Affirmative action for minorities began in the 1960s as an effort to restore racial justice. Sixty years later, the U.S. Supreme Court is ending one aspect of it (hopefully). Using racism to end racism has never made sense and finally someone with authority has declared the emperor has no clothes.
Affirmative action (per Wikipedia): a set of policies and practices within a government or organization seeking to increase the representation of particular groups based on their gender, race, sexuality, creed or nationality in areas in which they are underrepresented such as education and employment.
Jim Crowe laws fit the definition of affirmative action: government policies enacted to ensure Whites were not under-represented in certain key endeavors. Affirmative action simply favors other groups in the exact same fashion.
Jim Crowe laws discriminated against blacks and affirmative action discriminates against Asians in education. The discrimination appears to be by design. Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, founder and director of the Center for Antiracist research, a leading advocate in this arena, said: ‘The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.’ In other words, affirmative action is a necessary discrimination. Bull Connor said the same of Jim Crowe laws.
So, advocates for both Jim Crowe and affirmative action deem each “necessary discrimination”. America has thoroughly rejected the racism of the past, but has embraced a new form of racism (affirmative action). Today, we cannot imagine a world in which Blacks and Whites have separate facilities and are forcibly separated, yet it was once accepted by so many. Today, we have to be tricked into accepting the new form of racism. Does Dr. Kendi contemplate what future discrimination is needed to atone for the present discrimination he advocates for? No. That would end his think-tank (and thousands of Diversity and DEI groups embedded in businesses and schools around the country). This is a good niche for him and so many others, a good way to make a living. Dr. Kendi cannot defend his anti-racism; he cannot even adequately define racism, let alone recognize all forms or the harm of policies like affirmative action:
Dr. KENDI: So, racism, I would define it, um, as a collection, uh, of racist policies that lead to racial inequity that are substantiated by racist ideas. [PAUSE. LAUGHTER.] Sure. A collection, uh, of racist policies that lead to racial inequity that are substantiated by racist ideas. And anti-racism is pretty simple using the same terms. Anti-racism is a collection of anti-racist policies leading to racial — anybody want to take a guess? — equity that are substantiated by anti-racist ideas. source: WATCH: ‘Anti-Racism’ Guru Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s Definition Of ‘Racism’ Doesn’t Actually Define Racism (clashdaily.com)
Dr. Thomas Sowell, noted black economist, blames affirmative action programs and race-based quotas as harming, not helping, the intended recipients:
They are systematically mismatched with universities and the admissions process,” Sowell said. “That is if Harvard feels that it must have X percent of blacks. And the pool is such that they can’t get X percent of blacks at the same level as the rest of the Harvard students, they’re going to take those blacks who would have succeeded in some state university and bring them to Harvard where many of them will fail.
Dr. Shelby Steele, another black academician is also not sanguine about affirmative action. He also defines it as a racist policy:
There is at least a whisper of doubt over my entire generation of educated blacks–a whisper frankly, of inferiority. Are we where we are because of merit, or because of a jerrybuilt, white guilt concepts like affirmative action and “diversity”? How different, really, is diversity’s stigmatization of us as “needy victims” from segregation’s stigmatization of us as inferiors? In either case, we are put in service to the white imagination… In both cases we were a means to a white end.
The Affirmative Action Case
This recent Supreme Court case involved both Harvard University and the University of North Carolina (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/read-supreme-court-affirmative-action-decision-case-full-text-opinion-ruling/). Both schools were sued by Asian students claiming their 14th amendment rights for equal protection were violated. Harvard immediately defended their actions as necessary and denied any deserving student was ever passed over.
harvards-gatekeeper-reveals-sat-cutoff-scores-based-on-race
William Lee, the lawyer representing the Cambridge, Mass., school, denied that it engages in discriminatory practices, saying its doors are “open to students of all backgrounds and means.”
“Harvard never considers an applicant’s race to be a negative,” he said.
Harvard can truthfully assert Asian students are not excluded in the same manner blacks were excluded in the past. However, as noted earlier, that form of racism has been thoroughly repudiated. The problem is Harvard does not acknowledge the harm to borderline Asian students, only the benefit to Black students. They are still fighting the last war it would seem. The harm to Asian students is indeed more subtle than Jim Crowe discrimination, but what does that matter to individuals impacted? The school overlooks significant discrepancies to pretend there is no harm.
The court’s decision examines various SAT score deciles (i.e. the top 10%, 20%, 30%, etc.). You must be a good student, Black or otherwise, to get into Harvard, but the bottom line is Black, Hispanic, and Native American students in the top third among SAT scores have a far better chance of being accepted than Asian students with similar scores.
Harvard sends recruitment letters to African-American, Native American and Hispanic high schoolers with mid-range SAT scores, around 1100 on math and verbal combined out of a possible 1600, CNN reported.
Asian-Americans only receive a recruitment letter if they score at least 250 points higher — 1350 for women, and 1380 for men.
250 bonus points on an SAT is massive. An 1100 score is around the 65th percentile (a score better than for 65% of all students taking the exam). 1100 is above average for sure, but far below the average Harvard student. Asian students must be close to the 95th percentile to be considered for Harvard, while Black students 30 percentiles lower are considered. An Asian student with a 1300 SAT has a very slight chance of acceptance, but a Black student with the same score has a good chance. This obvious and extreme disparity is necessary to remedy past discrimination? Perhaps this is to right the wrong of all those Asians who held slaves in the antebellum South?
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/applying/articles/whats-a-good-sat-score
This is exactly the problem Dr. Sowell highlighted. A Black, Native American, or Hispanic student in the top third of SAT scores, a bright student for sure, someone who would do well in most other schools, must compete against a Harvard student body almost exclusively in the top 5% (the overwhelming majority of Harvard students score 1400 or above). Is this policy fair to that bright minority student? Harvard is setting up these less qualified students for potential failure, not being honest with them on how they stack up against others, giving them a false sense of security.
The policy is also not fair to borderline Asian students who would have been accepted at Harvard, but are excluded for a less qualified candidate. Why should two students with the same scores be treated differently? Is it right to lower standards for just one set of students? A black student in the top decile is almost a sure bet to be accepted, but not so with other racial groups.
The “goal,” according to Harvard’s director of admissions, “is to make sure that[Harvard does] not hav[e] a dramatic drop-off ” in minority admissions from the prior class.
There are natural fluctuations in everything measured. Many years admission numbers should fall well below the average; other years they will be well above . Take weather as an analogy. Does temperature, rainfall, etc. meet the average every day? How many days do we land exactly on the average? We are usually a little above or below, and quite often well above or below. So, why does Harvard make meeting the average an annual goal? Do they know nothing of statistics, math, and science at Harvard?
If we assume minority admissions follow a normal distribution (the famous bell curve), the current year’s measure will be at least one standard deviation from the average (outside the green shaded area) approximately one of every three years. The average should be in the green approximately two out of every three years(half the time below the average and the other half above). Therefore, a drop in admissions for one particular group one particular year, does not indicate racism (or some other ism) has suddenly increased. A drop in admissions for one year is probably a natural fluctuation; it should be expected periodically.
However, the admission numbers are not allowed to fluctuate. Schools forcing the admissions to meet the average (for who knows how many different groups) every single year means that some years even more undeserving students will be admitted. Why is meeting the average a goal? You think you and your party follow the science, but Harvard’s goal is un-scientific. It is a “politically correct” goal, meaning factually or scientifically incorrect.
The Justices Speak
Justices Jackson-Brown and Sotomayor make tortured, emotionally based defenses of affirmative action. From Justice Roberts opinion, a counter to his colleagues’ claims:
JUSTICE JACKSON attempts to minimize the role that race plays in UNC’s admissions process by noting that, from 2016–2021, the school accepted a lower “percentage of the most academically excellent in-state Black candidates”—that is, 65 out of 67 such applicants (97.01%)—than it did similarly situated Asian applicants—that is, 1118 out of 1139 such applicants (98.16%). It is not clear how the rejection of just two black applicants over five years could be “indicative of a genuinely holistic [admissions] process,” as JUSTICE JACKSON contends.
Justice Jackson is correct on this score: the very best students, Black or otherwise, are almost always accepted. However, that is not the issue. When we dig deeper, we see the difference is not nearly as slight as the numbers she selectively quotes. Second tier students, the ones with SAT scores in the 1100s, 1200s, or low 1300s, are usually not good enough unless you are a certain minority.
According to SFFA’s expert, over 80% of all black applicants in the top academic decile were admitted to UNC, while under 70% of white and Asian applicants in that decile were admitted. 3 App. in No. 21–707, at 1078–1083. In the second highest academic decile, the disparity is even starker: 83% of black applicants were admitted, while 58% of white applicants and 47% of Asian applicants were admitted. Ibid.
There is even more the disparity with the next decile:
And in the third highest decile, 77% of black applicants were admitted, compared to 48% of white applicants and 34% of Asian applicants. Ibid. The dissent does not dispute the accuracy of these figures.
The difference, in fact, is obvious and large:
black applicants in the top four academic deciles are between four and ten times more likely to be admitted to Harvard than Asian applicants in those deciles
Just being Black, with no other distinguishing qualification, affords a four to ten times advantage. How is this fair?
The numbers Justice Jackson cites actually demonstrate many qualified Blacks, Native Americans, and Hispanics will still make it to Harvard after the end of affirmative action. The best, most qualified students are almost always accepted.
Furthermore “far more African Americans had completed four years of higher education by 2019 than ever before – 26% compared with just 4% in 1962.” (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52992795) What is the continued justification for race-based criteria in education? The precedent has been established and accepted
Justice Sotomayor adds the following in her opinion:
By ending race-conscious college admissions, this Court closes the door of opportunity that the Court’s precedents helped open to young students of every race. It creates a leadership pipeline that is less diverse than our increasingly diverse society, reserving “positions of influence, affluence, and prestige in America” for a predominantly white pool of college graduates.
Is this a Wall Street Journal editorial, a Joe Biden campaign speech, or a Supreme Court opinion? Eliminating affirmative action would result in more Asians getting into the leadership pipeline. Having more Asians would make us more diverse, would it not?
More than fifty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King said:
https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny.
Instead of this notion, Justice Sotomayor echoes the lament of so many today; her words divide us along racial lines. She says America will re-constitute our society along racial lines unless people like her force us to be better. What proof does she have of this–and who is she to impose her will? Further, she makes a political argument, not a legal one. I claim instead any business which openly discriminates against Blacks will be hurt badly in the marketplace. Government coercion is unnecessary because of the current stigma of blatant racism.
Nobody in Justice Sotomayor’s coalition believes any longer in Dr. King’s dream. How different are her words from Dr. King’s words of unity. Dr. King envisioned a color blind society:
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
A color blind society scares the Left. Justice Sotomayor says “race blindness” is bad; it will have a “devastating effect”.
Today, this Court overrules decades of precedent and imposes a superficial rule of race blindness on the Nation. The devastating impact of this decision cannot be overstated. The majority’s vision of race neutrality will entrench racial segregation in higher education because racial inequality will persist so long as it is ignored.
Racial inequality will lead to racial segregation. How so? Inequality is a fact of life. Some are faster, taller, smarter, or richer than others. Do we have to end all these inequalities too or only racial inequality matters?
Justice Thomas instead echoes Dr. King and openly advocates for a color blind society, quoting from famous prior decisions:
The Constitution was amended to abolish slavery and proclaim that all persons born in the United States are citizens, entitled to the privileges or immunities of citizenship and the equal protection of the laws. Amdts. 13, 14. Because of that second founding, “[o]ur Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” Plessy v.Ferguson
Justice Thomas also correctly adds:
This Court’s commitment to that equality principle has ebbed and flowed over time.
Thomas and others in his coalition do not ignore history. He acknowledges the failing of America’s past. We are not stuck in the past, however. Thomas then sums up the logic of this decision:
the Court finally corrected course in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), announcing that primary schools must either desegregate with all deliberate speed or else close their doors. It then pulled back in Grutter v. Bollinger, (2003), permitting universities to discriminate based on race in their admissions process (though only temporarily) in order to achieve alleged “educational benefits of diversity.” Yet, the Constitution continues to embody a simple truth: Two discriminatory wrongs cannot make a right.
He makes such a simple and obvious point, yet so many cannot understand this basic logic. I understood it as a kid when I was bussed across town to achieve more diversity. Government policy cannot fix racism. In fact, government policy has been the worst source of racism in our country, affirmative action being only the latest instance. We would not have suffered under the racist policies of Jim Crowe without government’s thumb on the scale.
The court, via this decision simply advocates for a common fair standard. Judge according to their own unique abilities, not by the group to which they belong. Allow those with difficult circumstances, not the children of Barrack Obama or Kamala Harris, but those Black kids from broken homes and truly less advantaged to show how they have done well in spite of their individual circumstances. Give those determined kids the benefit of the doubt for their hard work and diligence, but do not give a bonus to every single kid of a certain race.
Reactions
Who else to ask for reaction but Whoopi Goldberg? Who else summarizes the insanity of the Left any better?
Whoopi Goldberg Asks If White People Need to Start Getting Beaten for Reforms to Happen – YouTube
“Do we need to see white people get beaten before things will change?” Goldberg asked once. The logic is something like this: So, white people see black people beaten and they don’t care. They will care when they see other white people beaten. They will feel threatened then. Change will come then.
She must actually believe this, but I do not know a single white person, not any person whatsoever, who thinks this way. Still, this dummy gives millions insight into her insanity.
Whoopi also dislikes Justice Thomas; she be believes he has abandoned his race and gives aid and comfort to the enemy. This decision gives her another chance to bash him. https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/whoopi-goldberg-eviscerates-clarence-thomas-in-wake-of-supreme-court-s-affirmative-action-ruling-watch-video/ar-AA1ddA6E
“He doesn’t know what diversity is. That’s what he said, and so he doesn’t get it,” Goldberg said in response to Thomas’ concurrence with the decision. “Well, let me pose this question to you, Justice Thomas: Could your mother and father vote in this country? Because had the 14th Amendment actually had us on equal footing, they would’ve been able to vote. And you know why that changed? Because people got out and made a change. If we didn’t have to, no one would do it.
Earlier during Hot Topics, Goldberg spoke to the importance of affirmative action and why it should continue to be upheld. “The 14th Amendment is supposed to promise equal protection, but if everyone was actually treated equally, we wouldn’t have had to put in affirmative action,” she said. “People wouldn’t have had to march, and begged, and gotten hosed, and all of these things that people did to just balance us out with everything else going on in the country.”
Yes, Justice Thomas who grew up dirt poor and experienced Jim Crowe racism first hand has a distorted view of racism and affirmative action. We should listen to Whoopi, a high school dropout, instead of the Yale Law school graduate and accomplished Supreme Court Justice.
Perhaps you say it is unfair to compare the blunt racism of America’s past with the milder affirmative action policy. Still, today’s racism has an ugly side as well. Small acts of racism lead to more egregious acts; there is no end to the slippery slope once the door is opened.
on having whiteness by donald moss – Bing
Whiteness is a condition one first acquires and then one has—a malignant, parasitic-like condition to which “white” people have a particular susceptibility. The condition is foundational, generating characteristic ways of being in one’s body, in one’s mind, and in one’s world. Parasitic Whiteness renders its hosts’ appetites voracious, insatiable, and perverse. These deformed appetites particularly target nonwhite peoples. Once established, these appetites are nearly impossible to eliminate. Effective treatment consists of a combination of psychic and social-historical interventions. Such interventions can reasonably aim only to reshape Whiteness’s infiltrated appetites—to reduce their intensity, redistribute their aims, and occasionally turn those aims toward the work of reparation. When remembered and represented, the ravages wreaked by the chronic condition can function either as warning (“never again”) or as temptation (“great again”). Memorialization alone, therefore, is no guarantee against regression. There is not yet a permanent cure.
Dr Donald Moss teaches psychoanalysis at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. According to the American Psychoanalytic Association, he has studied “clinical/ theoretical/ activist perspectives” in psychoanalysis since the 1980s. Moss has also written several articles for other academic journals.
Dr. Kendi’s advocacy of “present discrimination” leads to progressively uglier forms of racism. QED.
In the end, affirmative action and DEI and all the rest are about votes.
https://ifunny.co/picture/i-ve-never-been-called-a-racial-slur-by-a-eTjvX8n38
Politicians will play this same silly game until, like the gentleman above, we stop believing them.
The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now how 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign.
Diversity
Obsessive pursuit of diversity has led us to this point. Limiting diversity is clearly a problem, but what is the value of diversity for its own sake? There is no doubt Jackie Robinson improved the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1946. Baseball is better because the negro league players blended into MLB, but would baseball be better if there were set limits for each race? Nobody thinks so. So, why have limits in education? There are vast race disparities in many sports because there is no limit on diversity; anyone can participate. Sports are a true meritocracy today. That’s acceptable to almost all of us; forcing diversity to meet pre-determined limits would be a problem. It is the problem we eliminated many years ago. The tinkering with diversity since has worsened the situation.
Was President Biden served by diversity when he declared his running mate would be a black female? He limited the available candidates by ignoring a very large number of potential choices. Where is the benefit of that?
Many probably do not realize California struck down affirmative action in education nearly thirty years ago.
In 1996, California voters approved Proposition 209, an affirmative action ban at public universities in the state. Before the ban, UC Berkeley and UCLA were roughly representative of the California high school graduate population who were eligible for enrollment at universities, according to Zachary Bleemer, an economist at Princeton University.
The ban first took effect with the incoming class of ’98. Subsequently, diversity plummeted at UC’s most competitive campuses. That year, enrollment among Black and Latino students at UCLA and UC Berkeley fell by 40%, according to a 2020 study by Bleemer. As a result of the ban, Bleemer found that Black and Latino students who might have gotten into those two top schools enrolled at less competitive campuses.
But isn’t this fixing the problem Thomas Sowell defined? The proportions changed, but diversity was not eliminated in California–nor will it be eliminated in the US as whole following this decision. We closed that door long ago.
“Having a campus that looks like the world in which our students will go onto live is really important just as a bedrock value,” she said.
We have that already. We cannot possibly have proportional numbers for all races and groups at every institution, every business, every sport. When government forces that result, we get the new and unintended forms of racism we have today. End all government imposed racism, including all affirmative action, and we will be better off for it.
Dave https://seek-the-truth.com/about/
More on systemic racism: https://seek-the-truth.com/category/systemic/
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