Trayvon Martin and a different view of 2012 race relations

The facts we know about the death of Trayvon Martin seem to change every day, but we do know one thing for sure: It would be a mistake to draw sweeping conclusions about race relations in this country based on one event in one suburb on one night.

Whatever the facts finally turn out to be in this incident, you can see the glass as half-full or half-empty. By that, I don’t mean the usual “We have come a long way but we still have a long way to go” claptrap. Indeed, when it comes to race relations and equal opportunity in the United States of 2012, you have to be delusional not to see the glass as at least seven-eighths full.

After all, it is illegal to engage in racial discrimination not only in law enforcement but in just about any public or private transaction (voting, education, employment, contracting, public accommodations, lending, housing, you name it); the overwhelming majority of Americans believe that it should be illegal and that such discrimination is wrong; it is socially unacceptable to be a bigot; and race relations are good and getting better all the time. That’s not to say that friction and discrimination do not still exist—they do—but to think there is anything like the Jim Crow system of Dr. Martin Luther King’s time is, as I say, delusional. Jesse Jackson and those of his mindset are irresponsible to suggest otherwise.

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Indeed, the one kind of racial discrimination that not only continues but flourishes—and is defended publicly—is the politically correct kind: preferential treatment on the basis of skin color and national origin, a.k.a. affirmative action. And here is where one can see the glass as half-full or half-empty.

The vast majority of Americans have no patience for it, and the list of states that have banned racial preferences continues to grow: California (1996), Washington (1998), Michigan (2006), Nebraska (2008), Arizona (2010), and New Hampshire (as of January 1 this year). And voters this November in Oklahoma will have the opportunity to pass a ballot initiative there, too. The courts, while they bear much blame for allowing it and even encouraging it earlier on, have increasingly limited it. So there’s the half-full glass.

But there’s a half-empty glass, too. Academia loves racial and ethnic preferences, corporations have drunk the “diversity” Kool-Aid, and politicians are generally unwilling to challenge preferences—Democrats because their base insists on it, and Republicans because they skittishly fear the race card.

Worst of all, the Obama administration promotes it, sometimes directly and always indirectly. Directly, as when it supports university and even K-12 race-based policies, contracting preferences by the federal government, racial gerrymandering, federal workforce “diversity” efforts, and legislative provisions in Obamacare and Dodd-Frank (to name just the two highest- profile administration bills). Indirectly, as in nominating pro-preference executive-branch officials like Eric Holder and Thomas Perez and judges like Sonia Sotomayor and Goodwin Liu—and aggressively pushing the “disparate impact” approach to civil-rights enforcement.

Through the latter, the federal government insists that the numbers come out right, even if it means that policemen and firefighters cannot be tested, that companies should hire criminals, that loans must be made to the uncreditworthy, and that—I kid you not—whether pollution is acceptable depends on whether dangerous chemicals are spread about in a racially balanced way.

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The other reason to be less sanguine in 2012 is that the reasons for the socioeconomic disparities that drive politically correct discrimination are cultural and that, alas, the root problem—the appalling illegitimacy rate among African Americans (more than seven out of ten)—shows no sign, none, of diminishing.

Dr. King said he wanted his children to be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. Alas, many of those who would claim his mantle and wrap themselves in it during the Trayvon Martin controversy are happy with judging by skin color when it serves their policies. What’s more—judging by its enthusiasm for the disparate-impact approach and its silence on the problem of out-of-wedlock births—the Left thinks the content of people’s character should be viewed with indifference.

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