work by UCLA law professor Richard Sander and legal affairs journalist Stuart Taylor, ensure that too many minority students are placed in colleges where they are doomed to languish rather than thrive.
Scalia opined that the benefit of a racial preference system does not “stand to reason.” He was first putting forward an argument formally submitted for consideration in the case, and, second, pointing out that logic does not require a belief in affirmative action.
Questioning longstanding orthodoxy in favor of racial preferences, even in a case called to do just that, nevertheless produced howls from the usual suspects. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a former boxer habitually quick to land a low blow, suggested Scalia supported “racist theories.”
Democratic Rep. Donna Edwards, best remembered for the worst speech ever delivered to the annual Congressional Dinner (2014), said Scalia’s remarks were “offensive, completely unacceptable, and have no place in our legal discourse.” She condescended to give him the “benefit of the doubt” and concluded that he “spoke out of naiveté.”
And then came Trump on Sunday. He “didn’t like” Scalia’s words, which he described as “very, very tough to a certain community.” And then he dropped the coy vagueness of that “certain community” to make a pitch for black votes, saying, “I have great African-American friendships.”
It was a characteristically unedifying performance, at once intellectually shallow, unprincipled and contemptuous of the facts. And, as so many of Trump’s public pronouncements do, it showed that he is not a conservative even though most of his supporters are.
Each comment of this sort must be added to the scales as Republican voters weigh whom to nominate for the presidency. Trump’s outlandishness appeals to huge numbers of those who have given up hope that politicians will represent them; they’re now throwing open the window and yelling, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
Trump does not share their values, just their current grumpy and recalcitrant mood. But as winter closes in, one hopes they will close the window again. Trump is manifestly unsuitable to represent a great party, let alone occupy the White House. One hopes that will become obvious in the bright, snowy light of Iowa and New Hampshire.
