Affirmative Action

On the question you raise of the third criterion...you term this as 'an exit stratetgy', but that perhaps addresses the least important (in terms of consequences) half of the time/scope concerns. O'Conner is quoted referring to "amorphous concerns that might licence an indiscriminate use". But the quote Dworkin adds (from the amicus filed by the colleges/universities, "The proper constitutional concern would thus seem to be whether the selected means outlast the interest they are designed to serve, not whether they go on 'too long' in some abstract, undefined sense" points, I think, to the more consequential element.

But the Supreme Court has ruled over many decades that classifications according to race are inherently "suspect" and must therefore be subject to a "strict" scrutiny that imposes the following three tests. Race-sensitive admissions plans must serve some "compelling" goal, universities must not be able to pursue that goal adequately without them, and they must be "narrowly tailored" to achieving that

Justice O'Connor.[19] She said that identifying all uses of race as suspicious, and subjecting them to a strict scrutiny, allows judges to "smoke out" illegitimate uses of race that masquerade as helpful to disadvantaged groups. "Absent searching judicial inquiry into the justification for such race-based measures," she said, "there is simply no way of determining what classifications are 'benign' or 'remedial' and what classifications are in fact motivated by illegitimate notions of racial inferiority or simple racial politics."[20]

Unconstitutional racial classifications, that is, are those whose genesis and features do not dispel all suspicion of improper personal or institutional motives. The Richmond municipal council that preferred black contractors was itself dominated by black officials, and promoting diversity among contractors is not a traditional goal of city administrations. So suspicion could not be eliminated that the scheme's purpose was political rather than to secure some benefit for the community as a whole. But there are no such grounds for suspicion about the University of Michigan's motives. The most prestigious universities have for many decades taken the two goals I cited?-providing a student body diverse in many important dimensions, and training students to participate effectively in the community's political, social, and economic life?-as essential parts of their justification and aims. The FCC's decision to seek a particular racial balance among broadcasters, which the Court also struck down, was suspicious for a different reason: it imposed a racial structure fixed by a federal agency on a particular industry.[21] But university affirmative action programs only improve the mix of talented graduates and professionals that government, business, and private individuals may employ; the racial balance in the economy that results is not fixed in advance by any agency, but determined by the ordinary processes of individual choice.

Of course it is deplorable that America is still plagued by racial inequality so many decades after it committed itself to ending it. It would compound our failure, however, to forbid what so many of our academic, economic, and political leaders, after a quarter-century of reflective experience, think is our best weapon against that inequality. Colorblindness that has no basis in moral principle and helps only to perpetuate racial stratification is worse than pointless.

Dworkin wrote:

Of course it is deplorable that America is still plagued by racial inequality so many decades after it committed itself to ending it. It would compound our failure, however, to forbid what so many of our academic, economic, and political leaders, after a quarter-century of reflective experience, think is our best weapon against that inequality. Colorblindness that has no basis in moral principle and helps only to perpetuate racial stratification is worse than pointless.

If the present court strikes down AA as used by the UofM to improve our society in necessary ways, I think it possible that this court will be seen in future times as essentially racist, and that it will set the tone, however elevated in its language, intellectual sophistication, and legal niceties, for the reestablishment of a raciest society.

What "options" do you suggest for achieving and maintaining diversity?

The basic premise for the ujtility of AA in hiring practices is that, left to their own devices, employers would hire those they feel most comfortable with. What would you do to ensure that they used criteria that is more equitable?

Are companies presently required to publish hiring practices?

So let's get into it, here or in another thread. What kind of motivation is needed make communities and schools genuinely and unselfconsciously diverse? What's holding us back? Who wants it this way?