I was thinking in terms of the Asian plaintiffs that brought the case against Harvard and UNC, but I agree that was the goal of the group backing them.
It wasn’t “Asian plaintiffs who brought the case”, it was a group that wanted to bring the case and looked for plaintiffs. They were in the news well before they found any plaintiffs willing to sign on. And it is all about maintaining the privileges of white men who are already well-connected.
Yes, sorry for my unclear phrasing. I know the plaintiffs are Asian and the suit was backed by a conservative group.
Man, I’m just a big fail in this thread!
It’s too bad for the Supreme Court that they’ve lost all credibility and have already outed themselves as far-right ideological extremists, because otherwise there might – and I stress might – possibly be a shred of legal argument in favour of the plaintiff.
This is the classic “equality versus equity” argument rearing its head again. Wherein equality implies treating everyone equally, and equity implies giving everyone equal access to opportunity. An argument could, I suppose, be made that equality is protected by the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, whereas there is no explicit constitutional protection for equity.
The other side of the coin is that principles like equity are a matter of social policy, and social policy should be determined by the legislature in accordance with the basic principles of democracy, and not by an activist court that seeks to shape social policy according to its own whims by assigning itself quasi-legislative powers.
This has the potential to be a decision with the same seismic ramifications as overturning Roe v Wade and to further discredit the Supreme Court, but we shall see. My guess is if the conservatives continue with their ideological scorched-earth policy, that Roberts will once again side with the liberal justices if only to try to preserve whatever shred of integrity this institution has left.
IMHO, Roe was so egregiously wrong a decision that overturning it should be to the Supreme Court’s credit — much as moving against affirmative action would be — as a matter of Constitutional principles, rather than of policy preferences.
YMMV, of course.
Well, that’s certainly one way to look at it.
Another way to look at it is that the Roe v Wade ruling was an attempt to strike a delicate balance on an issue of enormous social import, and that its overturn in Dobbs v Jackson was an affront to half a century of settled law and stare decisis, perpetrated entirely by the three Trump appointees who were appointed to accomplish precisely that ideological mission, joined by Thomas and Alito, the two extant far-right extremists. Anyone who believes that these ideologues had the slightest concern for the Constitution or matters of law is living in a fantasy world.
Which, again, is how I viewed those who made up Roe: that it’s a fantasy to say they were swayed by concerns for the Constitution or matters of law, as opposed to — as you put it — a desire to “attempt to strike a delicate balance on an issue of enormous social import”.
Which isn’t, y’know, their damn job.
So, here’s to hoping they now decide these cases on Constitutional grounds as opposed to the opposite.
The “social import” aspect means that it demanded an exceedingly careful and even-handed reading of the Constitution; had they been purely driven by ideological considerations, they could have constructed such constitutional fantasies as Scalia did in Heller and just banned abortion laws altogether. Which is not that far-fetched a consideration as SCOTUS has done that numerous times, Citizens United being another example.
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled against abortion laws altogether based on a fair reading of the right to the “security of the person” in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And yet Canada is still here, surviving as a moral nation and a nation of laws, despite having had no abortion laws whatsoever for 35 years.
Does anyone seriously believe that such an “egregiously wrong” ruling as Roe v Wade that stood for half a century as settled law was only overturned when an idiot president keen to reward his sycophants had, by sheer luck, the opportunity to appoint no less than three far-right new justices to the Supreme Court on the advice of ideologically invested institutions like the Federalist Society?
No, this upcoming decision on affirmative action is likely to be, once again, all about ideology and absolutely nothing else. The US Supreme Court is now an embarrassment to the American claim to democracy.
The whole point of Roe was to take a matter that should’ve been resolved via democracy and have some folks in robes make the call instead. That’s the embarrassment that’s now been rectified.
Moderating:
This discussion is not about Roe. It’s about affirmative action. It’s fair to point out that the SCOTUS as it is currently comprised does not appear constrained by stare decisis as it has been in the past, and citing Roe for this proposition is allowable. But that should be the end of the discussion moving in the direction of Roe. Feel free to discuss Roe particularly in threads dedicated to it, or start a new one.
What I hope happens is that universities do what they should have done all along: use non-race based criteria such as coming from a single parent family, family income, whether you are the first person in your family to attend university, etc. The results would be much the same as race-based AA. Then get rid of legacy admissions and sports scholarships for rich white people sports like crew and lacrosse.
Race and ethnicity-based AA is a blunt instrument. I know someone who got preferential treatment at Harvard for having a Spanish surname even though his family didn’t have any ties to the Hispanic community and he didn’t speak a word of Spanish.
Really? That astonishes me. What kind of preferential treatment did he get?
I hear this and similar arguments (equality of opportunity does not equate to equality of outcome) and yet I can’t help but wonder… how exactly does one measure equality of opportunity in such a broad and diverse society where so many factors are at play, except by measuring outcomes?
My position is simple: if outcomes are unequal along racial/ethnic lines, then opportunities are likewise unequal along racial/ethnic lines.
But, to be clear, affirmative action policies by universities has not been about ensuring equal opportunity or outcomes since the late 1970s. We have another conservative-leaning court to thank for that. Instead, current affirmative action schemes (at least in higher education) have been forced to appeal to notions of “diversity” as enhancing the educational environment. Under this somewhat twisted theory, having a diverse student body benefits white students as much as it benefits minority students: they all get the benefit of the diverse learning environment. I’m not saying it’s not true, I’m just saying it sure would be nice if we could just come out and say that race-based preferences in college admissions are appropriate as a remedy in light of our nation’s long history of racism.
Again, we have conservatives to thank for getting us to this point where we have to pretend that affirmative action is not justified on such grounds (because they basically forestalled equity/equal opportunity justifications in the late 70s, while giving express sanction to the diversity justification by 2003).
Unfortunately, of course, you have a lot of people in power and out who look at the same thing and say, “well, that would be because [nonwhite race] is so [negative adjective], which is their fault, not ours, so no government intervention is appropriate.”
I’m with you. I didn’t want to bring it up explicitly because it’s a prohibited topic for advocacy (I don’t mean to draw someone into arguing for it, knowing they really can’t), but yeah. Basically, you have to either accept that equal opportunity should be reflected in equal outcomes along racial lines, or you have to be an adherent of scientific racism. Which I am not. Hence I hold to the idea that outcomes are the best measure of opportunity.
He was admitted with with grades and SAT scores that were marginal
I don’t think the latter is necessarily evidence of the former and there are massive dangers in assuming it must be true and acting to artifically engineer the outcomes accordingly. That’s not a world I want anyone to live in.
My position is equally simple. Concentrate on eliminating any structural barriers to participation, reach out to unrepresented groups to make sure they feel able to make use of those opportunities and then let the chips fall where they may.
If, under those circumstances, we still get unequal outcomes (which we will) then we can live comfortably with them. To in anyway force equal outcomes is a terrible course of action.
I’ve thought a lot about this, and I think much of it comes down to whether something is viewed as taunt-able/mock-able or not, for lack of a better term.
For instance, researchers don’t get criticized for making statements like “This race/ethnicity is likelier to develop lupus, thyroid cancer or glaucoma than other races.” The reason being that developing something like lupus, thyroid cancer or glaucoma are generally not considered shameful, or mock-able. It’s not disgraceful to have thyroid cancer, in fact, it probably gets you sympathy.
But when it comes to things like IQ or academic attainment, it does take on a shame/bullying connotation - because “stupid” is one of humanity’s oldest insults, because academic attainment is viewed as prestigious or a reward (or the lack of it is something shameful,) etc. As such, people are far more sensitive to the notion that a race may have higher (or lower) IQ than another, or that academic attainment has to do with culture or attitude rather than built-in discrimination.
No, those are not the only possibilities.
Culture can play a huge part in the life choices that people make and scientific racism plays no part in that and nor do obectively drafted standards of equal opportunity.
By your standard above you are saddled with holding the view that basketball either does not provide equal opportunity to white people or that Black people are someone inherently better due to their ethnicity.
Are you comfortable with that? How many Black people are you willing to prevent playing in order to maintain the “correct” ethnic balance? How many hispanic baseball players are you wanting to get rid of? How many jewish lawyers need to be prevented from practicing?
Then I’m willing to bet he was an athlete, or an artist, or an organizer, or had some other notable characteristic other than “a Spanish surname”. Because I’ve seen some pretty decent students who were Black or had Spanish surnames not be admitted.
Harvard may be leaning on the scales to keep the percentage of Asians below some secret threshold. But they admit about 3% of applicants. They have more than enough applicants they consider excellent to fill the class many times over. They aren’t admitting students they think are marginal.