On June 23, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of  “race-conscious admissions” at America’s state-operated colleges and universities. Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, holds that the form of racial discrimination known as “affirmative action” is lawful under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

Yes, you read that correctly. No, it doesn’t make any sense at all. The whole idea of equal protection is, um, EQUAL protection. That means neither special privilege nor special punishment based on non-essentials like skin color.

When the expression “race-conscious” crosses my field of view, it’s usually a safe bet that the person using it is a “white supremacist” or “white separatist” chiding those of similar skin tone for not joining him in his dislike of those of darker hue. And usually the vast majority of us see that for what it is and reject it, as we should.

Usually. But not when racial quotas and set-asides come up for consideration in the courts. Then racism suddenly becomes not just acceptable but mandatory,  or at least de rigueur, in stark contrast to Dr. Martin Luther King’s call for a society where we are judged on the content of our characters rather than on the color of our skins.

Does “structural” or “institutional” racism still exist, functioning so as to deprive people of color of their fair share of opportunities in our shared society? I’m not among those who dismiss the idea out of hand. In fact, I think it quite likely to be true.

Can structural/institutional racism be repaired or eliminated by adding more layers of structural/institutional racism atop the original ugly substrate? No. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Nor do three, four or five.

Color-blindness in college and university admissions is neither the first nor the last step in eliminating racism as a factor in the availability of post-secondary education opportunities. But it is certainly a necessary step, to be taken along with, rather than after, rooting out racial bias in curriculum, teaching and testing.

It’s demoralizing in this day and age to find Jim Crow alive and well in the form of state institutions demanding (and basing decisions on) disclosure of individuals’ racial and ethnic backgrounds.

It’s even more demoralizing — indeed, it’s beyond disgusting — to see the US Supreme Court affirming and supporting that racial discrimination in the name of “equal protection.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “Jim Crow is Alive and Well and Attending the University of Texas,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 06/24/16
• “Jim Crow is Alive and Well and Attending the University of Texas,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 06/24/16
• “Jim Crow at Texas University,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Bucks County, Pennsylvania Courier Times, 07/06/16

The US Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Utah v. Strieff, issued on June 20, is the latest in a long line of rulings expanding the powers of police at the expense of everyone else. Such expansions represent a clear and present danger to the public … and when resistance to the abuses they encourage explodes into open violence, as it surely will sooner or later, to police themselves.

Edward Strieff was detained in what the state of Utah’s attorneys openly admit was an illegal stop — a stop completely absent probable cause to believe that he had committed a crime — by Salt Lake City detective Douglas Fackrell. But the illegal stop and an illegal demand for identification enabled Fackrell to discover an outstanding traffic warrant. That discovery, the court holds, was an “attenuating” event which made Fackrell’s subsequent search of Strieff (and use of the drugs discovered on Strieff’s person in that search as evidence against him) perfectly legal.

In the opening to her dissent,  Justice Sonia Sotomayor explains the ruling’s essential evil. “This case allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your identification, and check it for outstanding traffic warrants — even if you are doing nothing wrong,” writes Sotomayor. “If the officer discovers a warrant for a fine you forgot to pay, courts will now excuse his illegal stop and will admit into evidence anything he happens to find by searching you after arresting you on the warrant.”

My late friend Aaron Russo (you may remember him as the award-winning producer of such motion pictures as “The Rose” and “Trading Places”) defined a police state in terms of fear. You know you’re living in a police state, Aaron said, if merely noticing a patrol car behind you in traffic makes you nervous.

I suspect the street sign marking that point is likewise in the rearview mirror for most of us. “No-knock” raids, “Terry stop” aka “stop and frisk” policies, and numerous violent police assaults and even murders caught on camera but often committed with impunity, make those fears eminently reasonable. This ruling can only add to the power of those fears and to the number of Americans living daily with them.

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible,” said president John F. Kennedy, “will make violent revolution inevitable.” With its ruling in Utah v. Strieff, the US Supreme Court continues a long and sorry record of answering to Kennedy’s description.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “Utah v. Strieff: SCOTUS Fuels a Dangerous Fire,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 06/21/16
• “Utah v. Strieff: SCOTUS Fuels a Dangerous Fire,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 06/21/16
• “Powers of police at issue,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Davenport, Iowa Quad-City Times, 06/21/16
• “Utah v. Strife: the Supremes Court’s Latest Dangerous Expansion of Police Powers,” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 06/22/16
• “Powers of police at issue,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Muscatine, Iowa Journal, 06/22/16
• “Utah v. Strieff: SCOTUS Fuels a Dangerous Fire,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Uintah Basin, Utah Standard, 06/23/16
• “Utah v. Strieff: SCOTUS Fuels a Dangerous Fire,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Key West: The Newspaper [Florida], 06/24/16
• “Utah v. Strieff: SCOTUS fuels a dangerous fire,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Sonoran News [Arizona], 06/29/16

The US State Department’s “Dissent Channel” is a mechanism through which department personnel may disagree with administration policy without fear of job retribution. On June 17, Mark Landler of the New York Times revealed the existence of a recent  “Dissent Channel”  memo bearing the signatures of 51 diplomats and other department officials and calling for “a more militarily assertive US role in Syria [versus the Assad regime], based on the judicious use of stand-off and air weapons.”

Let me open my dissent to the dissent by invoking the late Pete Seeger: “Oh when will they ever learn?”

The “judicious use” of US military force in the Middle East and Central Asia  has made things worse, not better, for 25 years now.

The first Gulf War weakened admittedly draconian, but at least secular, rule in the region, unleashing al Qaeda on the world.

The US invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq turned those countries into festering wounds, breeding grounds for raging infections of militant Islamism. US interventions in Libya, Syria and elsewhere have accelerated, not suppressed, the growth and virulence of those infections.

How many civilians have died in the Middle East and Central Asia due to these “judicious uses” of US military force over the last quarter century? There’s no way to know. Estimates of the death toll in Syria so far range from about 150,000 to nearly half a million. Thousands in Libya. Tens of thousands in Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands, possibly more than a million, in Iraq.

That’s not counting thousands of American deaths — more than 6,000 US troops, more than 3,000 American civilians — directly related to successive administrations’ hubristic ambition to run the lives of people, and dictate the policies of governments, in these countries.

US military force, “judicious” or otherwise, has failed to produce peace, democracy or stability in the region. In fact, it has had precisely the opposite effect. It hasn’t worked. It isn’t going to start working now.

The proper course is neither continuing the administration’s half-hearted policy of funding and supporting “good” Islamists versus “bad” Islamists in Syria, nor the aggressive military policy advocated for by these State Department dissenters. The proper course is complete US military withdrawal from the region.

Their problems are theirs, not America’s, to solve. The quicker we learn that, the better their lives, and ours, will become. The US is in a deep foreign policy hole of its own creation. Time to stop digging.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “Syria: Change the (Dissent) Channel,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 06/19/16
• “Syria: Change the (Dissent) Channel,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Antiwar.com, 06/20/16
• “Syria: Change the Dissent Channel,” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 06/20/16
• “Syria: Change the (Dissent) Channel,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 06/20/16
• “Syria: Change the (Dissent) Channel,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Key West: The Newspaper [Florida], 06/24/16