The Patriot Post® · Judgment Day Looms for Racist Admissions Policies

The facts of the case seem pretty straightforward: When it comes to admissions, Harvard College discriminates against Asians and whites, and in favor of blacks and Hispanics. The question is, will the Supreme Court allow the school, and others like it, to keep getting away with it?

For the sake of the colorblind society that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of, we hope not.

Last month, the High Court announced it would hear one of two cases (the other case involves the University of North Carolina) on October 31 that could end the decades-old practice of race-based discrimination in university admissions.

Students for Fair Admissions Inc. (SFFA) v. President & Fellows of Harvard College will come before the Court in an effort to eliminate race as an admissions factor and thus overturn Grutter v. Bollinger, the 2003 case that set the discriminatory precedent. In Grutter, the justices somehow held that a student admissions process that favors “underrepresented minority groups” doesn’t violate the “Equal Protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution so long as it takes into account other factors evaluated on an individual basis for every applicant.

The Harvard case also seeks to answer whether the school violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act through its alleged discrimination against Asian American students, stemming from the initial lawsuit. Here again, the case seems pretty clear, given that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in any program or activity that receives federal funds or other federal financial assistance.”

What, exactly, are we talking about in terms of discrimination? Kenny Xu spells it out in City Journal:

It has long been established that Asian-Americans and whites suffer disproportionately due to Harvard’s race-based admissions, which have created an upswell of resentment from frustrated Asian and white college applicants. In his expert witness testimony, Duke University economist Peter Arcidiacono estimates that an Asian-American with a 25 percent chance of admission to Harvard would have a 33 percent chance if he or she were white, a 75 percent chance if Hispanic, and a 95 percent chance if black. Furthermore, the average Asian-American admittee to Harvard had SAT scores roughly 120 points higher than blacks admitted and 50 points higher than whites. (This is a low estimate, as a third or more of Asian applicants would have scored higher than the maximum SAT score had the maximum been increased.)

“Harvard and the University of North Carolina,” said SFFA President Edward Blum, “have racially gerrymandered their freshman classes in order to achieve prescribed racial quotas. Every college applicant should be judged as a unique individual, not as some representative of a racial or ethnic group.”

We’ve been following this case for some time. As our Lewis Morris wrote back in January, “Harvard and UNC naturally claim that they have done no wrong.” He quoted The Washington Post, which said that the pursuit of “diversity justifies some intrusion on the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, which generally forbids the government to make decisions based on race.” Morris responded, “Wow.”

Wow is right. The language in both the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are clear. What part of “nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” do these social engineers not understand? What part of “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race” can they not get through their thick, racially discriminatory skulls?

As Xu notes, Harvard’s lawyers appear committed to a novel approach: to “impress the originalists on the court with an argument that the crafters of the Fourteenth Amendment saw race-conscious measures as necessary to ensure blacks’ ‘equal participation in society.’” It’s an argument that Xu dismisses as “bogus.”

The writing does appear to be on the wall. As The Wall Street Journal reports: “College-admissions officials are rushing to figure out what it would mean to enroll a diverse class of students if the law changes.” This would likely include widening their recruiting efforts, “looking more closely at applicants’ backgrounds and proactively offering spots to students before they even apply,” essentially informing them that they’re already guaranteed admission.

So much for merit. We’ll never underestimate the Left’s ability to skirt a law which doesn’t suit its agenda.

But we’ll cross those roads when we get to them. In the meantime, we’re reminded and comforted by the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, who put it simply and succinctly back in 2007: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

Again, it all seems pretty straightforward.