Equal treatment makes a comeback

There is something almost touching about the astonishment with which American universities are discovering that racial discrimination is illegal.

The Justice Department announced Monday that it is investigating the College of William & Mary over scholarships and student benefits that allegedly discriminate according to race. The Civil Rights Division says it is examining whether those programs violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits racial discrimination by recipients of federal funding.

Universities spent years teaching America that racial discrimination could cure racial discrimination. They may now receive an expensive lesson in return.

One might have supposed that this was not a particularly difficult statute for universities to understand. These are, after all, institutions populated by people who pride themselves on detecting racism in places