Race

At Slate Magazine there’s an edifying and somewhat thought provoking discussion of Thursday’s school integration Supreme Court decision by Walter Dellinger, Dahlia Lithwick, and Stuart Taylor Jr. It’s up to seven parts at this writing, but each is brief and worthy of your time.

The opinion itself is here. [pdf]

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Follow my thinking for a minute.

Race is a bogus construct biologically. It is still, however, a sociological construct of some power.

So, my question is, how do we eliminate the latter now that we understand there is no basis for the former?

It seems to me that assigning children to a school on account of race — whatever the motive — perpetuates the racial distinction, a distinction that doesn’t exist in nature.

So, maybe, the Court got it right — whatever the legal issues, and despite the fact that Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito are moral peasants. (I’m giving Kennedy, the waffler, a little benefit of the doubt, deserved or otherwise. He actually might be the most reprehensible of the five.)

Maybe this decision will force society — and right-minded school districts — to find means to correct socio-economic issues in our society without relying on the age-old racial distinctions that have brought about so much of the inequality to begin with.

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Walter Dellinger has a different point of view.