Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro used a baseball analogy to refute the dissents written by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor in Thursday’s landmark Supreme Court case that rolled back affirmative action policies at universities.
In a Friday Twitter post, Shapiro applied the justices’ logic in favor of affirmative action to baseball “to see how idiotic and counterproductive it is” and illuminate that lowering standards to artificially boost black participation in the long-run hurts, rather than helps, racial tensions and equality.
The logic that Jackson and Sotomayor want to endorse essentially states that in order to rectify past discrimination, current discrimination must be utilized. Let’s apply that example to baseball to see how idiotic and counterproductive this is.
Imagine, for a moment, that…
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 30, 2023
“Imagine, for a moment, that instead of MLB breaking the color line by recruiting the very best players from the Negro Leagues beginning in the mid-1940s, they had instead changed the rules of the game: black pitchers would now only need to throw two strikes to strike out white batters, and black batters would get four strikes before striking out.” Shapiro wrote. “This would be designed in order to artificially boost the statistics of black players, making them more competitive in MLB.”
But, Shapiro noted, this would have decreased the quality of baseball and exacerbated racial tensions at the same time — the opposite of what Sotomayor and Jackson claim is their goal.
“Would this improve the quality of baseball or decrease it? Would it make for better and more competitive black players in the future, such that the rules could later be made the same for everyone while achieving ‘racial balance,’ or decrease such chances? Would it exacerbate racial tensions or close them?”
Echoing Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion, Shapiro concluded that the way to remedy past discrimination is not discrimination today. He argues that doing so in the MLB was unnecessary because black players did not need standards lowered for them to compete with white players. College admissions, similarly, should focus on merit, not race.
“If you argue that this was unnecessary in baseball because top black players could already compete despite the discrimination against them — YES. That’s the point I’m making. It’s true in baseball and it’s true in college admissions. The only way to remedy past discrimination is NOT present discrimination. It never was,” he continued.
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Shapiro said that his tweet should not be misconstrued in a way to mean he is against challenging policies that cause specific harm.
“This is distinct from the argument that those who have specific damages from specific policies should be able to receive redress from those who damaged them specifically. That’s basic tort law. What we’re talking about is a regime of racial ‘correctives’ that don’t correct, they merely make things far worse.”