The Tar Heel Thursday, July t), 1978 5
Dave McKinnon
Bakke: an unimportant defeat for civil rights movement
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I found myself on these pages about two
months ago arguing for a decision from the
Supreme Court in the Bakke case pretty much
like the one that was handed down last week.
Since then I've been questioned on those views
a good deal, and I've been especially disturbed
by the reception the decision has gotten from a
lot of people in the national press.
The court's ruling has been called vague and
confusing, and has been referred to as a
stopgap compromise rather than a definitive
landmark. And of course all this must be
admitted. But a lot of Poli-Sci professors with
large tastes for irony have taken genuine
pleasure in pointing out that these are usually
the greatest virtues of Supreme Court
decisions. And this is probably true of Bulb.
s
opinion
V
But it does not have tobe admitted that this
decision marks any kind of serious reversal for
the national civil rights movement. Obviously
the Supreme Court itself hasn't retreated any,
since it has never approved of quotas before.
Nor does the decision mark a retreat for
national policy in general. The Court made it
clear that this was a ruling limited in
application at least to university admissions
policies.
No mention was made of a similar ruling for
employment policy, and of the concern among
minority groups that an effective ban on
quotas in higher education will mean fewer
places for their members, it can only be said
that, as Justice Powell pointed out, alternative
means of achieving the same ends exist. More
importantly, the alternative methods are
already in use in almost every case, as a number
of university administrators have noted.
Beyond this, there is every indication that
the Bakke rule if there really is such a thing
will not be applied when the Court gets
around to deciding on affirmative action in
employment policy. Justice Powell's opinion
clearly left open the possibility that quotas can
be employed in certain circumstances, while
four other justices saw no difference between
the quota system and other forms of
affirmative action, and found them all
constitutional. Justice Powell also indicated
that quotas or their rigid specifications with
Congressional sanction are likely to receive
more respect from the Court than the
voluntary policy of UC-Davis.
There is finally the question of the more
abstract and long-term effects of the decision.
According to one frequently-heard argument,
the Bakke decision, by appearing to be a setback
for the civil-rights movement, will in fact be a
setback, through its general impact on public
opinion. And there is probably something to
this, but not as much as some would have us
believe.
Above all, the simple fact of the tremendous
progress of the movement for equality
remains, and will remain. And no white
backlash prompted by Bakke can be conceived
which would threaten those gains.
Nor does the decision in Bakke mean that this
progress will cease, or even be slowed down.
The drive for equality in this country has
simply progressed beyond the point where a
decision like Bakke can effect it seriously. It is no
longer a movement dependent on the mood of a
white electorate or the opinion of a white
Supreme Court. On the contrary, it has
become solidly entrenched in the nation's
political ways, due not least of all to its own
most significant result the effective
realization of political power by minorities.
Under these circumstances, partial moral
defeats become even more unimportant.
After only a week, then, the Bakke decision
has already had too much wisdom pressed out
of it. As many of its detractors have pointed
out, it does have a certain symbolic
significance, in drawing a partial limit on the
proper procedures for achieving equality in
some very limited circumstances. Under
normal circumstances this would go relatively
unnoticed. It has happened before. But given
the profoundly important possibilities
signalled by Proposition 13, thedissatisfaction
of minority groups with the present
administration, and the general shifting of the
battle for equal rights into less immediate,
visible, and exciting areas in the last decade,
Bakke begins to look like the judicial
contribution to a very meaningful series of
events. But Bakke itself is not very meaningful,
and the proper means of countering the greater
threat to the rights movement does not even lie
in Bakke's direction.
Dave McKinnon is a senior English and
history major from Wadesboro, N.C.
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