Here's the post where I take on Ron Bailey of Reason Magazine.

Ron Bailey has put up a long attack on me on the Reason Magazine blog. It's his version of what happened at the Liberty Fund colloquium on Frank S. Meyer, which I've alluded to but avoided talking about in detail. Now that he's written so much over there, it forces me to get specific about some things I'd rather leave unsaid. Here's Ron:

... Althouse bizarrely came away thinking that conservatives and libertarians were frightening "true believers." Why? Evidently because they took political and moral ideas seriously.

False. I came away surprised that some people, especially the libertarians, were hardcore, true believers, wedded to an abstract version of an idea and unwilling to look at how it played out in the real world. I had come to the conference thinking I had more in common with libertarians but was quite put off by them in person. By contrast, the conservative position, because it had more to do with the real-life context, was much less troubling to me. This surprised me, because I disagree with so much of what social conservatives favor.

Much too seriously for Althouse's comfort. For one thing, there was quite a bit of discussion about the relation of virtue to liberty. Meyer's argument is that liberty is the necessary prerequisite for practicing virtue. Apparently some conservatives, such as L. Brent Bozell, Jr. (see Bozell's 1962 essay "Freedom or Virtue?" which we read for the seminar) with whom Meyer was arguing, believe that the state has the right and obligation to coerce virtue. This is anathema to libertarians. The first concern of libertarians is state power and this paramount concern for the abuse of state power means that the state should stay out of private activities that traditional conservatives might consider vicious, e.g., personal use of recreational drugs, voluntary prostitution, and so forth. Anyway, this politico-philosophical discussion apparently confused Althouse. Perhaps her skills at abstract thinking have been dulled by all the time she spends dissecting the particularities of legal cases as a law professor.

False. This didn't "confuse" me. But thanks for the "apparently." I agree -- and said at the conference many times -- that the state should not coerce virtue when it doesn't affect other persons. What disturbed me was the assertion in the writings that the public accommodations provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act were pernicious. And when I said that at the conference, a lot of the participates immediately challenged me. Did I think the law was right?!! This is what I mean by the excessive belief in the libertarian principle at the abstract level. These folks -- including Bailey, I think -- would have left restaurants and hotels to continue discriminating against black people as long as they pleased. Someone asserted that the free market would solve the problem better than government regulation. I said that the restaurant in the case about the constitutionality of the 1964 Civil Rights Act in fact made more money by seating only white customers and serving take-out to black people. One other person at the table agreed, but the point was pushed past. It didn't fit the abstraction. I thought the failure to deal with this point was very damaging to the credibility of what we were reading and talking about.

In any case, I had never met Althouse before the colloquium nor even read her blog. When chatting with her over cocktails, she seemed pleasant enough if a bit vague. In casual conversation, she made sure that I knew that she had been a "hippie" back in the day.

Self-deprecation and modesty doesn't play well with libertarians. "Cocktails," by the way, was a glass of wine. Bailey -- I'll say -- wasn't pleasant or vague. Should I counter with some adjectives about him? He was brusque and didn't seem at ease chatting over cocktails. Think about it. You're a middle-aged man, meeting a woman for the first time, having a drink, and she reveals some little fact about herself. What do you do? Smile and reveal some little thing about yourself and make connections? Or do you grunt a few syllables and decide she's a lightweight?

During the sessions when the group analyzed various texts from Meyer, she often seemed lost, not really following the discussion. As she has blogged, she was clearly out of her milieu.

I was uncomfortable with the crowd I found myself in because I felt they were essentially celebrating a man who had written a slim book touting a political philosophy that was used in its time very specifically to oppose civil rights and desegregation. Too many people at the table wanted to talk -- at length and repetitiously -- about abstractions, such as the meaning of the word "virtue." I found this perverse and offensive. I may have "seemed lost" to Bailey, and I surely was not content to just "follow the discussion." I thought there were serious matters that had to be dealt with. Why should I respect this man Meyer at all to want to engage with his book? He wrote screeds in the National Review urging the southern governors to take over the National Guard and fight off school desegregation! It was simply bizarre. Yet I had committed myself to nine hours of conversation! I had to listen to everyone politely. I had no option to walk out. If that look on my face "seemed lost," then I was doing a decent enough job of concealing my true feelings. It wasn't easy.

One session at the end of conference was devoted to Meyer's defense of federalism-his idea is that the constitutional structure that divides state power among political subdivisions tends to limit the power of the state over individuals, thus enlarging the sphere of personal liberty. The tragic historical abuse of federalism was state-mandated racial segregation which Meyer defended. As I understood Meyer's argument, he believed that preserving federalism as bulwark [sic] against the growth of central government power was more important to him than vindicating the rights of black Americans.

Big of him, huh? He really believed his principles, so deeply that black people were just going to have to suffer for his beliefs. What a guy! But you tell me: How do I know he loved his principles first and felt just terrible about how other people were going to have to pay the price for his lofty commitments or whether he actually came to love his ideas because of where they would lead? Why do you love the abstractions you love? To ask this question is not to fail to be an intellectual. To fail to ask this question is to fall short as a thinker.

I heard way too many people say they wanted to stay on the abstract level and then flatter themselves by saying this made them intellectuals. This did not unleash waves of admiration from me, however. It made me begin to entertain the thought that some of these seemingly normal, nice enough people really were racists. How could you tell?

Now here's where Althouse begins to get strange. During that session, as I recall, absolutely everyone around the table condemned Meyer's defense of federalism in the face of the real evil of state-mandated segregation. Everyone!

Yes, state-mandated segregation. But I had brought up the subject of discrimination by private business-owners, which was roundly defended at the table in the name of restricting government to the most minimal level of intrusion on the individual, in hardcore, true-believer libertarian style. (Believe me, the readings expressed the most morbid fear of government you can imagine.)

But apparently not vigorously enough for Althouse.

Because my problem was not limited to state-mandated segregation. You were very clear that that was all you opposed.

Although she did not say it during the sessions, she apparently believes that past racism means that federalism is tainted. She has not made very clear what that "taint" means for the future of federalism.

I've written about this a lot, and not only did I talk about it at the conference, but I've been writing about this in law review articles for 20 years. You might try educating yourself about what I think before writing a big attack on me. Or maybe you're the one with dulled thinking skills. My point, which is quite clear, is that federalism has been associated with the evils of racism historically and that this presents a problem for those who would portray it as good thing today. There are many people who simply experience "federalism" as a code-word for racism. I have written about the positive values of federalism for a long time and have often encountered this problem. I know from long experience that it is crucial to disaggregate federalism from the history of racism to make it attractive in political and legal arguments. As long as Bailey is disparaging my intelligence, I may as well say that Bailey's inability to get this point doesn't make him look terribly smart.

However, during the session, some participants did wonder if there was a way to rescue federalism and really re-establish states as 50 different "laboratories of democracy." Contemporary libertarians strongly favor federalism because it allows some states to permit gay marriage, physician assisted death, medical marijuana, concealed carry of handguns, and surrogate motherhood contracts and other private activities without interference from the Feds. I would be even more startled to discover that Althouse opposes these and similar cases of federalism.

Bailey doesn't seem to know that this is a subject I've written a great deal about in my scholarly writing. Nor does he seem to remember that I brought up this aspect of federalism at the conference. I was the main person who did! Talk about not paying attention!

Of course, libertarians who are eager to prevent the state from interfering in the lives of citizens in order to enforce its version of virtuous behavior, support this kind of federalism. This point was made repeatedly in conference sessions.

Yeah, mainly by me.

As I said, if Althouse thought America's shameful racist history meant that federalism is beyond rescuing (including the "good kinds" just mentioned), she had ample opportunity to make that point during the formal sessions.

Which I don't, so this is just an obtuse point.

However, she can't expect everyone in the room who have been discussing these issues for years to just roll over and agree with her. Oh, by the way, did I mention that no one defended Meyer's views on federalism and racial segregation?.

Again: obtuse.

Liberty Fund colloquia strongly encourage conversation among participants outside of the formal sessions. Participants dine together every evening and are usually seated at tables of six or so participants in order to facilitate conversation. (Althouse weirdly and incorrectly refers to these rules that aim to encourage discussion as "cult-like" here.)

The surly Bailey doesn't appreciate my sense of humor.

After dinner, conferees are invited back to a hospitality suite for cocktails and snacks where they can talk further with one another for as long they like. As it happens, I was sitting at a table at the dinner in which Ann Althouse had her apparent epiphany about tainted federalism and her panic attack about the racial sensitivities of conservatives and libertarians.

We'll get to what he terms a "panic attack" further down.

What happened is that since she had not joined several of us in the hospitality suite the previous night, she asked what we have been discussing until 2 am. Some of my tablemates at dinner told her that I had provoked a spirited debate (lasting perhaps and hour and a half) about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I had asserted that state-sanctioned racial segregation was so egregious a violation of the rights of black citizens that it was absolutely necessary for the federal government to intervene to smash it.

Again, note that he was only opposing "state-sanctioned racial segregation" and only because it was "so egregious" a violation. And apparently, it took a big one-and-a-half-hour fight even to get through that point! I'm trying to convey to you readers just how retrograde things were here. At what point would you start to wonder if this is what it is like to be with racists (of a certain level of intelligence and social class)?

The whole political point of libertarianism is to strictly limit the power of the state over individuals. Mandating racial segregation via state power (as was done in the Southern states) is precisely the kind of state tyranny what libertarians detest [sic]. In any case, I think she found my view of the Civil Rights Act agreeable.

Hardly. You would have protected the individual rights of the businesses that would have gone on discriminating. You only wanted to limit the state, which is what you always want to do anyway, in service of your big idea.

During the discussion in the hospitality suite, absolutely no one defended state-sanctioned segregation and all agreed that Federal intervention was necessary to outlaw state-enforced Jim Crow segregation.

Again with the "state-sanctioned"! That isn't the point. This is so obtuse!

Once the topic had been broached over dinner, I turned to another tablemate who is a fervent Catholic intellectual to discuss some bioethical stuff. We had brought up transhumanism during one of the sessions earlier in the day. The two of us were having a perfectly civil conversation about the moral status of embryos. Anyway next thing I know, Ann Althouse is shouting at two of our dinner companions demanding that they prove to her (Althouse) that they are not racists! She kept asking over and over, "How do I know that I'm not sitting at a table full of racists?" This was completely bizarre! It should go without saying, but I will say it: No one at the conference could even remotely be accused of being racist.

I've already explained how I came to feel that the people I was sitting with could in fact be racists. At the table, I asked my question calmly at first, but was met with continued assertions about the rights of business owners and hypotheticals about the rights of white people. There was a long, irritating hypothetical about KKK members that I couldn't hear over the din of the restaurant. The other woman at the table who was going on in this vein was very young, in her mid-twenties, and she maintained a smug expression on her face as she talked about the rights of white people and repeatedly declined to express concern for the history of racism in the United States and the suffering of real people. It was always back to the hypos about white people. I tried very hard not to express anger at her, but finally I did: How do I know you're not a racist? It was a serious question, something I'd been wondering about all day.

Apparently, the three of them had been discussing the constitutionality of the public accommodations sections of the Civil Rights Act that forbids private businesses to racially discriminate among customers. That is an interesting issue where people ask serious questions about how to balance state intervention and individual choice. Anyway, it's an important issue over which people of good will may disagree-once state-enforced segregation is obliterated, will individual choices under equality of law and in a free market place end racial discrimination? Perhaps not. As Nobel Economics Laureate Gary Becker has argued if a minority group is a very small percentage of a population, then the costs of discrimination will be borne mainly by the minority and market forces may not be strong enough to overcome such discrimination. To me, the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that compelled private businesses to serve people of all races have largely resulted in beneficial outcomes. But beneficial outcomes may not be the only desideratum of state intervention. Consider the egregious violation of property rights that took place in the Kelo v. New London case. After all, forcing Ms. Kelo to sell her house so that the city could give it to a private developer is beneficial to the city of New London's tax base. Again, people of good will can have serious disagreements on where the proper limits to state power should lie. For example, should the Feds outlaw gay marriage, medical marijuana, concealed carry, surrogate motherhood even though some states want their citizens to have the opportunity to participate in those activities? Some conservatives would say yes. Libertarians would say no.

Got that? He thinks the government should have left the private businesses alone to discriminate against black people as long as they felt like it.

In trying to explain to Althouse why private discrimination might be OK, I later pieced together that my tablemates had posed the question of whether or not Althouse would want to have the right to refuse to serve KKK members if she owned a restaurant--say, the KKK members were planning to have a weekly luncheon meeting at her cafe? My interpretation of what happened is that because she didn't want to appear to be hypocrite, she refused to answer and kept asking more and more abstract questions about their example. When she was backed into a corner, she lashed out, suggesting that people who disagreed with her feelings were racists. Eventually, she was so upset that she began crying. Of course, at that point the possibility of civil intellectual discourse completely evaporated.

My friends, in all honesty, what made me cry -- and I'm not too sentimental, as you may have noticed -- was the realization that these people didn't care about civil rights.

I was also astonished by the poise with which my tablemates handled Althouse. Our companions did not raise their voices nor dismiss her (as I would have), but tried to calm her down. In fact, Althouse made the situation even more personal by yelling repeatedly at one of my dinner companions (who is also a colleague) that she was an "intellectual lightweight" and an "embarrassment to women everywhere." In fact, in my opinion, with that statement Althouse had actually identified herself. Before Althouse stalked away, I asked her to apologize for that insult, but she refused.

I don't think I said "embarrassment to women everywhere." That doesn't sound like my language. But I really was very angry at this young woman for her smiling and for her incessant justification of racial discrimination. I left the table because Bailey himself yelled at me in an extremely harsh way. He just kept saying "You don't know her. I know her." Basically, they were colleagues, and he was vouching for her. He didn't respond on the substantive issue. How could he? He agreed with her about private discrimination. At that point, I was so offended by these people that I got up and left. I felt terrible about causing a scene and being part of any ugliness. But on long reflection, I think I would have felt far worse if I had sat through all of that without saying anything.

IN THE COMMENTS: Ron Bailey shows up and I respond:

RON BAILEY: Professor Althouse: It is perfectly OK to complain that you think that people are foolishly adhering to principle while ignoring actual experience in the real world. What is NOT OK is for you to shout at other people calling them "racists" because they don't completely agree with your analysis. Especially when they are NOT racists.

Ron, you took the cake for shouting that night, but I agree that I got angry in the end, after much provocation and a severe lack of friendliness. I did not call people racists. I talked about how important it was to distinguish yourself from racist things that adhere to your abstract ideas. If anyone at that table had had the decency to say sincerely that they cared about civil rights and wanted to find a way to make it show that they hated racism, I would never have gotten angry like that. You suddenly became very vicious toward me, in defense of your friend. It looked really ugly. I was just begging for people to care about racism. Your colleague had an infuriatingly insolent smirk on her face for two hours. I tried very hard to deal with it, but it was just too much for me in the end. You did nothing to reach out toward me, a moderate, who came to the conference interested in libertarians. You completely alienated me and lost me as a potential ally, which was surpassingly foolish politically.

RON BAILEY: As you know calling someone a racist in America in the 2lst century is the worst epithet you can use. Deservedly so, racism is despicable. So you'd better reserve the term for people who really are racist, say, David Duke.

Oh, spare me. You're the one that just wrote a big, long post on a prominent website insulting me every which way you could think of. And yeah, racism is very bad. That's why you should try harder to disassociate yourself from it! Since it's so ugly, get the hell farther away from it. Don't attack me for saying you're standing too close to it... unless you like the impression it gives!

RON BAILEY: Finally, as much it pains me, I guess I have to spell it out for you. When I write: "To me, the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that compelled private businesses to serve people of all races have largely resulted in beneficial outcomes" that means that I support the public accommodations sections of the Civil Rights Act. Now have I jumped through your racial sensitivity hoops enough?

No. You admit that there were benefits but you still stood by the principle that government should not have acted, and you're still calling my concern about civil rights "racial sensitivity hoops." It's quite absurd, really. You didn't have to make a big display today of how little you cared, and I never wrote a post about you. Go ahead and stew in your own fetid juice. You're missing a part, man.

RON BAILEY: BTW, your ad hominem, "Think about it. You're a middle-aged man, meeting a woman for the first time, having a drink" implying that if I'm not racist, that I may be anti-feminist. Priceless.

It wasn't an accusation of sexism, Ron, as the context of my post makes pretty damned clear. It was a way of saying that you did not understand the function of small talk and were socially awkward. You still don't get it. And the only reason I went ahead and wrote it is because you blatantly insulted me. You took any number of gratuitous shots at me and that freed me to be rude right back at you.

UPDATE: Three academics respond to this post, and I fight back here. I'm not responding to everyone who goes after this post, though. There are a few people who apparently monitor this blog constantly and do dumb little posts that -- really -- I have seen. If you send significant traffic here, and I never respond to you, it's because I think you're boring, little man.

"For years — and long after segregation ended — the Montpelier Station, Va., post office operated in a building where signs reading 'White' and 'Colored' hung over two separate doors."

"The signs are not meant for people to follow, but rather intended as features of a museum exhibit about the country’s era of racial segregation. No matter: The U.S. Postal Service is done being associated with it. Over the summer, the Postal Service shut down its small, one-employee operation housed within the building, telling news outlets in a statement this week that it 'determined the display at the site was unacceptable to the Postal Service.'"

From "Postal Service ditches office with ‘White’ and ‘Colored’ historical signs/The post office shared a space with a museum, where the signs are part of an exhibit on segregation" (WaPo).

These weren't doors inside in some display but the entrance doors to the building, the building you needed to enter to get to the post office. It's one thing for the government to offer to teach people about the history of racism in a museum setting, which they may choose to visit, quite another to confront people with it as they go about their ordinary business and need to interact with the government.

Presumably the idea was that it was good to impose this lesson on white people, but there are at least 2 big problems with that idea. First, members of a minority group matter, even if they are a small proportion. And second, how do you know the white people are taking the message the right way? Are they solemnly chastened or improperly amused or smug or even feeling superior? It's too negative a message to assume people are taking it the right way and responding correctly.

CORRECTION: The building is in Montpelier Station, Virginia, not Montpelier, Vermont, which probably didn't have signs like that. Montpelier Station is in Orange County, which has a population that is about 12% black.

Is busing for school desegregation really going to be a central issue for the Democrats?

That's how it looked in last night's debate, when Kamala Harris lit into Joe Biden for his long-ago rejection of forced busing imposed by the federal government.

I was wondering how much this issue could resonate with younger voters and also how many older voters — old enough to remember what Biden lived through — had any great enthusiasm for moving children about on buses in order to change the racial proportions in various schools.

Researching my questions, I saw that there's one Democratic presidential candidate who must be horrified at this issue rising to the top: NYC mayor Bill de Blasio. I'm reading "Parents Do What the Mayor Hasn’t — Integrate Schools" (NYT):

Mr. de Blasio said his administration would move faster toward a comprehensive citywide plan now that local efforts seemed to be working, but he said it would still be voluntary. “Is everyone going to buy in? No,” he said. “We do not require everyone to buy in.”

The mayor also said the city’s hands were largely tied with segregation in public elementary schools, which are largely zoned by neighborhood and more affected by residential segregation patterns. Busing, he said, “absolutely poisoned the well” in Boston in the 1970s, near where he grew up. “I’m telling you, and I think history is on my side here, you do not want to create a series of conflicts here,” he said.

See also "Segregation Has Been the Story of New York City’s Schools for 50 Years/Low black and Hispanic enrollment at Stuyvesant High School has reignited a debate about how to finally integrate the city’s schools" (NYT)("Last summer, Mr. de Blasio ruled out using busing to achieve integration").

ADDED: Is there room for local experimentation in how to provide equal schooling? I'm reading "'I Love My Skin!' Why Black Parents Are Turning to Afrocentric Schools/While New York City schools are deeply segregated, some black families are choosing an alternative to integration" (from last January in the NYT):

"The ascent of an African-American to the presidency — a victory by a 47-year-old man who was born when segregation was still the law of the land..."

"... across much of this nation — is a moment so powerful and so obvious that its symbolism needs no commentary."

Oh lord, the drivel we must now read. Come on. Segregation wasn't the "law of the land" in 1961. Segregation by law was declared unconstitutional in 1954. And Obama hasn't "ascended" to the presidency. He won an election. You ascend to a throne. Let's keep our wits about us.

The exclusion of African Americans from "the social, communal and intimate cultural life of white Americans."

Harvard sociology professor Orlando Patterson calls this "The Last Race Problem" (TimesSelect link):

[A]ccompanying [the integration of African Americans into "the upper echelons and leadership of American society, public life and national identity"] has been the near complete isolation of blacks from the private life of the white majority. Recent modest improvements notwithstanding, blacks, including the middle class, are nearly as segregated today as they were in DuBois’s day....

The celebrated tipping-point theory of Thomas Schelling, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, has long appeared to offer a pessimistic answer to the puzzle. It holds that even where a majority of whites favor having black neighbors, the all-white preference of just a few will always rapidly escalate into total segregation.

However, the economist William Easterly, after examining data on segregation over the past three decades, has demonstrated conclusively that Schelling’s theory is groundless in regard to race. In the vast majority of neighborhoods studied, Easterly found no pattern of acceleration of white decline, no evidence of a sudden, extreme exodus at the fabled tipping point, but instead a steady, almost constant decline in the proportion of whites from one decade to the next. Moreover, the typical neighborhoods that did change from being predominantly white to predominantly black in this period still had a significant proportion of whites living in them.

So why does segregation persist? The evidence seems clear that, in sharp contrast with the past, the major cause is that blacks generally prefer to live in neighborhoods that are at least 40 percent black. Blacks mention ethnic pride and white hostility as their main reasons for not moving to white neighborhoods. But studies like Mary Pattillo-McCoy’s ethnography of middle-class black ghettos show that the disadvantages, especially for youth, far outweigh the psychic gains.

It would be naïve to discount persisting white racism, but other minorities, like Jews, have faced a similar dilemma and opted, with good reasons, for integration. The Jewish-American experience also shows that identity and integration are not incompatible, and that when the middle class moves, others follow. If America is ever to solve the second part of DuBois’s color problem, it will be on the shoulders of the black middle class.

So, according to Patterson, it is up to the black middle class to change its ways. Whether they are reading TimesSelect is another matter. I assume the people who get TimesSelect are already living in middle class white neighborhoods. Patterson is encouraging complacency on their part. That doesn't mean he's not right, though.

(Here's an article of his from last March about "the tragic disconnection of millions of black youths from the American mainstream.")

Katrina and segregation.

Bearing Blog writes about an interview on NPR with Betty Hearn Morrow, a disaster sociologist. (The audio should be available here at 1:00.)

Bizarre. This morning on NPR's Weekend Edition: a sociologist tries to explain to Linda Wertheimer, without using the word "segregation," that the relief workers will be intentionally racially segregating the emergency shelters. I think the link is here.

She's going on about how people want to be with their own "cultural group" and how tensions will be lower that way. This may or may not be true, but what's interesting to me is the linguistic somersaults she's putting herself through to avoid saying "we will segregate the shelters."

Has everyone forgotten about Johnson v. California, a case the Supreme Court issued back in February?

The Supreme Court ruled ... that California must abandon its policy of assigning inmates to racially segregated cells for as long as 60 days when they arrive at new prisons -- unless the state can prove it has no race-neutral way to prevent interracial violence.

A five-justice majority rejected the state's contention that the court should defer to the judgment of the corrections officials who deemed the unwritten policy necessary to prevent members of race-based gangs from turning on one another in two-man cells. The state also argued that its policy affects members of all races equally. The court said California's policy must withstand the same "strict scrutiny" as all other racial classifications.

"We rejected the notion that separate can ever be equal . . . 50 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education, and we refuse to resurrect it today," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in an opinion that was joined by Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

"When government officers are permitted to use race as a proxy for gang membership and violence without demonstrating a compelling government interest and proving that their means are narrowly tailored, society as a whole suffers," O'Connor added.

[Justice Stevens, writing separately, took an even stronger anti-segregation position.]

I wonder what the civil rights cases coming out of Katrina will look like. If the issue of segregating refugee shelters worked its way up to the Supreme Court, would the Johnson dissenting view prevail?

Justice Clarence Thomas said the majority put concern for the "indignity and stigma of racial discrimination" ahead of inmates' "safety and . . . lives."

In a 28-page dissenting opinion that was nearly twice as long as the majority opinion, Thomas, joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, said California authorities need latitude to deal with such gangs as the Crips and the Aryan Brotherhood. Its policy, he wrote, "is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests."

John Roberts will have replaced Justice O'Connor (unless something very strange happens), but the Johnson majority would still have five votes. It will be interesting to see what effect transformed microcosmic society of the Court will have on Anthony Kennedy.

"The worst forms of racial discrimination in this Nation have always been accompanied by straight-faced representations that discrimination helped minorities."

Justice Thomas, in today's opinion in Fisher v. University of Texas, likening affirmative action to slavery and segregation. ("Slaveholders argued that slavery was a 'positive good' that civilized blacks and elevated them in every dimension of life.... A century later, segregationists similarly asserted that segregation was not only benign, but good for black students.... Following in these inauspicious footsteps, the University would have us believe that its discrimination is likewise benign. I think the lesson of history is clear enough: Racial discrimination is never benign....")

"UW-Madison’s Multicultural Student Center separated attendees by race to discuss a violent week of news that stirred debates about racism and law enforcement..."

"... prompting criticism from conservative news outlets that the arrangement amounted to segregation."

Amounted to? It clearly is segregation, whether you want to defend it or attack it.

Campus officials said the decision to hold separate meetings Monday for white and minority students, faculty and staff was made to ensure people of color had a place to discuss their concerns, and said the rules were not meant to exclude participants.

“No one was turned away from any session,” UW-Madison spokeswoman Meredith McGlone said in a statement.... McGlone said participants wanted “a space to express feelings without the fear of being judged. Our students of color often find such spaces hard to come by... It is a best practice in student affairs to allow quiet and reflective space for those who request it.”

That's defending it.

Still, McGlone said, the intent behind the different meetings “could have been communicated more clearly to avoid any impression of exclusion.”

The defense is that the officials meant well and didn't intend to demean anybody. Let's remember that the problem with "separate but equal" — as the Supreme Court put it in Brown v. Board of Education — was that the line separating the races was "usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of" the nonwhite group.

Despite student protests, the Princeton board of trustees has voted to keep the name Woodrow Wilson on its various buildings and programs.

The NYT reports.

Wilson has been a much-loved figure at Princeton, but in September, the Black Justice League, a student activist group, distributed posters around campus that revealed his views on race, including his comment to an African-American leader that, “Segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.”

As president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson reintroduced segregation into the federal work force, admired the Ku Klux Klan and did not believe that black Americans were worthy of full citizenship.

The board also rejected a demand that faculty and staff submit to cultural competency training and that students take a course on the history of a marginalized people. The demand for a place on campus dedicated to black students was, ironically, met.

"'States rights' was always a cover for segregation and harsh discrimination. The poor – both white and people of color – are already especially burdened by anti-abortion legislation..."

"... because they can’t afford travel to a blue state to get an abortion. They’re also hurt by the failure of red states to expand Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act; by red state de facto segregation in public schools; and by red state measures to suppress votes. One answer is for Democratic administrations and congresses in Washington to prioritize the needs of the red state poor and make extra efforts to protect the civil and political rights of people of color in red states.... Blue states have a potential role here. They should spend additional resources on the needs of red state residents, such as Oregon is now doing for people from outside Oregon who seek abortions....  California already bars anyone on a state payroll (including yours truly, who teaches at UC Berkeley) from getting reimbursed for travel to states that discriminate against LGBTQ+ people. Where will all this end? Not with two separate nations. What America is going through is analogous to Brexit – a lumbering, mutual decision to go separate ways on most things but remain connected on a few big things (such as national defense, monetary policy and civil and political rights).... The open question is like the one faced by every couple that separates: how will the two find ways to be civil toward each other?"

Writes Robert Reich, ending with a question that undercuts the click-bait headline, in "The second American civil war is already happening/America will still be America. But it is fast becoming two versions of itself. The open question is: how will the two be civil toward each other?" (The Guardian).

Does this deserve my tag "civility bullshit"? It's a close call. I'll add it because now I'm talking about it, but I don't think Reich deserves it, because he is calling for his own side to be civil. Those who click on that headline will probably mostly be people who are hot for battle and hating their adversary and — because it's Reich and The Guardian and because of the incipient overruling of Roe v. Wade — on the left.

I hear Reich saying settle down and think of specific, practical things that can be done through the ordinary processes of government, which include, in the United States, federalism. Let's take a moment to sneer at federalism — AKA "states rights" — and then let's calm down and diligently use it.

"Woodrow Wilson was extremely racist — even by the standards of his time."

Vox explains, supporting the Princeton students who are protesting the use of Wilson's name on various programs and buildings around the university.

Easily the worst part of Wilson's record as president was his overseeing of the resegregation of multiple agencies of the federal government, which had been surprisingly integrated as a result of Reconstruction decades earlier....

Outright dismissals were also common. Upon taking office, Wilson himself fired 15 out of 17 black supervisors in the federal service and replaced them with white people....

In 1914, a group of black professionals led by newspaper editor and Harvard alumnus Monroe Trotter met with Wilson to protest the segregation. Wilson informed Trotter, "Segregation is not humiliating, but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen."

Much more at the link.

Do commenters who ask things like "Does anyone at the Post review these stories before they are printed?" actually read the text they think is so wrong?

Here's the top-rated comment on a Washington Post column by Christine Emba titled "The new SAT score will identify barriers — but it won’t remove them":

Does anyone at the Post review these stories before they are printed?

The author's conventional wisdom comment that "the Ivy League, Stanford, MIT. These schools also tend to be white and wealthy, the ones left standing after a generation of disinvestment in secondary public education that’s been driven by racial self-segregation and poverty." seems to vary from the facts I found on the net.

I didn't spend more than 10 minutes doing some research but this is what I found: Wikipedia indicates that the 2010 Census (latest available) had the US as 72% white. Harvard's latest admitted undergraduate class was less than 50% "white"; Yale undergraduates are 44.7% "white"; and Stanford's "white" population is listed as 37% (although there is a block of "non-resident alien" students that is not broken out by race/ethnicity).

These kinds of statistics which conflict with the author's words, assumptions, and fundamental ides should be addressed in this article.

I've got a fundamental "ide" for you: You misread the text! And so did the many comments on the comment, like this one, laughing at Elba: "Hehehe, the author obviously never spent an evening in the Chem Library at Berkeley." (Here's Emba's profile. She went to Princeton and studied public and international affairs.)

Now, force yourself, you knee-jerk mockers. Here's what Elba wrote:

The graduates of the top 200 elite high schools make up a full third of the student body at the most prestigious colleges: the Ivy League, Stanford, MIT. These schools also tend to be white and wealthy, the ones left standing after a generation of disinvestment in secondary public education that has been driven by racial self-segregation and poverty. Giving less-obvious applicants a chance is well and good, but real equity will take more than an end-stage score adjustment.

"These schools" =  "the top 200 elite high schools." Elba is saying those high school tend to be wealthy and white, not that the Ivy League, Stanford, and MIT are majority white. All she says about those colleges is that they are one third from those high schools. She isn't even saying that the third from those high schools are majority white. The third from those high schools might be Asian-American or something else. Her point is that there are some great high schools that are available to some fortunate young people, and the SAT "diversity" score might give some boost to the young people who didn't get that advantage, but that it might distract us from what's more important: providing better education at the primary and secondary level.

Obama's statement was "a gracious response from a man the court had just branded as the legal equivalent of a segregationist."

Benjamin Wittes wonders if the Obama campaign read the decision it said this about:

"Barack Obama has always believed that same-sex couples should enjoy equal rights under the law, and he will continue to fight for civil unions as president," the Obama campaign stated oh-so-carefully in response to this week's California Supreme Court decision striking down the state's ban on gay marriage. "He respects the decision of the California Supreme Court, and continues to believe that states should make their own decisions when it comes to the issue of marriage."

The state court likened the policy Obama promotes to "separate but equal" racial segregation:

"[Affording] access to [marriage] exclusively to opposite-sex couples, while providing same-sex couples access to only a novel alternative designation [domestic partnership], realistically must be viewed as constituting significantly unequal treatment to same-sex couples," the court wrote. Those challenging the law "persuasively invoke by analogy the decisions of the United States Supreme Court finding inadequate a state's creation of a separate law school for Black students rather than granting such students access to the University of Texas Law School."

Wittes, who supports gay marriage, criticizes the court for accepting the analogy offered by the litigants:

Somehow, we've confused progress on marriage equality with some of the most opprobrious episodes of our legal, cultural, and moral history. For having the guts to move forward while other states were passing nasty constitutional amendments depriving gays of any marital benefits, Californians stand condemned in their own courts for discrimination and in their own newspapers for bigotry.

Few people, of course, really believe this. When we listen to Obama touting civil unions, we hear the progress that he urges, not some appeal to segregation. But it can't be progress when Obama suggests civil unions, and also progress when a court strikes them down as unconstitutionally discriminatory.

It's very common to say that judges are "confused," but I don't see the confusion. The California Court continued (PDF) in the paragraph Wittes quotes:

As plaintiffs maintain, [the Texas Law School case demonstrates] that even when the state grants ostensibly equal benefits to a previously excluded class through the creation of a new institution, the intangible symbolic differences that remain often are constitutionally significant.

Obviously, the court knows that the state was trying to move toward equality here, and I don't hear it insulting the politicians who want to move only incrementally. It is saying that there is constitutional significance to the symbolism of creating a separate institution. It seems to me that the court was reasoning in a principled, doctrinal fashion and not leavening its decisionmaking with sensitivity toward political realities.

"This Is The Most Depressing Version Of Google Maps I’ve Ever Seen."

What is depressing? That when people get more money they move to the suburbs? That people flock to cities when they are young and at the lower end of the income scale? That childless people often have these 2 characteristics: they aren't making enough money yet and they are comfortable with the housing options in the city? Our easily depressed map viewer assumes he's looking at an image of nothing but racial segregation:

What do you get when you combine Google maps and a bunch of info about household income? Only one of the most fascinating things ever to happen because of the census. Colder colors mean wealthier neighborhoods; warmer colors mean poorer ones. Whoever thought segregation could be this hypnotic, am I right? 

Since you are so fascinated, how about thinking your way out of that hypnosis, which perhaps is something you got put under in college. Wake up. Think of other dimensions. And look up the word "median."

"The Genius of Obama's Two-Year College Proposal/The plan's potential to promote socioeconomic and racial integration is critical to advancing higher education."

Richard Kahlenberg in The Atlantic:

While some argue that free tuition for upper- and middle-class students is a waste of resources, in fact it is in everyone’s interest to ensure that community colleges are socioeconomically integrated.... [W]ealthy students outnumber poor students at the most selective four-year colleges by 14 to one, while community colleges educate twice as many low-income students as high-income students....

[T]he growing number of low-income and working-class students in community colleges has been associated with reduced educational expectations and a less-rigorous curriculum.... As economic segregation rises in community colleges, students are less likely to be surrounded by well-prepared middle-class classmates who model academic success.

The Obama proposal could begin an important process of reversing the negative effects of socioeconomic segregation in higher education... [L]et’s see whether expanding universal public education to the two-year sector will, in the end, begin to reduce higher education’s economic divide and strengthen community colleges to become the engines of social mobility they were designed to be.

The black female librarian introvert at the 5-day conference.

Instapundit writes:

YOU KNOW, STUFF LIKE THIS MAKES ME WONDER WHY WE EVER BOTHERED TO END SEGREGATION. IT’S JUST SO STRESSFUL BEING IN AN INTEGRATED ENVIRONMENT WHERE PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT FROM YOU. NYU librarian laments ‘fatigue’ from ‘presence of white people.

If you could send these stories back to 1964, would we even have a Civil Rights Act? Or would most of America have knocked itself unconscious from the massive face-palming.

The link goes to a Campus Reform report on this blog post by a black librarian named April Hathcock. From the actual blog post:

I’m an introvert, an over-achiever, and an over-joiner, so I’m always faced with having to be conscious about taking breaks, saying no, and engaging in other forms of self-care. But when you combine that with 5 days of being talked at, over, and through by folks in a profession that’s 88% white…well, let’s just say I hit my limit.

Its been 5 straight days of being tone-policed and condescended to and 'splained to. Five days of listening to white men librarians complain about being a “minority” in this 88% white profession–where they consistently hold higher positions with higher pay–because they don’t understand the basics of systemic oppression... Five days of having “nice white ladies” tell you to be “civil” and “professional” when you talk about the importance of acknowledging oppression and our profession’s role in it. 

See? She's raising the problem I call "civility bullshit."

Even with well-meaning white people, friends even, it’s been exhausting; the fatigue is still there. Five days of having white colleagues corner you to “hear more” about the microaggressions you’ve suffered and witnessed, not because they want to check in on your fatigue, but because they take a weird pleasure in hearing the horror stories and feeling superior to their “less woke” racial compatriots.

Hathcock is describing her personal experience as a black woman and — it's important to see — an introvert. It's difficult for introverts to do conferences and tp need to talk so much with people, even at a 2 or 3 day conference. But this was a 5-day conference! The hell! I'm not even sure I'm that much of an introvert, but after 3 days, I'd be running off and hiding in my room as much as possible, just because it's a 5-day conference. I can't imagine how bad that would feel, if, on top of the sheer difficulty of relating to other people for 5 days straight, I was continually having interactions that focused on something about me that puts me in a small minority, and I would be at my wit's end if those interactions entailed efforts to restrict how I talk, especially if I believed that my style of speech came from my emotional connection to my minority status and other people were advising me to rein it in.

April Hathcock's statements make complete sense to me. And I don't see how it undermines the arguments for banning race discrimination that there are going to be some negative experiences in a mixed-race environment. It seems really wrong to say: We gave you the integration you said you wanted, so don't complain about how you're treated now that we stopped excluding you.

In this light, you might want to read: "A Conversation with Malcolm Gladwell: Revisiting Brown v. Board." Excerpt:

I’m really examining the social science at the core of [Brown] and saying that the social science argument that the court made was wrong—or at least was painfully and tragically incomplete....

The court, for its own peculiar reasons, wanted to claim that black people, as a result of segregation, had suffered a kind of grievous and catastrophic psychological injury. And I’m sorry, that’s just not true....

[T]o draw the sweeping conclusion that the court did—that unless black kids can sit next to white kids in a classroom they can’t get an education—is nonsense!...

Here's Gladwell's podcast on the subject.

AND: Maybe it's time, once again, to read "Caring for Your Introvert."

Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate?....

Scalia scoffs at lawsuit challenging sex segregation in dorms.

The lawsuit, against Catholic University, which got rid of coed dorms, is based on D.C.’s Human Rights Act. Scalia, speaking at Duquesne Law School, said:

“Our educational establishment these days, while so tolerant of and even insistent upon diversity in all other aspects of life seems bent on eliminating diversity of moral judgment — particularly moral judgment based on religious views...

“I hope [Duquesne] will not yield — as some Catholic institutions have — to this politically correct insistence upon suppression of moral judgment, to this distorted view of what diversity in America means.”

More on the lawsuit here:

Catholic University spokesman Victor Nakas [said] DC’s Human Rights Act... “forbids a school from denying or conditioning the use of facilities for a discriminatory reason. The single-sex residence policy that we are phasing in treats both sexes equally, so there is no discrimination.”

The reason for the sex segregation, Nakas said, was "to curb the abuse of alcohol and to stymie development of a 'hook-up' culture."

Goodbye to Judge Leonard B. Sand.

"Leonard B. Sand, Judge in Landmark Yonkers Segregation Case, Dies at 88," is the headline at The New York Times.

The charges against Yonkers were brought in a lawsuit that the Justice Department filed in 1980 in Federal District Court in Manhattan. The case was assigned to Judge Sand, who had joined the court two years earlier.... Some applauded him as rightly following precedents when, in 1986, he ordered that the city remedy the housing portion of its violations by adopting a plan for building up to 1,000 units of low- and moderate-income housing in predominantly white neighborhoods.

They praised him again when he imposed potentially bankrupting fines on Yonkers to overcome its City Council’s repeated defiance of his mandated remedy.... Critics, however, viewed him as engaging in “social engineering,” and some called him a “judicial tyrant.” Yonkers officials, who denied they were responsible for the segregation, denounced the judge, as did many white residents, some of whom picketed his weekend home in northern Westchester County....

Other widely noted decisions by Judge Sand included a 1990 ruling that overturned a ban on panhandling in the New York City subway system. It was the first time a federal court found that panhandling was a free-speech right protected by the First Amendment....

Perhaps Judge Sand’s most prominent criminal trial was that in 2001 of four terrorists who were convicted of conspiring in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in East Africa, which killed 224 people. Two defendants then faced a death penalty hearing, which resulted in life sentences after the jury could not agree on imposing a death sentence.... [S]ome jurors noted that the terrorists “were suicide bombers, so why give them what they want?”...

I clerked for Judge Sand from the fall of 1981 to the summer of 1982 — the between-pregnancies period of my life. He embodied the qualities you imagine when you think about the ideal judge. It was wonderful to go from law school to the experience of watching him manage the day to day ordeals of the lawyers and clients of the Southern District of New York.

"As school districts across the nation announce that their buildings will remain closed in the fall, parents are quickly organizing 'learning pods' or 'pandemic pods'..."

"... small groupings of children who gather every day and learn in a shared space, often participating in the online instruction provided by their schools. Pods are supervised either by a hired private teacher or other adult, or with parents taking turns. At face value, learning pods seem a necessary solution to the current crisis. But in practice, they will exacerbate inequities, racial segregation and the opportunity gap within schools.... For parents who need to work and can’t supervise their children’s learning, joining a pod may feel like the only way they can educate their kids and keep their jobs.... Paradoxically, at a time when the Black Lives Matter movement has prompted a national reckoning with white supremacy, white parents are again ignoring racial and class inequality when it comes to educating their children. As a result, they are actively replicating the systems that many of them say they want to dismantle.... The history of public schooling in this country is one in which white parents have repeatedly abandoned public schools, or resisted integration efforts at every turn.... We can either take this moment to continue that pattern by retreating into the comfort of our own advantages, or...." Or what?

I'm reading in "The Latest in School Segregation: Private Pandemic ‘Pods’/If they become the norm, less privileged kids will suffer" by Clara Totenberg Green, a social emotional learning specialist in the Atlanta Public Schools (NYT).

"It used to be routine, too, Chief Justice Roberts said, for presidents to appoint prominent public figures to the court."

"In 1941, the year Hughes left the court, Chief Justice Roberts said, 'you had two senators on the court, a representative, three former attorneys general.' The court that decided Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 decision banning segregation in public schools, included Chief Justice Earl Warren, a former governor of California; Hugo L. Black, a former United States senator; William O. Douglas, who had been chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission; and Robert H. Jackson, who had been the attorney general. By contrast, Chief Justice Roberts said, until Justice Elena Kagan arrived in 2010, “every single member of the court had been a court of appeals judge.' He did not comment Friday on the significance of the narrowing of the career paths, but in 2009 he said the development was a positive one, resulting in decisions with 'a more legal perspective and less of a policy perspective.'"

From respectful coverage, by the NYT's Adam Liptak, of a talk by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. at NYU School of Law. Roberts's subject was Charles Evans Hughes, who before becoming Chief Justice "had been governor of New York, an associate justice of the court, the Republican nominee for president (losing narrowly to Woodrow Wilson), secretary of state and a Wall Street lawyer who argued more than 50 cases in the court."

Interesting to see the somewhat random appearance of the name Woodrow Wilson. The old president has become a big issue of late. In this very edition of the NYT, Woodrow Wilson comes up in 2 headlines: