Friends, if there's anything I love love love, it's diversity! Why, I wish we had more in higher education. Like, for example, I wish 90% of my colleagues weren't blinkered, self-satisfied neo-Marxists. Hey, if wishes were horses, right? In that case, higher ed would smell a lot like horse sweat, and maybe that wouldn't be such a win, after all. Anyway, my latest article is an expanded version of my post from Thursday, analyzing in depth why the Supreme Court's ruling on affirmative action isn't likely to deter the Left from its project of shoving a highly curated version of "diversity, equity, and inclusion" down our throats.
DEI Will Never Die
Thursday,
June 29th,
2023 was a very good day for the Supreme Court and the U.S.
Constitution. On that day the high court struck down "affirmative
action" and disallowed race preferences in college admissions.
Way back in 1978
the Supreme Court, brimming with good intentions, left open the door
to race-conscious admissions, and we've been dealing with the fallout
ever since. In practice, every elite institution of higher learning
currently discriminates, covertly but systematically, against whites
and Asians, in order to diminish the number of white and Asian
students it is obligated to admit, and to maximize the number of
Hispanic and black students.
The
magnitude and scope of this discrimination is not exactly minuscule
either. For instance, an Asian-American college applicant must
generally score 140 points higher on the SAT than a white student,
and 450 points higher than a black student, to have the same
chance of admission
to a private college. What's more, a vast DEI (“diversity, equity,
and inclusion”) infrastructure
has been fostered in American higher education that supports this
grossly biased and unfair approach to admissions and in general views
“whiteness” (though not “Asianness”) as a blight on society
that only “anti-racism” (which looks an awful lot like racism)
can overcome.
The
big takeaway today, therefore, unfortunately, is how far we still
have to go to make this a truly colorblind country. The Left is, as
everyone knows, obsessed
with race, gender, and sexuality. They are determined to drive this
country apart, into special interest groups and "protected
classes", and to hand out favors to these groups based on
totally subjective considerations of "equity".
To illustrate the
ambiguities of equity, consider the case of the (Ivy League)
University of Pennsylvania. What would an “equitable” percentage
of black students in Penn's student body look like? Penn is an
institution of national prominence, so perhaps black students should
be 13% of the student body, to mirror their percentage of the
national population. Then again, blacks are only 11% of
Pennsylvania's population, so perhaps that is a reasonable figure.
Then again, Penn is located in the city of Philadelphia, in which
blacks are 38% of the population. On the other hand, in greater
Philadelphia only 19% of the population is black. So, in short, which
is it? Which metric would satisfy the conception of “equity” that
the Left is advancing? And, if equity is not essentially numerical,
then how are we to measure it at all?
The sad truth is
that the Left need not, and will not, pin itself down in defining the
specific factors that produce “equity”, or which define
“diversity” or “inclusion” either (if it's a question of
including anyone they don't like, you can bet that they'll forget
about inclusion in a heartbeat). This ambiguity allows them to shift
constantly the battlefield on which the struggle for equity is fought
– and it further permits them never to admit that the battle has
been won, and thus to hold “diversity, equity, and inclusion” as
cudgels over the heads of their putatively racist, sexist, and
homophobic enemies forever. Meanwhile, members of protected classes
are informed that “Nazis” are hiding behind every bush, and only
the tender mercies of big government and the DEI apparatus can
protect them. You can call it "divide and conquer" or
"social justice" or whatever you like, but it's the heart
and soul of the progressive movement nowadays, and it isn't going
away simply because the Supreme Court says so.
In
fact, colleges and universities have long since developed contingency
plans to deal with a SCOTUS ruling like the one we saw on Thursday.
Downplaying
the importance
of objective tests, like the SAT and ACT, is a big part of higher
ed's fallback strategy. This allows admissions decisions to be made
based on much more subjective factors, which gives colleges and
universities the wiggle room they crave.
In
many parts of the country, because of local and state laws that
already prohibit race preferences, colleges and universities have
already shifted gears to supposedly race-neutral admissions policies
that still, in practice, promote the interests of one race over
another. At the University of Texas, for example, the policy is to
let in the top
6% of
every high school class . Never mind that you might come from the
worst high school in recorded history -- you're in! The object of
this approach was, of course, to promote "diversity" at the
cost of academic rigor and personal merit. And it's working.
Another
neat ruse to boost the numbers of black and Hispanic students, and to
stymie white and Asian applicants, is to place a very high value on
subjective factors such as character and likability, and then to find
whites and Asians deficient in these qualities en
masse. Harvard
has been accused
of doing exactly that, and such strategies will proliferate in the
wake of the recent SCOTUS decision. Indeed, the majority opinion,
written by Chief Justice John Roberts, practically
recommended
such an approach: “...nothing in this opinion should be
construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s
discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through
discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” If, therefore, one
assumes (systematically) that black and Hispanic students have
superior “grit”, because they have had to shoulder their way
through “systemic racism” all their lives, whereas whites and
Asians have lived lives of idle privilege, then a new, superficially
“race-neutral”, form of discrimination might be permissible.
Expect,
therefore, almost every institution of American higher education to
reach deep down into its bag of tricks to ensure that this Supreme
Court ruling has little or no practical effect on the demographics of
the students who attend our colleges and universities, nor on the
background of faculty, staff, and administrators, all of whom will
continue to grow less white (though not necessarily less Asian), by
the day, as leftists insist they should and must. This is the “social
justice” ideology to which almost all colleges and universities are
implacably committed. It would mortify them, by contrast, to see any
demographic indicators move in the “wrong” direction. And so they
won't.
What's
more, institutions of higher ed are beholden to accrediting bodies,
and other oversight authorities, which are captive
to the DEI agenda. Any college or university that actually practiced
colorblind admissions or hiring would quickly find itself in big
trouble with accreditors, with the federal Department of Education,
and with the media and the donor class. This assumes, of course, that
some institutions of higher learning might actually dissent from DEI
orthodoxy. There is precious little evidence that any of them do.
Ergo, don't
expect one Supreme Court decision to dent, even slightly, the culture
of identity politics that infuses the progressive movement, the
Democratic Party, and American education as a whole, including
colleges and universities. These forces in America all have one thing
in common: they view meritocracy as analogous to white supremacy, and
they demand that government and other powerful institutions act to
promote the advancement of disadvantaged groups, even at the cost of
fairness to individuals. We can expect them to act accordingly.
Dr.
Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred
and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com.
He appears on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480/106.9.
And here it is at American Greatness:
https://amgreatness.com/2023/07/03/dei-will-never-die/
***
In other news, the Wall Street Journal is asking a question that every American may be asking a year or so from now: why would you reelect a president who has presided over declining real incomes? Joe Biden, needless to say, is very impressed by his own economic stewardship, but the American people are not. This didn't help the GOP nearly as much as expected in 2022, but much in 2024 will depend on whether economic conditions get better or worse in the months to come. Inflation appears to be slowly abating, but the danger of a recession remains acute.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidenomics-joe-biden-average-hourly-earnings-bureau-of-labor-statistics-8d4b1545?mod=opinion_lead_pos2
France is ablaze, as you might have heard, and as usual the media is handling it in a very specific and biased way: they are blaming the police, and giving the people terrorizing France's cities a pass. Once again, we see that the Left's supposed opposition to violence is marred by some major blind spots. Violence and illegality never reflect poorly on individuals and groups that the Left likes. In fact, when those individuals or groups lash out, it's somehow the right that is to blame. C'est la guerre (politique).
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-66073728
Finally, Ukraine's offensive is still struggling, and naturally the Ukrainian brass is blaming the West for not doing enough. Good ole Mark Milley responds: "We are giving them as much help as humanly possible." Now, that's just a bald-faced lie. We could be fighting alongside the Ukrainians, and, if we believed our own inflated rhetoric about saving "democracy" from Putin/Hitler, we probably would be. Of course, we haven't the slightest intention of breaking a sweat in this war. It's the Ukrainians' job to be cannon fodder, and so far they're obliging.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/07/01/top-ukraine-general-blames-counteroffensive-struggles-on-lack-of-western-fighter-jets-and-weapons/
