On a Diane Rehm show episode the other day, previewing the new Supreme Court session, a caller asked guests, including the legal analyst Stuart Taylor, about the Abigail Fisher affirmative action in college admissions case coming before the Court. Taylor made an interesting point about the class politics of affirmative action:

PATRICK (CALLER): I have a question about — and I’ve been around a while. I’m over 50, so I guess you could say I’m kind of a middle-of-the-road person. But this case in Texas, I can never wrap my head around this issue of diversity. And when we’ve become — we’re a society where we feel that taking diversity is better than having the best and the brightest and the smartest contribute. I don’t understand that.
And I can also say this from another standpoint. I have a son that’s handicapped. And although there are some things that allow him to participate, from a federal standpoint, like accessibility and things of that nature, I never expected for him to be accepted or gone to places ’cause he wasn’t able to do it or qualify to do it. If he’s qualified to do it, then he should be able to do it.

REHM: Stuart?

TAYLOR: I think Patrick’s view is the majority view of the American people, I believe. By a wide margin, polls and other (word?) have shown for a long time that people do not like — most of them — having race give somebody an advantage over somebody else. One thing that’s interesting about the current case is the entire American establishment, just about, is on the pro-racial preference side.

Seventy-three friend of the court briefs filed on that side by hundreds of institutions and all the universities, all the educational associations, most of the Fortune 500 corporations. And so we have this huge disconnect between the ordinary citizen — a lot of them like Patrick — and the establishment, which, for its own reasons — racial peace, whatever — wants to have racial preferences continue, I think, indefinitely.