Monday, June 23, 2003

Justice O'Connor Sets A Time Limit

This from TAPPED, a discussion by Jonathan Goldberg, of a surprise tucked away in Justice O'Connor's majority opinion.

"We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today," O'Connor wrote in the majority opinion that upheld the University of Michigan Law School's right to use race as a factor in its admission decisions.
(....)
Should liberals fail to understand and react to this limit, there is no doubt conservatives will come reminding us about it some 25 years from now.

Liberals need to embrace this limit as a call to immediate action: We have 25 years to remedy the root inequalities in our nation, so that race-based affirmative action -- which, however necessary right now, is, after all, no one's idea of a fair long-term way of organizing society -- can be phased out without destroying diversity in university student bodies, the military or the business world.


Interesting thought. Goldberg suggests an alliance with moderate Republicans.

I can certainly get behind that.

But what about those other folks who have the power right now? How many of those twenty-five years are going to be used up by having to fight their attempted stalls and rollbacks or by needing to expose their false claims of equality achieved? Just asking?