THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

The big buzz right now is about Supreme Court decisions. On affirmative action, the Court decided two things.

First, the Court struck down a college admissions system which gave a member of each racial group a certain number of points. You got some extra points for being black or Hispanic and whoever had the highest number of total points got admitted.

The Supreme Court decided that this system of giving each racial group so many points was not what the Founding Fathers were thinking about when they wrote the Constitution. They said it was too openly anti-white.

But in another case the Court decided that, while giving actual points for being in a minority group was too much like a straight quota system, states do have to favor non-whites.

In this latter case the Court decided that diversity is a good thing and government should favor non-whites over whites to achieve diversity. But you can't do it in a blatant way like a points system.

So if you put this in plain English the Court made two contradictory decisions, one for racial discrimination and one against racial discrimination.

The Court said that you must divide up a pie and give more to minorities without giving less to whites.

This proposition does not work if you use plain English. That is what the points system does. The points system puts discrimination in plain English.

So the Court struck down the use of straight English.

On the other hand the Court said states must favor non-whites. It declared that diversity is "a compelling state interest." The logical problem here is that it is impossible to discriminate FOR somebody unless you discriminate AGAINST somebody.

Our national policy defies logic. So the Court outlawed logic.