Pocahontas
Donald Trump is a lout, whose idea of political dialogue is puerile schoolyard insults. However, many of his rants contain a kernel of something that resonates with a great many Americans (a fact that shocks the great and good). His nickname for Elizabeth Warren is a shot at political correctness and affirmative action. In this case, I am with him. Elizabeth has responded by taking a DNA test demonstrating that she is somewhere between 1/64th and 1/1024th Native American. The actual science is considerably more complicated, but that rendition will do for these purposes. She was trying to provide scientific underpinning for her claim of minority status.
Let’s start our journey with the standard set by Martin Luther King Jr. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” I am aware that any white person quoting that sentence will be labeled a racist. I can live with that label. I think the real racists are those who make the charge. They are judging me by the color of my skin (which ain’t all that white).
Why did Elizabeth Warren claim to be a Cherokee? I can’t read her mind, but my suspicious mind says she thought it would help her climb the slippery slope of academia. In that event, it worked. She got a job teaching at Harvard Law. Harvard advertised her as a minority to enhance their diversity creds. A win-win.
How does all of this differ from the Mixed Race designation in apartheid South Africa? What about the one drop of black blood criterion of the Confederate South? How does it differ from the Indian Caste system? How about the one drop of Jewish blood that could send anyone the Nazis apprehended to the gas chamber? It is all judgement by race, not character.
America is a nation based on an idea, not race or ancestry. The idea is that All Men Are Created Equal. The colonists revolted against the idea that they should be ruled by people whose status was based on their ancestry (aristocracy). It took awhile for women and slaves to be included, but we finally managed that. The goal is a color blind meritocracy. The notion that we should be singling out members of any group based on race or national origin or imagined victimhood for special treatment is an affront to the very foundation of our nation and MLK’s dream.
The profound illogic of affirmative action is now on display in a New York courtroom.We have the spectacle of one minority group suing Harvard because they were denied admission in favor of two other minority groups. Asians are Harvard’s new Jews.
I don’t give a rat’s rear end who ancestored Elizabeth Warren. I care about her policy prescriptions. Her attempt to establish victimhood speaks volumes about the prospect of a Warren presidency. Should she succeed in winning, I will attempt to assert that Sicilians are a persecuted minority, deserving of government contracts priced well above the low bid.
What about the fact that African Americans have been discriminated against in the past? Don’t we owe them a leg up to even up? Yes, we do. That leg up should not, however, be affirmative action admission to Harvard. We should provide each and every child in our society with a solid academic foundation in primary and secondary school. Doing so would allow every child an equal opportunity to get the highest SAT score their intelligence and drive could produce. Harvard should then admit those with the highest test scores, regardless of race, creed, home of national origin, disability, sexual orientation, etc., etc., etc. In those circumstances, each and every Harvard student could look in the mirror and say “I earned my place here.” If Harvard doesn’t want to do that, they should not be the recipient of tax dollars. They would lose several hundred million a year but they can scrape by on their endowment (currently $39.2 billion).
