THE PROBLEM WITH HIRING FOR EQUITY IS THAT WE DO NEED COMPETENCE: The Supreme Court Confronts the Left’s Victimhood Consensus.
Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 reasserted the principle that no one should be discriminated against based on race, it has been clear that racial identity proponents led by our cultural elites have succeeded in dividing America into racial categories while allocating jobs and even elections based on race. Two recent Supreme Court cases challenge this move. The Court heard arguments regarding two critical cases brought by the Students for Fair Admissions Inc. (“SFFA.)” SFFA is “dedicated to defending the right to racial equality in college admissions.” These related cases — SFFA v. Harvard and SFFA v. the University of North Carolina — are primarily driven by SFFA’s members, including Asian American students who were denied admission to Harvard and the University of North Carolina.
In making their admissions decisions, it is evident that both schools consider the race of applicants, with the schools advantaging American Indian, Hispanic, and black applicants at the expense of Asian American students. Driven by the promise of merit and values surfacing from strong families, Asian American students study more than twice as many hours as white students. Hence, it is not surprising that Asian Americans outperform whites as well as members of other ethnic minorities. The data at Harvard show that an Asian American applicant in the fourth-highest decile (top 40%) of his graduating class had only a 6.51 percent chance of admission. In contrast, an African American applicant had a 57.7 percent chance of admission. Harvard offers a holistic admissions approach steeped in deceptive practices that hide racial preferences. As George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley has shown, Harvard arguably manipulates the applicants’ personality, likability, courage, and kindness scores to achieve its desired objective: race-based admissions levels.
This approach represents little more than the return of Plessy v. Ferguson’s separate but equal doctrine, which is now hidden within contemporary diversity rhetoric. Plessy v. Ferguson was outlawed more than seventy years ago in the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The return of race-based admissions allows Harvard to rate Asian American applicants fifty percent lower on average than African Americans. Harvard’s percentage ranking allowed black students with lower scores on standardized tests to be admitted at roughly twice the rate of Asian American students. This raises the question of why Harvard and other universities have decided to engage in subterfuge that is hidden in plain sight. Several answers take center stage.
h/t SH