John Rosenberg, editor of the excellent “Discriminations.us” blogsite, and I have published an article that catalogues ten strong reasons for opposing racial and ethnic preferences in university admissions—making the case that the “diversity” rationale for such discrimination is full of holes. The article is forthcoming in the Fall issue of Academic Questions, the journal of the National Association of Scholars, and it’s already available online here and on the NAS website, here.
Here’s a quick summary of our ten points.
Our first four objections fall under the general heading of racial preferences being discriminatory:
(1) the “holistic” justification is nothing but sophistry;
(2) the use of racial preferences has led inevitably to quotas, however much that is denied;
(3) Asian American students are, in particular, victims of this politically correct racial profiling; and
(4) it is no justification to say that our economy is, increasingly, a global one.
The next two objections point out that the “educational benefits” from such quota-driven “diversity” are wildly overstated:
(5)the “diversity” rationale, lest we forget, says it is not intended to benefit African Americans—and, indeed, it doesn’t; and
(6) the data one would logically demand of there being “educational benefits” from this “diversity” is, in fact, absent.
On the other hand, the data showing there to be heavy costs associated with so-called “diversity” continue to accumulate:
(7) the mismatching of less qualified individuals with more demanding institutions simply sets up the former to fail;
(8) the use of racial preferences reinforces—and depends on—racialism and stereotypes; and
(9) “diversity” is, indeed, an especially intrusive — and illogical — government intervention.
Last and certainly not least:
(10) treating people differently on the basis of skin color and what country their ancestors came from violates the American creed, that we should be treated without regard to race, creed, or color.
Anyway, I hope you’ll click on one of the links in the first paragraph above and enjoy the whole article.
* * *
Here’s a really good — and really scary — article from Investor’s Business Daily on the Justice Department’s abuse of “disparate impact” lawsuits against lenders. (These are lawsuits that do not allege actual discrimination, but simply challenge practices that have a racially “disproportionate” statistical effect.)
The department has filed at least 55 such lawsuits alleging racial bias in loans from 2009-11, up from only 30 over the prior eight years. What’s more, the lawsuits are based on faulty statistical data, and ignore “borrowers’ credit scores, household debt-to-income ratios, loan-to-property-value ratios, down payments, employment history, documented income, assets and other key variables.”
A key concern is that all this “will pressure banks to further degrade underwriting standards and make more of the kinds of unsafe loans that triggered the foreclosure crisis.”
* * *
In this Daily Caller piece, Charles Johnson digs deep and finds that Obama’s support for racial preferences — most recently manifested in the amicus brief his administration filed in Fisher v. University of Texas — has roots in the beginning of his political career. For example, as a state senator, he actively opposed the Center for Equal Opportunity’s efforts to get admissions data from Illinois public universities. Congratulations to Mr. Johnson on some fine detective work!
