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January 6, 2024 - 8:00am
Legal activists are working to end racial discrimination in hiring and school admissions through a handful of court cases currently moving towards the Supreme Court.
In 2023, the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard and UNC. The ruling narrowly banned the practice of direct racial discrimination in college admissions, but universities appear to be using loopholes to skirt the ban. Due to the ruling’s limited application, it means that racial discrimination, both direct and indirect, still thrives in elite high school admissions and in hiring practices across the country.
The extent to which universities are still factoring in race in admissions will become apparent in April, when acceptance decisions are released. But since the court’s June ruling, universities quickly seized on its ambiguities, encouraging students to mention their race in college essays. Johns Hopkins University, for example, asked applicants to “tell us about an aspect of your identity (eg. race, gender, sexuality, religion, community, etc.) or a life experience that has shaped you as an individual”, while Rice University asked, “What perspectives shaped by your background, experiences, upbringing, and/or racial identity inspire you to join our community of change agents at Rice?”
Some universities may actually be crossing the line into territory that explicitly violates the court’s ruling, rather than merely violating it in spirit, according to Edward Blum, president of Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), the group behind SFFA v. Harvard.
“SFFA is closely monitoring a few universities where we believe their required essays are little more than racial classification checkboxes,” Blum told UnHerd, though he declined to name them due to likely litigation.
Several prestigious high schools are using racial proxies such as zip codes or what middle school a student attended as factors in admissions. The Supreme Court is expected to announce in the coming weeks whether it will consider one such case: Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board.
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SubscribeReally makes one wonder about the standard of student that are both going in and eventually coming out of these places when considering these policies and the Gay debacle.
You must be equally horrified by the scandal emerging about Ackmans wife?
No? Gosh, i wonder why?!?!?
Not exactly headlines news
HR women and their consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
We should immediately revert to the term
PERSONNEL.
HR makes it sound like a food, Soylent Green perhaps .
Nobody cares what you think Racist Grandpa. Have another whisky and go back to sleep.
Ms Gobshite are you aware that in England CS is a euphemism for HYPOCRITE?
Invariably someone who spouts socialist drivel such as your good self, but also attempts to live a patrician lifestyle. The late Tony Benn was a good example whilst today the ridiculous Diane Abbott* is another.
(*And NOT for allegedly copulating with Corbyn I hasten to add.)
Spot on, Mr Stanhope, but I suspect that our resident champagne-guzzling socialist is not just a hypocrite, but a forum troll whose mission is to insult and to stir the pot. I make it a point to not feed trolls. Nothing makes them angrier than being ignored.
You are absolutely correct and I am duly admonished and shall endeavour to resist temptation in future.
I thank you.
… a disaster aided by single-gender primary school teachers.
Those on the left, including the HR infestation, would say there is no such thing as a single gender.
God, you people are miserable scumbags. Have you ever been happy for a moment? Is there anyone you don’t hate?
Is it really impossible for you to write anything without sneering or insulting? What a very unpleasant person you must be.
You by contrast, come across as a very loving and tolerant person who accepts differing opinions with ease, avoiding hatred and insult in favor of polite persuasion.
Sometimes online personna and the real world differ considerably, so I genuainely hope your personal life is less judgemental and combative than your online personna, or I fear it would be full of unhappiness and possibly self reproach. (Some very critical people exempt themselves and some include themselves, of course)
However impassioned the arguments are for affirmative action, or an evening up of the scales, they cannot get past some inescapable truths.
Any and all “positive discrimination” for one group requires actual discrimination against another.
Equality of Opportunity is a laudable goal and should be argued for and worked towards by all right thinking people.
Equality of Outcome is impossible, unworkable and requires inequity against one party to achieve “equality” for the other. This should be argued against by all right thinking people.
Applying artificial quotas in any sector – to try and correct perceived imbalances – almost always leads to resentment from those who feel that not everybody is being rewarded on merit and, rather than healing divisions, it actually exacerbates them.
It is more sinister than that. Exempt from DEI, the children of the elite will have their places at these institutions come what may.
It is the white children who would otherwise have got in on merit who will excluded
And the Asian children
Good summary, but I would note that even equality of opportunity needs to be balanced with freedom. At the extreme, without such balance, the only real way to create absolute equality of opportunity would be for the state to raise all children in meticulously standardized institutions run by robots, separating them entirely from the intellectual and cultural influences of their biological parents. (Of course, even more extreme would be to ensure they are all genetically equally talented).
Absent that, the children of some parents are going to have some advantages over those of other parents, period. We can’t reduce that advantage to zero, without the above extremes.
The state can however treat the children even handedly, and provide some extra support to those from disadvantaged backgrounds (due to any individual cause of disadvantage, not just those which have identity group signifiers). I strongly believe in that relative equal opportunity/non discrimination, so long as it doesn’t go too far.
They might not be good at anything else but give college faculty and administrators credit for cunning and knowing how to play the system.
No doubt the Supreme Court, populated by religious maniacs and outright crooks like Clarence Thomas, will find some excuse to continue the persistence of white privilege in higher education in the United States.
Jolly good.!
Privilege: an accusation often made by those who benefitted the most from it against those who benefited the least.
Affirmative action discriminates against those groups it tries to advantage. Claudine Gay might have tried harder and produced more papers if affirmative action hadn’t encouraged her complacency.
Well-meaning, but unlikely. The world will continue to turn with fewer academic papers.
It is noteworthy that the left (i.e. Democrats) unanimously voted against the 14th amendment in 1867. This amendment has multiple facets. 1st it recognized all former slaves as U.S. citizens. 2nd it sort to protect them from government discrimination through the “equal protection clause”. Also, it forbade states from honoring the debts of the Confederacy.
Almost 160 years later, the progressive left still works to undermine the 14th amendment. But on this issue of equal protection they are on the back foot and will lose, court case by court case. Progress!
No court ruling is going to make them stop this. They’re as stubborn and sanctimonious as Bull Connor in the old South. We’ll have to send in troops to enforce the law.
People don’t like it, the courts don’t like it, but unis do it anyway. It’s the doctrine of FYTW. One means of race-based decision making will be replaced by another because doing so is part of institutional DNA now. They do not know how to behave otherwise and the screeching activist community is not going away.