Racial discrimination in the name of diversity

IN the name of diversity, Attorney General Aaron Ford supports discriminating against Asian-americans.

Last week, Ford signed Nevada onto an amicus brief in support of Harvard University’s practice of downgrading Asian applicants based on their race.

The case began in 2014, when Students for Fair Admissions sued Harvard, claiming the school was intentionally discriminating against Asians by forcing “them to compete against each other for admission.”

During the course of the case, Harvard admitted that it gives each applicant a “personal rating” supposedly based on social characteristics. A lower score means a lower chance of being accepted. It turns out that Harvard systematically rated Asian applicants much lower than non-asians. A century ago, many elite universities used similar social criteria to discriminate against Jewish applicants.

“A male non-disadvantaged Asian-american student with characteristics that would suggest a 25 percent probability of admission would see those chances rise to 95 percent if he were treated as an African-american,” Peter Arcidiacono, a Duke economics professor, wrote in a report he did for the case.

This is a long way from

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of judging people not “by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

It also flies in the face of U.S. Supreme Court precedent. In 2003, the justices blessed off on “narrowly tailored” admissions processes that considered race “only as a ‘plus’ in a particular applicant’s file.” But such a plan couldn’t make “race or ethnicity the defining feature of the application.”

Even that approval had a time limit. “The court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today,” Justice Sandra Day O’connor wrote.

Despite this, a federal judge ruled that Harvard’s admissions process was constitutional. The case is currently before the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and looks headed to the Supreme Court.

In an amicus brief, Nevada, 14 other states and Washington, D.C., argue that colleges need to be able to “consider race in admissions to ensure our students gain the educational benefits of diversity.”

“Enrollment of nonwhite students at the University of California’s elite institutions and graduate schools, in particular, has fallen since the ban on race-conscious admissions,” the brief reads. It’s referring to Proposition 209, which bans racial preferences and was passed by Golden State voters in 1996.

That’s an odd contention because the study cited by the amicus brief finds that 43 percent of UCLA’S 2013 freshman class was Asian-american. At Cal-berkeley in 2013, Asian students made up 45 percent of the freshman class. White students were 26 percent and 32 percent, respectively.

Collectively, nonwhite students are doing just fine — unless you consider Asian students to be white. Which is what this brief implies.

Asian-americans constitute 5 percent of the U.S. population, making them a smaller minority than Hispanics or African-americans.

But, according to Ford, Harvard and so many other leftists, Asians aren’t diverse enough. Shame on them.

Contact Victor Joecks at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on Twitter.