Is All Racial Discrimination Wrong?
Throughout most of their history the NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund argued that discrimination was wrong. Now they argue that it’s wrong when it works to the disadvantage of blacks, but no big deal otherwise. Thus, responding to the news that colleges are abandoning what the New York Times quaintly calls “focused scholarships” and the rest of us call race-exclusive scholarships, LDF Chairman Theodore Shaw challenge[d] the notion that programs for minority students hurt whites. “How is it that they conclude that the great evil in this country is discrimination against white people?” Mr. Shaw asked. “Can I put that question any more pointedly? I struggle to find the words to do it because it’s so stunning.” Speaking as one of (but not a representative of) “them,” I don’t believe I have ever maintained that racial discrimination is “the great evil in this country.” (Shaw, of course, may think it — defined as virtually anything that does not improve the position of bl
