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发帖数: 4796 | 1 Opinion: Yes, it's time for affirmative action to end -- finally
The Supreme Court has held repeatedly that "all government racial
classifications must be analyzed by a reviewing court under strict scrutiny.
" Now, thanks to a pending lawsuit and a new presidential order,
affirmative action is under strict scrutiny from an even higher court, the
one of public opinion.
Here's hoping this renewed attention marks the beginning of the end.
Affirmative action has become the gateway drug to identity politics, or the
breakup of America into antagonistic "oppressor" and "
subordinate" groups constantly engaging in power relations. It suborns
adolescents filled with angst about not getting into the right college into
ticking the right box.
But the government should have never gotten into the business of racial
classifications in the first place, let alone deciding whom among them
stands to receive privileges and who goes to the back of the line. The Civil
Rights movement was supposed to rid the country of that, but it
metamorphosed into its opposite when the focus shifted from ending unequal
treatment to a crusade for statistical diversity.
Now two cases will once again motivate individual Americans to apply "
strict scrutiny of all race-based action" by government, in the words of
the court in 1989. One was last week's rescindment of Obama-era
guidelines by the Trump administration. The other is a lawsuit by a group of
Asian-Americans against Harvard.
They are both important in their own right. The first reinstates the Bush
administration's approach to racial preferences, one that is more in
line with actual legal precedent. The second seeks to overturn that
precedent with a new understanding of the wreckage that affirmative action
leaves behind, and not just for Asian-Americans.
The Obama "guidance on the voluntary use of race to achieve diversity&#
34; in both K-12 and post-secondary education overemphasized race in the
admissions process and even encouraged its use over race-neutral admissions
processes, which the Supreme Court has said must be tried first.
While rescinding them does not really amount to a legal body blow against
affirmative action, it is a side-glance hit that checks its forward progress
. As Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity put it, "School
officials who keep their race-conscious admissions policies intact would do
so knowing that they could face a Justice Department investigation or
lawsuit, or lose funding from the Education Department."
That should concentrate the attention of school administrators, who are put
on notice that, as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos put it, the Supreme Court
's "written decisions are the best guide for navigating this complex
issue."
But that's where the Harvard case, due to go to a district court in
Boston on Oct. 15, comes in. It lays bare how Harvard has used racial
preferences to discriminate against Asian-Americans.
The plaintiffs in the case, a group called Students for Fair Admissions (
SFFA), have produced evidence that Harvard itself conducted a study in 2013
which showed that if academics were the only criteria used in admissions,
Asian-Americans would make up 43 percent of the student body.
Harvard and other elite schools artificially keep down the number of Asians
precisely because of their pursuit of diversity for the sake of diversity.
They believe, in the words of the 2003 Supreme Court's decision in
Grutter v. Bollinger, that the "educational benefits that flow from an
ethnically diverse student body" justify the use of race in admissions.
But if you represent just 5.6 percent of the population, as Asians do, then
43 percent at Harvard is not very "diverse." So, SFFA asserts in its
lawsuit, Harvard has been scoring Asian-American applicants lower on "
character traits."
SFFA is financed by Edward Blum, who has financed several attempts to roll
back affirmative action, including that of Abby Fisher, the plaintiff in yet
another affirmative action case which went to the Supreme Court but failed
to bring down its edifice.
When it comes to Asian-Americans, Blum may have found the right cause. They
give the lie to the entire narrative that marginalized, "subordinate"
; groups cannot get ahead in American society, cannot play by the
established rules, cannot assimilate.
Left unsaid, of course, is the damage the use of racial preferences causes
to those in whose name it is practiced. The awful implication that they
cannot compete without an unfair advantage, the stigma it attaches to their
credentials and achievements, the expectation that individuals will assume
the perspectives of entire ethnic collectives so they can share them in the
classroom—these should all be considered as the nation again looks at
racial preferences.
The court of public opinion is all that should be needed in a democracy.
Mike Gonzalez is a Senior Fellow in the Davis Institute for National
Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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发帖数: 38600 | | s******r
发帖数: 5309 | 4 狐狸台的意思是取消考试AA，以后疼笑靠爹妈的推荐信。LOL | W*****B
发帖数: 4796 | 5 re
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