Mona Charen: “Admissions officers at selective schools pretend they are offering opportunity to ‘underserved’ minorities, but in reality, they are simply lowering standards for already-privileged students with the preferred skin tone. Ninety-two percent of blacks at elite colleges are from the top half of the income distribution. A study a decade ago at Harvard Law School found that only a third of students had four African-American grandparents. Another third were from interracial families. The rest were children of recent immigrants from Africa or the West Indies. Should mixed-race students get half a preference? Should their scores be 50 percent higher than students with two black parents? These are the kinds of absurdities our current system presents. …The shame of the nation is that poor children continue to be so trapped in terrible schools. That is the disgrace that race counters cloak.”