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The Best Reason To Support Obama?

Bonnie Erbe, a U.S. News and World Report columnist who claims to have covered Washington politics ?since God was a baby,? argues that Obama?s election ?would kill affirmative action.?

What could do more damage to the argument that African-Americans deserve racial preferences than a majority of Americans voting to put an African-American in the White House? Little, from where I sit. Of course, there will still be economic data showing African-Americans disproportionately represented among low-income Americans. But the argument racial bias is widespread in American society becomes that much more difficult to make.

Perhaps, but what if Obama himself believes that racial preferences are still needed, continues to make the argument despite its alleged difficulty, and more to the point appoints federal court judges and Supreme Court justices who, like him, do not believe the Constitution does or should provide individuals with a right to be treated ?without regard? to their race or ethnicity?

In short, I would file Erbe?s hopeful prediction that Obama?s election would relegate racial preferences to the dustbin of history in the same wishful thinking file I discussed here:

The hopeful optimism of Stuart Taylor, Edward Blum, George Will, and others that Obama can lead the country to a new plateau of racial reconciliation must rest, at least at this point, on a conviction that the bi-racialism that Obama literally ?embodies,? that what he is, will ultimately be more important than whatever he may believe, say, or even do.

They may be right. If he wins I certainly hope they?re right. But at this point their confidence that what Obama is will trump his long support for racial preference policies leaves me with a troubling, Clintonian observation: it depends on what the meaning of ?is? is.

Of course, none of this means that the mere possibility that an Obama election might make it marginally more difficult to justify racial preferences isn?t still the best reason to support him. But that possibility, in turn, doesn?t mean it?s a good enough reason.

Full post as published by Discriminations on July 16, 2008 (boomark / email).