When Seeing Race is Helpful

My friend, mentor, and co-author Walter E. Williams once told me about his search for a wife. First, he eliminated from consideration all males; he wanted a woman to be his marriage partner, significant other, and bed partner (what a despicable homophobe he was; imagine discriminating against half the human race!). Then, he mentioned that he was not interested in any female of the white or Oriental race; he had focused his attention, solely, upon black women (what a racist, he!). But this is only the beginning of his appalling narrowmindedness. He also wanted in this role someone pretty, intelligent, with a sense of humor, and desired that there should be a “spark” between the two of them. (My oh my, what a pig he was!)

Did he violate anyone’s rights in this horrid behavior of his? Not at all. At least not if we take seriously the law of free association: that all people should be free to associate with whomever they choose. That is the problem with slavery, rape, and the 1964 so-called Civil Rights law: it compels some people to associate with others against their will. (READ MORE: Would a Harris Presidency Help Blacks?)

What about the government? Should its bureaucrats, too, be free to “associate” with whichever people they select? Were public universities properly free to discriminate against blacks during the Jim Crow era, and nowadays against Asians and (especially male) whites?

Not a bit of it, at least not according to the U.S. Constitution (14th amendment, section 2) which states: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Why Should the Military Be Able to Discriminate?

This brings us to the recent Supreme Court ruling vis-à-vis Harvard and North Carolina State. The latter is clearly a public institution; this, supposedly, does not apply to the former, but it benefits from state largesse to such a great degree ($625 million in a recent year) that, for all intents and purposes, it may be considered in that category (if not, it would be as justified as Walter Williams or anyone else for that matter to discriminate against anyone or group it wishes, and to its heart’s content).

Strictly speaking — and how else should we take the U.S. Constitution — there should be no public universities at all, at least not as they presently function. They all discriminate against a certain class of people, namely, those with lower intelligence. All public universities should be compelled to take on all comers, regardless of their ability to do college work. This, of course, would ruin all public educational institutions and thus end them; good riddance say all those who favor full free enterprise. This is one strike against the supremes: they came nowhere near to recognizing this responsibility of theirs.

Another might well be their exception on behalf of U.S. military academies. Most people think in this context only in terms of West Point or Annapolis, but there are quite a few more of them out there. If the rule is that the government may not engage in discrimination, why make an exemption for any military institution of higher learning? (READ MORE: Biden, Harris, and DEI (Democrats’ Exquisite Irony))

For example, according to the Hechinger Report, this exception was “head-scratching.” The Heritage Foundation headlined: “Affirmative Action Must End at Military-Service Academies.” According to Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), the ruling was “outright grotesque for exempting military academies.”

Race Matters in Some Operations

Here, however, I think we can give the Supreme Court a pass, at least based on some assumptions. How so? First, consider the domestic equivalent of our armed forces, the police. Suppose they want to infiltrate a black gang such as the Blood or the Crips. It doesn’t matter how high a score on an entry test garnered by a white or an Oriental, a black cop even with a lower score is required for the job. Ditto for planting a spy in the Italian mafia. There, a high-scoring black or Asian simply will not do. There is a case for racial discrimination on the part of the government. This consideration will have to be reconciled with the U.S. Constitution. It is, after all, not a suicide pact.

Similar considerations apply to the U.S. military, at least if it is to do the job it is now undertaking (whether it should do so is an entirely separate question). If it wants to surreptitiously place its people in Russia, it needs one type of person; for Nigeria, someone from a very different race; ditto regarding North Korea. (READ MORE: Working-Class Whites Anxiously Losing Ground)

Or, consider the recent example of troops from Kenya being brought in the quell the difficulties now afflicting Haiti. Not that this should occur, but given that it is, one can posit that these soldiers will be far less resented amongst the Haitian population and thus more successful, than were they to have come from Canada or Norway or Australia.

So the supremes get a bye, at least a partial one, in this military academy exception.

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