President Joe Biden’s Department of Education is attempting to circumvent the Supreme Court’s recent ruling against using racial discrimination in college admissions.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court found that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina had limited the admission of Asian candidates in favor of other “racial groups.” Citing the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the court ruled that persons could not receive different treatment in college admissions because of their skin color.
This deeply upset the Biden administration.
Following grumbling by the White House and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, the Department of Education hosted a summit on July 26 strategizing how to continue to use racial discrimination in college admissions.
Presidents of Ivy League schools, officials from Biden’s administration, critical race theory advocates, “tribal leaders,” and legacy media journalists clutched their pearls for five hours—heaping scorn on the Supreme Court’s decision to ban “affirmative action.” They made up racially based statistics and smugly told the crowd that they planned to work around the decision and continue the practice by mass-funding “racial diversity” programs.
Almost every panelist and speaker began his or her introduction by screeching that the Supreme Court ruling caused him some kind of physical pain. Christina Paxson, president of Brown University, said, “It felt like a gut punch.”
The entire charade eerily smacked of George Orwell’s “Two Minutes Hate” in “1984,” where the ruling regime’s party members were expected to scream at a picture of a state-appointed villain for two minutes every day.
After the panelist or speaker had fulfilled his duty of petulant fist-shaking, each began painting a picture of the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs—and inventing whatever statistics necessary to persuade the crowd that these DEI programs deserved boatloads of additional funding.
Stephanie Rodriguez, the secretary of higher education for New Mexico, said she takes “the Supreme Court’s decision personally.”
“It really guts decades of progress that we have made as a country to allow students that look like me and my family to walk the floors of our higher education institutions,” Rodriguez said.
It should be noted that the Supreme Court’s decision to end racially discriminatory practices in college admissions does not limit any individual’s ability to gain admission to a university over another racial group—as Rodriguez implies.
Rodriguez also appeared to praise the racial makeup of New Mexico, insinuating that “cultural richness” is a product of skin color:
“We’re also very fortunate that New Mexico is ethnically diverse and culturally rich, uh, rich with the majority of our population being Hispanic and Native American.”
I shouldn’t have to tell you that the ethnic makeup of a person has nothing to do with their “cultural richness,” nor should that be a factor in whether an individual qualifies for an engineering degree.
Patricia McGuire, the president of Trinity Washington University in Washington, D.C., suggested it was wrong to refuse a student admission under the assumption that the student “can’t do the work here” based on qualifiers like “they can’t read.”
McGuire is either ignoring or ignorant of the major impact prior academic performance has on student retention rate. It is deliberately cruel to knowingly accept an unprepared student into a demanding program simply because of racial quotas. Many of these students who would have performed better in a less competitive environment end up failing out or quitting school, and their future job prospects and incomes suffer as a result.
Gabrielle Starr, the president of Pomona College, claimed that it was necessary to base medical school admissions on race because black OB-GYNs reduce the rate of “maternal mortality” with black women.
There is no piece of evidence that even slightly suggests skin color increases or decreases the effectiveness of a doctor. Maternal mortality is most impacted by the skill and perception of the medical professional—not the amount of melanin in the doctor or nurse.
Shaun Harper, founder of the Race and Equity Center at the University of Southern California, claimed that Ivy League schools just don’t want black students. Of course, Harvard was caught explicitly favoring black students over Asian students—but he didn’t mention that.
After conjuring pseudoscientific arguments in favor of racial discrimination, panelists began demanding millions of dollars from anyone and everyone for their DEI programs. These programs, the panelists argued, were essential, as they could groom students by targeting “students of color” directly.
Of the 11 panelists, eight called for states and the federal government to dramatically increase the funding for such programs.
Dennis Olson, the commissioner of the Minnesota Office of Higher Education, told the crowd that his office was planning to beg the state legislature for increased funds immediately: “[DEI] requires sustained investment—continual investment from our legislature, so we’re going to push for that.”
He then announced his plan to create a “free tuition” scholarship fund for “American Indian” students.
Sandra Boham, president of Salish Kootenai College, a private tribal college in Montana, suggested that it was “social injustice” to require that students prove their Native American ancestry in order to receive scholarships and federal funding.
Song Richardson, the president of Colorado College, introduced a DEI program of “automatic admission” for Colorado College applicants, capping her pitch with “Diversity, yes, is expensive.”
There is no qualitative data suggesting that DEI programs have positively impacted the academic performance of students at any college or university—adding an expensive insult to the injury of their considerable price tag.
The only proposed groups summit attendees targeted with these expensive DEI offices and programs were black and Native American students. Hispanic, Asian, Jewish, Pacific Islander, and other minority groups were strangely absent from the Department of Education’s concerns—though Paxson promised her DEI office worked with students who were “white, black, Latino, or any shade in between.”
However, panelists did make it perfectly clear that any criticism of DEI programs was horrifically racist.
Walter Kimbrough, interim executive director of the Black Men’s Research Institute at Morehouse College, said those who oppose DEI programs “don’t like black people,” referencing an article he’d written calling Georgia’s DEI audits “racist.”
Jonathan Butcher, the Will Skillman senior research fellow in education policy at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal that questioning DEI programs is well-warranted, not racist:
DEI is an $8 billion-per-year industry, and with dozens of DEI staff on many campuses, taxpayers are right to ask where the money for those salaries comes from. And they are right to ask what exactly DEI offices do and whether their programs violate state and federal civil rights laws.
(The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)
After the last panel, the crowd broke into several small groups to discuss topics such as “Admissions Strategies,” “Recruitment and Pipeline Programs: Targeted Recruitment,” “Affordability Initiatives,” and retention initiatives, which were not live streamed.
Biden’s administration has made it perfectly clear that it will prioritize racial discrimination over meritocracy—all at moral, social, and financial cost to the citizens of the United States.
University presidents, public school superintendents, teachers union officials, and Department of Education leaders gathered on July 26 to reaffirm their commitment to defining racial castes in America’s education system—no matter what the Supreme Court rules.
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