Meritocracy Now!
8th July 2023
Last Friday, a day after the Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action, I noted the gap between the Democratic Party’s leaders and its voters on race-based admissions. Polls find a majority of Democrats opposed to using race as a factor in admissions. The party’s elite, however, is almost universally in favor of affirmative action — as hysterical reactions from the president and others made clear.
But that was last week. Now that the dust has settled, and everyone has had a chance to cool down over July 4, have the Democrats gained some Independence-Day perspective on the end of race-based decisions? Not really. Emotional denunciation remains the dominant tone, and elected officials willing to side with the majority of their party’s supporters are no easier to come by than they were last Friday. For the left more generally, it has been a week of impressive mental contortions to avoid any awkward realities about the discrimination against millions of non-white Americans made possible by affirmative action. NPR gets the gold medal for this news story suggesting Asian Americans are white supremacists. Or something.
Missing from the Democratic reaction to the Supreme Court decision is any suggestion that they see the bigger picture. Were the Democrats a genuine working-class party, they might use this decision to highlight the many ways in which America’s elite schools fall short of their meritocratic potential.