Time to End Race-Based College Admissions

Any day now the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to address the issue of affirmative action when it rules on a pair of cases brought by Students for Fair Admissions. This is an organization founded by Edward Blum of Tallahassee, Florida, to challenge higher education’s race-based admission policies in court.

One case was brought against the University of North Carolina, to challenge race-based admissions in public-funded schools, and the second against Harvard, challenging the practice in private schools.

The Supreme court ruled in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke that using race as one factor in admissions was permissible, reasoning that schools have a “compelling interest” in maintaining a diverse student body for educational benefits.

Bakke and subsequent cases cautioned, however, that the use of racial quotas in the admissions process is unconstitutional.

Students for Fair Admissions argues that affirmative action violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and places white and Asian-American applicants at a disadvantage.

The universities counter that their practices comply with Bakke and later cases, and they apparently do, which suggests that it’s time to revisit the issue.

Court observers believe that these two cases will ultimately be the death knell to affirmative action.

Chief Justice John Roberts suggested during oral arguments that ending the practice could be “an incentive for the university to truly pursue race neutral alternatives” to promote diversity. Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett proposed alternatives that might be more effective than “ticking a box” to indicate the applicant’s race.

If the court watchers are right, good riddance.

Affirmative action has become a societal cancer, one that’s metastasized from the colleges and universities to invade government, business, and other organizations. It’s also society’s premier gateway drug, leading us to the more hardcore drugs of diversity, inclusion, and identity politics.

The goal is a quota system — choosing the correct number from this group and from that, all in the name of equity. No, not equality (as in “all men are created equal”), but equality (as in “because I said so, that’s why”).

As a result a new position has opened up in the workplace — a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Officer — to make sure all new hires have the correct mix of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation.

It’s taken us from the days of the late President John F. Kennedy and his quest to find “the best and the brightest” to fill his administration, to the current president, who brags that he has the most diverse administration in American history.

But he also has the most incompetent administration in American history.

Possibly for that very reason, affirmative action was never meant to be a permanent fixture in society.

Grutter v. Bollinger was one of those cases following in Bakke’s footsteps. It arose when Barbara Gunter was denied admission at the University of Michigan Law School despite having better LSAT test scores and a higher GPA than minority applicants who were ultimately admitted.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who wrote the majority opinion and affirmed Bakke, cautioned that "race-conscious admissions policies must be limited in time.”

O’Connor observed that “The Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.”

That case was decided June 23, 2003 — 20 years ago. Close enough.

“It’s time for America to end affirmative action,” argued Betsy McCaughey more than a year ago.

McCaughey, a former New York lieutenant governor and a regular Newsmax TV contributor added, “It’s a polite euphemism for an ugly process — reverse discrimination. It hasn’t made the U.S. economically fairer, and another 25 years won’t change the results.”

In addition, it runs counter to a principle goal of the late civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. — one he described during his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” he said.

King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Ten years later the Supreme Court decided in Bakke that race-based admission policies were constitutional. Had King been alive at that time of the Bakke decision, he would have raised holy hell.

June 28 will mark the 45th anniversary of Bakke. Just as Roe v. Wade was struck down just prior to its 50th anniversary, Bakke should be laid to rest just prior to its 45th.

Throw it in the ash heap of other failed institutions such as slavery and Jim Crow laws. It’s just as un-American as the others.

It’s past time. We owe ourselves and future generations a race neutral, colorblind society, so that we can look at one another not for what’s on the surface, but for what lies underneath.