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The Supreme Court’s landmark decision on June 29 to gut affirmative action has now made it illegal for colleges to consider race as a specific factor in their admissions process. The plaintiffs argued that Harvard admissions unfairly held Asian Americans to a higher standard when it comes to objective measures like test scores, while giving them low marks when relying on personality metrics.
Straight Arrow News contributor Ruben Navarrette says that the Supreme Court ruling was driven by politics and way off base. According to Navarrette, If college admissions programs are guilty of any discrimination, it is against Black and Brown applicants, not Asian Americans who are well represented in the student body.
It’s time to smell one of the big lies about affirmative action — that the practice of colleges and universities taking race and ethnicity into account in admissions results in discrimination against Asians.
For the last 50 years, it’s been white males who claimed that affirmative action amounted to “reverse discrimination” against them, after being laughed out of court, because it’s hard to argue you deserve 2% of the pie when you already control 98%.
White males began to use Asians as a stalking horse to help topple affirmative action. The trouble is the claim that Asians are being discriminated against is just as laughable. I bet most civil rights lawyers know it, as do most college admissions officers. They just won’t say it out loud because they’re afraid that they’ll come across as anti-Asian. I’m not “anti” anyone. As a journalist, I’m just pro-truth. And as a Mexican American, with two Harvard degrees, I know the truth about what’s going on in the admissions process at elite schools.
Unfortunately, we didn’t find much truth at the Supreme Court, which recently, as expected, struck down the practice of affirmative action in college and university admissions.
