Race to the bottom

At bottom, the American problem has always been race and racism. It warped the moral vision of the Founders. It distorted the core elements of the Constitution. It infected acts of Congress. It perverted too many Supreme Court decisions to name. It threatened the very existence of this Republic. Yet, not even the ravages of the Civil War could extirpate the corroding racism that pervaded America. In the eyes of the current Supreme Court, racism persists in effect and in practice to this day. However, the recent decision of the Court banning affirmative action—the measured use of racial and ethnic preferences—in college admissions makes clear there’s no shared vision of how to address America’s problem with race in the 21st Century.