Right Color Only

The latest battle over race-​conscious affirmative action policies is taking place over a loan forgiveness program in the Providence, Rhode Island, public school district.

The Legal Insurrection Foundation is suing to overturn an “overtly racist and discriminatory” program being implemented by a district that receives millions in federal funding. Which means that all taxpayers are indirectly subsidizing this sort of thing.

According to the district’s new policy, an applicant for a teaching post can get up to $25,000 in college loans paid off if he teaches for three years in a row in the district. The incentive seems innocuous enough until you learn that beneficiaries of the grant, being funded by a Rhode Island charity, must “identify as Asian, Black, Indigenous, Latino, biracial, or multi-racial.”

The specification that one must “identify as” a member of one of these races may sound as if persons of unambiguously blanco tint need merely “identify as” Black or Indigenous or the like to get around the whites-​need-​not-​apply exclusion. But such a mode of circumvention — even if, as seems unlikely, it could succeed to the extent that officials pretended to believe the claim — would require applicants to lie or become delusional. 

To match this delusional policy, no doubt.

But the policy would still remain racist and discriminatory.

The Foundation’s filing quotes a dictum that if universally accepted would put an end to all this nonsense: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

---

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL‑E 2

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts