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The Editorial Board of Wall Street Journal published the following last Monday (May 24, 2021 6:18 pm ET; a print version was published on May 25). It addresses the Justices of our Supreme Court, who are considering whether to accept the appeal of Students For Fair Admissions against Harvard. Here are some excerpts:
The Court needs to affirm the principle of racial equality or the U.S. will re-segregate.
....... The particulars concern whether Harvard discriminates against Asian-Americans in its admissions decisions. Harvard won in the lower courts but the Asian-American plaintiffs have appealed to the High Court. The larger stakes are whether the Supreme Court will wink as America divides in ways that have proved so destructive in the past.
.......This is what is at stake in Harvard. In America today the principle that drove the civil-rights movement—equality for all—is fast giving way to the view that race must be a dominant factor in every decision from college admission to eligibility for a federal farm program to the makeup of corporate boards to who gets priority for a Covid vaccine.
........ Harvard’s claim that it doesn’t discriminate against Asian-Americans is self-evidently false. In the name of diversity, it favors blacks and Hispanics for admission while pretending that this won’t penalize applicants whose race is unfavored. The discrimination manifests itself in the much higher SAT scores required of Asian-Americans, as well as a subjective personality rating system that consistently assigns Asian-Americans far lower scores.
....... Taking the Harvard case is arguably more important than deciding either the gun or abortion cases.
........ The Justices should know there is overwhelming public support for the principle of racial equality, rather than the “racial equity” standard that uses government to dictate outcomes by race. A 2019 Pew survey found that 73% of Americans say “colleges and universities should not consider race or ethnicity when making decisions about student admissions.” The number is 62% for blacks and 65% for Hispanic-Americans.
Citizens in two of the nation’s most left-leaning states—Washington and California—recently rejected ballot initiatives that would have allowed racial preferences for state hiring, contracts and university admissions. In California the measure was defeated 57%-43% and lost in 52 of 58 counties.
The 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection of the law, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act makes discrimination by race illegal. What the plaintiffs ask is for the Court to affirm, at long last, that these words mean what they say." (emphasis added by S. B. Woo)
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See also an opinion by George F. Will, published by Washington Post. Its title is "Today's anti-Asian racism usually disguises itself as 'diversity' ".
S. B. Woo
President and a volunteer for the past 22 years
80-20 Educational Foundation, Inc, a 501 C-3 organization,
Lieutenant Governor of Delaware (1985-89)
