“Individuals who have been wronged by unlawful racial discrimination should be made whole; but under our Constitution there can be no such thing as either a creditor or a debtor race. That concept is alien to the Constitution’s focus upon the individual, see Amdt. 14, 1 (“[N]or shall any State…deny to any person” the equal protection of the laws), and its rejection of dispositions based on race, see Amdt. 15, 1 (prohibiting abridgment of the right to vote “on account of race”) or based on blood, see Art. III, 3 (“[N]o Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood”); Art. I, 9 (“No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States”). To pursue the concept of racial entitlement – even for the most admirable and benign of purposes – is to reinforce and preserve for future mischief the way of thinking that produced race slavery, race privilege and race hatred. In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American.”
Guest Comment on NRO – August 19, 2003, 11:30 a.m.
By Barbara Grutter
“We will never become a truly inclusive society if we continue to discriminate against or disenfranchise one group in the process of including another. Equal protection means the same thing for everyone or it means nothing for anyone. We will not wait, as Sandra Day O’Connor suggests, another 25 years for the principle of equal treatment to become a reality in Michigan.”
“This is an issue that transcends party affiliation, rhetoric, and politics. Michiganians recognize that our integrity and identity as a people demand equal protection under the law, and that our future depends on it.”
Barbara
Grutter, a resident of Plymouth, MI, was the lead plaintiff in Grutter v.
Bollinger. This piece originally ran in the Grand Rapids (MI) Press in response
to a commentary by Michigan GOP chair Betsy DeVos.