As Roger properly reminds us below, the argument for racial preferences in Grutter and in other court decisions was never about remedying injustices against blacks as a group. The argument in Grutter v. Bollinger was that “diversity,” or racial and ethnic proportionality, enhances education, an entirely bogus claim based on entirely bogus studies. This is the reason racial preferences are extended to Hispanics, who do not have the history of discrimination in this country that blacks do (although La Raza and other groups try to cry racism and claim victimhood wherever they can).
These continuing arguments for affirmative action as a remedy for past discrimination, however, tell us that the diversity defense is such nonsense that not even the proponents of racial preferences themselves believe it. They only use it cynically — when they can remember it — to pull the wool over the eyes of society in order to advance the interests of minorities against the majority.
It is worthwhile to remember that the opponents of affirmative action in Grutter did not even challenge the diversity defense, so convinced were they that the Supreme Court would never allow overt racial preferences into the Constitution and that the simple evocation of equality before the law would be enough to defeat any racial preference program. They were wrong of course, another proof that the “ideas” — the ideas that America is built on — don’t guarantee themselves, but require cultural foundation and elaboration. I wonder if this lesson has been learned.