Returning to Race-based College Admissions

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my resumed regular KVMR radio commentary broadcast on 3 June 2020.]

Former University of California regent Ward Connerly founded the American Civil Rights Institute in response to the corrupt racism that affirmative action introduced into state government contracting, public jobs hiring, and deciding who would be admitted to state schools.  Almost 25 years ago he launched Prop 209 which was the successful ballot initiative that made it illegal for California to consider race in performing any of those functions.

Being able to award contracts, jobs, and admissions on the basis of race was a big progressive vote getter for the state’s Democratic Party, and leftwing politicians have been chafing for all these years trying to figure out how to make racial patrimony legal again.

In the meantime, race-based admissions into the nation’s universities and colleges has become a much-publicized issue, especially after it was discovered that elite universities were leading the pack with racial quota systems in their admissions programs applied in the most corrupt and merit-free manner.  For these elitist administrations academic merit became a racist criterion when considering applicants for their freshman classes.  Since African-American and Hispanic students ranked way below the Asians and whites in academic achievement, it was clear that something had to be done to ‘level the playing field’ and bring social justice to bear.

The result was that race quotas were pushed to the top, and academic merit was demoted in the ranking of factors that would recommend admission.  The proponents of academics started pushing back when these admissions policies came to light.  However, nobody really cared how the white applicants were discriminated against.  What really hit a nerve on the race-based policies was the dirty deal dealt to Asian-American applicants.  This cohort of minority students always blew the tops off their high school grades, achievement tests, and any other criteria like extra-curricular activities and breadth of interests.  If the new progressive race-based admissions standards were fairly applied to all minorities, the Asian-American kids would have flooded the enrollment rolls.  What to do now?

Well, the answer to the progressive administrations was obvious, lay on another layer of corruption and eliminate any semblance of balance between minority and academic requirements.  If you were black or Latino, you went to the head of the line until the quota was filled, and that was that.  However, when the Asian-American community got wind of such obviously biased and unfair practices, they got active and involved.  The result was that these tilted playing field practices made national headlines with our polarized country predictably lined up on both sides of the issue.

Today, California’s Democrats see an opportunity to eliminate the last barriers to race-based admissions policies.  This week the State Assembly’s Appropriations Committee will vote to pass ACA5, the proposed constitutional amendment to overturn Prop209, and again legitimize race-based admissions.  The 81-year-old Ward Connerly has returned to work with a handful of very devoted Asian-American civic groups to stop ACA5, which most likely will be railroaded through the Senate during this pandemic season without a single public hearing.  It will then appear on the November ballot to let Californians again decide how they want to diminish and demote the state’s higher education systems.  The reinstatement of this corrupt practice will be sold to our electorate under the guise of affirmative action.  In opposition, Asian-Americans against ACA5 know that “If it passes, Asian-American students will be further scapegoated and penalized in college admissions.”  Those Californians who believe in a colorblind society when it comes to government preferences and perks should join to oppose ACA5 on the November ballot.

Should it pass, lawsuits are already being prepared to fight this discriminatory amendment.  And there’s a good chance the case will end up before the Supreme Court. The plaintiffs hope that the court would then rule as clearly and categorically as Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a 2007 opinion: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” (more here)

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

Comments

[The Estonian Fox]

And yet, you have the world's best technical university right there in Pasadena - CalTech, which seems to be overwhelmingly merit based, and has a large percentage of Asians enrolled. You would, or at least I would, expect that the politicians are able to recognize quality when it's right there in shouting distance. I've always figured that those low down on the IQ scale (and who better fits that quality than politicians) can eventually learn to be enlightened. Though the time period to do that may be measured in stellar lifetimes.

[George Rebane]

Efox 627pm - As we both know, such an expectation would be in error. Even in those elite technical schools there are active programs to reconstitute the core STEM curricula into a new politically correct progressive structure that de-emphasizes European provenances, re-attributes non-European/white genesis, and injects dollops of ideology re inclusivity, diversity, social justice, and the re-purposing of science to socialist ends. An interesting read on this is found in my subscription of 'The Algorithm from MIT Technology Review'.