Deconstruction, American-style.

Much of this issue is devoted, in one way or another, to race. But then, so is much of American politics. The combination of the O.J. verdict and the Million Man March has shifted it to the forefront of politics again, temporarily overshadowing even Medicare.

As so often, however, the lessons being drawn from these events are the opposite of any reasonable conclusion. One subtle suggestion, as Mark Cunningham points out, is that the "attack" on affirmative action is responsible for the signs of increasing division between the races.

This might be plausible if there had been signs of growing racial harmony before November 1994. In fact, as Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton show, racial divisions have been steadily growing in step with the increasing scope, enforcement, and blatancy of the racial quotas at the heart of affirmative action.

Nor is that curious. Race-conscious policies make people conscious of race.

It is alarming, however, that such race-consciousness has now reached the point where many black Americans have begun to think of themselves as a separate nation -- a kind of black English-speaking Quebec scattered across the American continent.

That is, after all, the candid agenda of the Nation of Islam, of the Million Man March which it sponsored, and of influential black scholars and professionals who devote much ingenuity to constitutional schemes that would replace majority rule with cantonal democracy, racial vetoes, "concurrent majorities," and various forms of racial proportionality.

Until now, such "fancy franchises" have been waystations on the road to majority rule (as in South Africa). Will America be the first case in which they lead away from it? The question sounds far-fetched. So did the idea of racial quotas when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act.

America is now faced with two theories about itself: either it is a single people or it is a federation of many peoples. If the former, it will eliminate racial quotas and downplay race- consciousness generally in favor of an inclusive American identity. If the latter, it will move gradually toward racial proportionalism and its own deconstruction.

These possibilities are incarnated in two men. Colin Powell embodies the inclusive concept of the American whose race is a secondary identity, Louis Farrakhan that of the black who has rejected the accident of being born American.

Mr. Farrakhan argues his case forcefully; Mr. Powell does not yet seem to know there's a war on.

Deconstructionism has been the theme of much speculation on the O.J. verdict. It has been claimed incessantly that black Americans, on and off the jury, "saw" the evidence differently because they brought their own experiences (of police brutality, etc.) to the judgment. Since whites had a different experience, black and white "truths" were different. And never the twain shall meet.

All this is the greatest nonsense. It denies that there is such a thing as truth or objective reality. Indeed, it logically implies that Simpson could be both guilty and innocent of his wife's murder -- depending upon who's reaching the verdict.

But it is the identical argument used to justify "diversity" in the newsrooms of the mainstream press. As the diversity-mongers put it, we need black, Hispanic, lesbian, gay, etc. perspectives on the news.

Of course, they don't know their own theories. Any competent Parisian deconstructionist could tell them that you can safely have a newsroom staffed by live white males because the readers create the texts (i.e., write the newspapers) by their own interpretations.

Still, think of the Washington Post and the New York Times as newspapers specially tailored to the demands of the crowds who celebrated Mr. Simpson's acquittal.