In the summer of 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ended the practice of affirmative action, or race-based admission practices in its decision in a pair of cases brought by Students for Fair Admissions.
But California is not only still driving race-based admissions practices, it’s shifted the policy into overdrive, and the California university system is now the target of a lawsuit because of it.
Weirder yet, the person who filed the lawsuit is himself a member of a minority group, but he’s a member of the wrong one — he’s Asian, and his credentials are amazing.
Palo Alto teen Stanley Zhong earned a 4.42 GPA from a prestigious high school, and acquired a nearly perfect SAT score — 1590 out of 1600.
Those facts on their own should have prompted every college and university from coast to coast to roll out the red carpet with full scholarship offers.
But . . . it gets better.
Zhong founded his own tech startup, tutored low-income kids in computer coding, and was hired by Google right out of high school as a software engineer — a position the company normally reserves for Ph.Ds.
But Zhong really wanted to continue his education, so he applied to 18 different schools, but was rejected by 16 of them.
Co-plaintiffs to the lawsuit are his father, Nan Zhong, and a group called Students Who Oppose Racial Discrimination, or SWORD.
The named defendants include the University of California system, along with five of its campuses — UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, and UC Davis, alleging racial discrimination. The lawsuit also names the U.S. Department of Education as a defendant.
"What we're trying to get out of this is a fair treatment for future Asian applicants going forward, including my other kids and my future grandkids," Nan Zhong told ABC 7 News.
The University of California system released a statement in response to the lawsuit.
"The UC undergraduate admissions application collects students' race and ethnicity for statistical purposes only," the statement said. "This information is not shared with application reviewers and is not used for admission."
Even if it’s true that an applicant’s race and ethnicity "is not shared with application reviewers," how many Latinos or Blacks have the surname "Zhong"?
Likely none.
So, how could universities be so brazen in their discrimination?
The previous administration gave them the green light.
Within hours of the high court’s decision ending race-based admissions practices, then-President Joe Biden urged colleges to ignore the ruling, stating that "diversity should be considered, including students' lack of financial means."
The following month the Department of Education and the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department made it official.
They released guidelines advising schools how to get around the ruling, stating, "We stand ready to support institutions that recognize that such diversity is core to their commitment to excellence, and that pursue lawful steps to promote diversity and full inclusion."
When civil rights icon the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. accepted the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, he made an important point about ending discrimination.
"The movement does not seek to liberate Negroes at the expense of the humiliation and enslavement of whites," he said.
"It seeks no victory over anyone. It seeks to liberate American society and to share in the self-liberation of all the people."
Stated differently, you can’t end the discrimination of one sector of the population by discriminating against another.
During that same decade, President John F. Kennedy was filling the open slots in his administration using a simple criteria, "the best and the brightest."
Less than two years ago the Supreme Court ruled that affirmative action — race-based admission practices at college and universities — was unconstitutional.
If King and Kennedy were alive today, they’d be applauding that decision and denouncing every college and university that rejected Zhong.
And calling it "reverse discrimination" doesn’t make it moral or right.
Whether you’re discriminating against Asians or Blacks, men or women, straights, or gays, it’s all discrimination — there’s nothing "reverse" about it.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and a Second Amendment supporter. Read Michael Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.
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