Category Archive

My colleague Terry Eastland wrote about this last week, but in case you missed it: Accordingly to a new Pew Research Center survey, 73 percent of Americans believe that race and ethnicity should play no role in university admissions. All racial and ethnic groups reject this discrimination: 78 percent of whites, 62 percent of blacks, 65 percent of Hispanics, and 59 percent of Asian Americans. This result is no outlier, by the way, and is line with other surveys over the years. *** And for the same reason — which can be summed up as E Pluribus Unum — reparations …

Comes now notice of a new survey by the Pew Research Center. It finds that most Americans–73%–say that colleges and universities should not consider race or ethnicity when making decisions about student admissions; that 7% say that race should be a major factor in college admissions; and that 19% say it should be a minor factor. The survey does not explain what it means to “consider” race or ethnicity when deciding who gets in. But it would seem to mean using race in ways that favor the chances of getting in for “underrepresented minorities” when there are a limited number …

Harvard was not a party in Bakke, but it was the most important opinion in that landmark case. It deserves to be read together with the filings in the ongoing Harvard racial admissions discrimination case, which was argued in October and the decision in which could come any time. It’s remarkable that one school could figure so prominently in two major cases raising many of the same issues, but that is what we have here. The 1978 Bakke case included an opinion that sanctioned use of the diversity rationale by which applicants lacking the race necessary for a sufficiently racial …

With countless Democrats eager to run for president in 2020, and with race a doubtless campaign topic in the short two years ahead, maybe some of the would-be Democratic candidates will see the merits of something President Obama once said, namely that the America he sees and celebrates is “not a black America and white America and Latino America or Asian America” but “the United States of America.” Obama said that during his breakthrough speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Alas, his tenure too often encouraged Americans to see themselves in terms of color and ethnicity, as I argued in …

The Supreme Court Refuses to Stand in the Way of the People of Michigan In 2014 the Justices refused to strike down a ballot measure in Michigan providing that the state and its agencies “shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, and public contracting.” I wrote about Schuette when the decision was handed down (for The Weekly Standard). It was a ruling that allowed the people of Michigan—and not the federal courts—to decide whether basic …

According to a recent survey, Americans don’t like racial preferences.  This is not news, being quite in line with many earlier polls, but the time and place here are rather propitious, with the Harvard affirmative-action case going to trial next week. The new survey, by Boston’s public-radio station no less, asked this question: “The Supreme Court has decided colleges can use race as one factor in deciding which applicants to admit. Do you agree or disagree with this ruling?” And 72 percent of those surveyed said they disagreed with the Court’s ruling, with only 24 percent agreeing. (Indeed, the only …