The US Supreme Court soon is going to review race-based college admissions less than ten years after it approved the use of race as a criterion.
The Court this Fall will take up the case of a white woman who says that she was rejected by the University of Texas because of the school’s affirmative action admission policy.
College administrators nationwide know that a ruling against affirmative action, in this case at public universities including their hiring and contracting, will upend decades of liberal policy.
AP.com recently reported that affirmative action is ‘a powerful tool for increasing campus diversity.’
No it isn’t. It is a tool to increase campus conformity. Because ultra-liberal universities are using affirmative action to increase the number of students who think and vote ultra-liberal (blacks, latinos, women…) and to keep out conservative whites or anyone else who is non-liberal.
Today at affirmative-action universities you find many unqualified blacks and latinos, and fewer and fewer qualified whites. This is classic socialism just as there are fewer and fewer qualified white men on college campuses across America as “women” are given sexual preference. This is more liberal discrimination.
Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of College Registrars and Admissions Officers, said that “If the (Supreme Court) decision is very broad and very hostile to affirmative action, the future of the rest of country may look very similar to California. It would be very disruptive at many institutions."
California in 1996 banned the use of race in college admissions in what is known as Proposition 209. And the results have been dramatic. Asians are highly represented today in the California public university system while blacks have sunk way down in their representation.
And liberals think that this is wrong – that universities actually are admitting students based on their abilities. Look at what liberal AP says about the possibility that affirmative action policies will be overturned by the Supreme Court:
‘Since (Prop 209), California's most selective public colleges and graduate schools have struggled to assemble student bodies that reflect the state's demographic mix. Universities around the country could soon face the same challenge.’
In other words to the Democrat left it is a “challenge” to admit students based on their grades and their abilities. This is abhorrent. Because college admission should be a reward for hard work and intelligence, not a political spoils program as the Democrat left has made it.
The other bogus point – that ‘schools have struggled to assemble student bodies that reflect the state's demographic mix’ – is that university populations must somehow match the state’s or the nation’s demographics.
This is nonsense. If blacks or latinos perform poorly in high school, why should they be represented in the universities?
They should not. But under the contrived racial preference policies of the Democrats and the liberals who run the universities students can be admitted and promoted no matter their actual achievement.
In fact it has been reported that poor black students are eight times more likely to get scholarships to Harvard than poor whites. This is pure, unadulterated discrimination.
Reported mindingthecampus.com:
‘Most elite universities seem to have little interest in diversifying their student bodies when it comes to the numbers of born-again Christians from the Bible belt, students from Appalachia and other rural and small-town areas, people who have served in the U.S. military, those who have grown up on farms or ranches, Mormons, Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses, lower-middle-class Catholics, working class "white ethnics," social and political conservatives, wheelchair users, married students, married students with children, or older students first starting out in college after raising children or spending several years in the workforce. Students in these categories are often very rare at the more competitive colleges, especially the Ivy League. While these kinds of people would surely add to the diverse viewpoints and life-experiences represented on college campuses, in practice "diversity" on campus is largely a code word for the presence of a substantial proportion of those in the "underrepresented" racial minority groups.
A new study by Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade and his colleague Alexandria Radford is a real eye-opener in revealing just what sorts of students highly competitive colleges want–or don't want–on their campuses and how they structure their admissions policies to get the kind of "diversity" they seek. The Espenshade/Radford study draws from a new data set, the National Study of College Experience (NSCE), which was gathered from eight highly competitive public and private colleges and universities (entering freshmen SAT scores: 1360). Data was collected on over 245,000 applicants from three separate application years, and over 9,000 enrolled students filled out extensive questionnaires. Because of confidentiality agreements Espenshade and Radford could not name the institutions but they assure us that their statistical profile shows they fit nicely within the top 50 colleges and universities listed in the U.S. News & World Report ratings.
Consistent with other studies, though in much greater detail, Espenshade and Radford show the substantial admissions boost, particularly at the private colleges in their study, which Hispanic students get over whites, and the enormous advantage over whites given to blacks. They also show how Asians must do substantially better than whites in order to reap the same probabilities of acceptance to these same highly competitive private colleges. On an "other things equal basis," where adjustments are made for a variety of background factors, being Hispanic conferred an admissions boost over being white (for those who applied in 1997) equivalent to 130 SAT points (out of 1600), while being black rather than white conferred a 310 SAT point advantage. Asians, however, suffered an admissions penalty compared to whites equivalent to 140 SAT points.’
Wow. 130 SAT points and 310 SAT points. Do you understand how unfair that is to whites and especially to Asians to ‘give’ so many points to blacks and latinos?
Voters in Arizona, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Washington and Nebraska have approved Prop 209 types of bans on affirmative action, which in fact should be called ‘affirmative discrimination’.
At the University of Washington (state) the number of “minorities” dropped one-third after voters banned affirmative action in 1998.
AP reported about California:
‘With affirmative action outlawed, Asian American students have dominated admissions. The freshman class admitted to UC Berkeley this coming fall is 30 percent white and 46 percent Asian, according to newly released data. The share of admitted Asians is four times higher than their percentage in the state's K-12 public schools.
But traditionally underrepresented Hispanic and black students remain so. In a state where Latinos make up half the K-12 public school population, only 15 percent of the Berkeley students are Hispanic. And the freshman class is less than 4 percent African Americans, although they make up 7 percent of the K-12 students.
Junior Magali Flores, 20, said she experienced culture shock when she arrived on the Berkeley campus in 2009 after graduating from a predominantly Latino high school in Los Angeles.
Flores, one of five children of working-class parents from Mexico, said she feels the university can feel hostile to students of color, causing some to leave because they don't feel welcome at Berkeley.
"We want to see more of our people on campus," Flores said. "With diversity, more people would be tolerant and understanding of different ethnicities, different cultures."
UC Berkeley has tried to bolster diversity by expanding outreach to high schools in poor neighborhoods and considering applicants' achievements in light of the academic opportunities available to them.
But officials say it's hard to find large numbers of underrepresented minorities competitive enough for Berkeley, where only about one in five applicants are offered spots in the freshman class.’
So the school says that it can’t find enough ‘minorities’. So how about simply admitting students on the basis of qualifications instead of all the laborious searching for the right kinds of ‘minority’ students? You know, the old system of merit that existed before ‘affirmative discrimination’ came along? After all, there are plenty of students to choose from.
But choosing students based on qualifications is an affront to the Democrat left. Because under their so-called egalitarian socialism students are to be rewarded for their race and/or skin color and not their achievements.
Yet if their skin color or their race happens to be Asian or white, they are discriminated against. AP also reported:
‘In addition, California's highest-achieving minority students are heavily recruited by top private colleges that practice affirmative action and offer scholarships to minorities, administrators say.
"It's frustrating," said Harry Le Grande, vice chancellor of student affairs at Berkeley. "Many times we lose them to elite privates that can actually take race into account when they admit students."’
In other words private colleges can practice discrimination. No problem.
Yes, friends. And this must go too. Because private corporations and businesses are never, ever allowed any hint of discrimination. They are sued all over for any such practice. So why can the elite colleges do so?
Answer: Because they are on the Democrat left where all of the government-enforced discrimination happens today.
Says the Democrat left, according to AP:
‘Backers say affirmative-action policies are needed to combat the legacy of racial discrimination and level the playing field for minorities who are more likely to attend inferior high schools. Colleges benefit from diverse student bodies, and minority students often become leaders in their communities after graduating from top colleges.
"It's critical that our most selective institutions that look at least somewhat like the rest of our society," Nassirian said.’
No it isn’t. It is critical that our colleges and universities train the best qualified people. Because if the smartest and best people are not trained, our society is going to decline further in our internationally competitive world. Much of our economic decline today is due to pure discrimination against qualified people.
In the famous New Haven, Connecticut case Ricci v DeStefano, for instance, even four liberal Supreme Court justices agreed that white firefighters who passed a promotion test could legally be denied those promotions simply because no blacks had passed the test.
Thus the blacks did not study or were not smart enough to pass the test and they are supposed to be advanced anyway?
Under ‘affirmative discrimination’, of course. And that means, by the way, that the people of New Haven are going to be less safe if less qualified firefighters are advanced simply on account of race. After all a fire captain needs to know precisely what to do in the event of a fire. There are established rulebook practices that lead to increased safety for both fire victims and firefighters. If an unqualified person is in charge, more deaths will result.
Fortunately the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of the white (qualified) firefighters.
So here’s a suggestion: Let’s have an affirmative action airline in which pilots will be promoted not on account of their skills and knowledge but on account of their race, gender, sexual orientation or political persuasion. And certainly liberals will all flock to that airline, won’t they?
Uhhh, well, after the first few planes go down, the airline will go out of business.
Look at what else AP reported:
‘Affirmative-action advocates say Proposition 209 has created a "new Jim Crow regime" in California where elite public colleges are dominated by white and Asian students while black and Hispanic students are relegated to less prestigious campuses.’
Sorry but the “new Jim Crow regime” is one in which laws discriminate against whites, Asians and other qualified students.