President Donald Trump has proven that when it comes to undoing Barack Obama’s legacy, he’s leaving no stone unturned.
After annihilating ISIS, ripping the heart out of ObamaCare by repealing the individual mandate, rolling back thousands of pages in regulatory red tape, exiting the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Iran nuclear deal, rejecting the Paris Climate Accord, and ending “catch and release” at the border, Trump has turned to affirmative action in college admissions.
While affirmative action programs long-predate the Obama presidency, Obama did strengthen such guidelines. At the end of 2011, Obama’s Department of Justice issued guidance on the “Voluntary use of Race to Achieve Diversity in Post-secondary Education,” which encouraged universities to “consider race to further the compelling interest of achieving diversity.”
Countless studies have shown that affirmative action programs tend to help Black and Hispanic students at the expense of White and Asian students. African-American economists such as Thomas Sowell have argued that affirmative action harms everyone because it creates an “academic mismatch.” While “racial preferences put more minority students on campus,” Sowell tells us, it’s only “in ways that reduce the number who graduate,” he pointed out.
According to CNBC, “The Trump administration signaled the rules could be on the chopping block a year ago, when it began searching for lawyers who were interested in investigating ‘intentional race-based discrimination’ on college campuses. Administration lawyers are investigating a 2015 complaint alleging that Harvard University discriminates against Asian-Americans in its admissions practices.” As you can see, in the table above, it’s hardly just “alleged” that affirmative action discriminates against Asians.
The administration will reportedly revert back to George W. Bush-era guidance that “strongly encourages the use of race-neutral methods” in college admissions.
Speaking of the Harvard case which motivated all of this, a 2013 analysis by Harvard itself found that Asian-Americans would make up 43% of admissions if based on academic credentials alone, yet only made up 20% of admissions. There’s also “personality” tests part of the Harvard admissions process, in which Asian Americans score the worst. That’s interesting, because Harvard applicants also have to be interviewed by a Harvard alum, and Asian applicants receive above-average personality scores from them. In other words, that makes it more likely that the admissions process is, in fact, discriminating against Asians.
Who would’ve thought that regulating something based on race would lead to racism?
The Supreme Court first addressed the issue of affirmative action in 1978, finding that it could only be constitutional if race wasn’t the sole factor in an admissions decision. That ruling truly solved nothing though, because a college could still have admissions based 99.9% on race, and 0.01% on merit, in that case. If considering race in admissions is wrong, it’s wrong regardless of what percentage it came into a school’s decision to accept an applicant.
