Ivy’s progressive admission policies simply more racism
If the definition of racism is deliberate discrimination based on race, color or national origin, Yale University appears to be a textbook case of “systemic racism.”
And, so, the Department of Justice contends.
Last week, Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband charged, “Yale discriminates based on race... in its undergraduate admissions process and race is the determinative factor in hundreds of admissions decisions each year.
“Asian Americans and whites have only one-tenth to one-fourth of the likelihood of admission as African American applicants with comparable academic credentials ...
“Yale uses race at multiple steps of its admissions process resulting in a multiplied effect of race on an applicant’s likelihood of admission.
“Yale racially balances its classes.”
Yale defends its policy by claiming it considers the “whole person” — leadership, a likelihood students “will contribute to the
Yale Community and the world,” and, says Yale President Peter Salovey, “a student body whose diversity is a mark of its excellence.”
Yet, somehow, when all these factors are considered, the higher-scoring Asian and white students invariably come up short, because the racial composition of Yale’s incoming classes remains roughly the same every year.
The Justice Department refused to wave its big stick — a threat to cut off tax dollars that go to Yale, which sits on an endowment of some $30 billion — second only to Harvard’s.
A court case alleging that Harvard emulates Yale, or vice versa, and admits Black and brown students whose test scores would disqualify white and Asian students is headed for the Supreme Court.
At the heart of this dispute over diversity are basic questions, the resolution of which will affect the long-term unity of the American nation.
Is discrimination against white students in favor of Black students with far lower test scores morally acceptable if done to advance racial “diversity”?
And, if so, for how long? Forever?
Is it praiseworthy to advance Hispanic applicants over Asian applicants with far higher test scores and academic achievements? Why? What did these Chinese, Korean, Filipino and Vietnamese high school seniors do to deserve discrimination in the country to which their parents came where, supposedly, “All men are created equal”?
But what if equality of opportunity, an equal chance at the starting line, fails to produce equality of results?
What if Black Americans dominate America’s most richly rewarded sports such as the NBA and NFL, while Asians and whites excel in academic pursuits?
Why is it right to discriminate against working-class white kids from Middle America in favor of urban and middle-class Black kids? If so, what does social justice mean? Who defines it?
If Asian Americans, outnumbered 5 to 1 by Black and Hispanic Americans, can be indefinitely discriminated against, this would appear to be the very definition of “un-American.” And if white Americans, the shrinking majority of the nation, can indefinitely be discriminated against in favor of people of color, they will eventually embrace the tribal politics of race and identity that would risk the breakup of the union, as is happening in Europe and around the world. As for Yale and other Ivy League universities, it is an indictment of conservatives who have held executive power often in the past 50 years that they have not chopped federal funding for these bastions of progressive racism.