By Don Schmitz
The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) last week struck down unconstitutional race preferences for college applicants as a component of the admissions process. Rightfully so, the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment clearly affirms; “No State shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Polling shows a firm majority of Americans support the ruling. In 1996, California voters passed Prop 209, outlawing preferential treatment in the areas of public employment and public education based on race or sex.
In 2020, tenacious folks on the left who can’t abide a meritocracy, tried to overturn that law with Prop 16. They vastly outspent those opposing them, but it was crushed by a larger margin than the passage of the original law, right here in very blue California. “Politically correct” discrimination is still discrimination, and it’s wrong. Many on the left, but certainly not all liberals or Democrats, are so deeply invested in their identity politics they can’t see the obvious truth.
Racial discrimination is abhorrent, and having good intentions behind it is the quintessential example of “the ends justify the means.” Our country’s sordid history of institutionalized racism in employment and academia is thankfully relegated to the trash heap. It took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to accomplish that, and how ironic that the last remanent of institutionalized racism in America in plain sight was created and supported by so called “progressives” for what they call “affirmative action.”
Imagine you are a hard-working young person who hit the books K through 12 while your friends went out partying. Your parents sacrificed to save money to send you to your dream university, you have a high GPA, did great on the entrance exams, but you are told you are denied admission because of the color of your skin.
That is exactly what was happening at Harvard in the SCOTUS case. Harvard’s Asian student population had grown to 30 percent, but they are only 6.3 percent of the U.S. population. That just won’t do for those bureaucrats and admission boards who see the lines on the color bar, so for the “greater good” (as they see it) they were giving admission to less qualified applicants and turning away excellent candidates. Again, just because of their ethnicity.
UCLA, which has been barred from discriminating based on race for decades, is now 35 percent Asian. Good! May the best qualified earn their spot, it is just, fair, and results in the best people prospering from their hard work. That’s about as American as it gets. Tell me honestly, do you want the pilot flying your plane, or the doctor performing your surgery, to be there because of their race? There is such an inherent patronizing condescension in race preferences by the left. Biden campaign field organizer Erica Marsh stated, “No Black person will be able to succeed in a merit-based system.”
So vile, such racist poison, but she and her ilk feel good about it because they are “helping.” Expect a strong reaction from leftists to this. Thomas Sowell stated, “When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.” Kamala Harris, who was overtly nominated for VP because of her race and gender, stated, “the court has not fully understood the importance of equal opportunity.” Wow. SCOTUS affirmed color-blind equal opportunity, but their Orwellian worldview twists it all around. British Laureate Mike Rosen stated, “Conservatives believe in equality of opportunity. Liberals believe in equality of outcome.”
Not sure that my liberal friends espouse that, but as a conservative, as an American, I passionately believe in equal opportunity. I have been blessed in my career to work with many dynamic and brilliant Black and Hispanic people, and they excelled based upon their talents, period. This entire paradigm is so corrosive, the left constantly dividing us by race and gender. We needed to excise the cancerous bias that used to permeate our policies, and thank God we did, but now it’s time to move forward with a color-blind society in our colleges and workplace, or we will never “arrive.” No family should be denied their merit-based spot due to this racism.
In one of the greatest moments of American oratory, MLK delivered his 1963 “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial. “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.” We carved a beautiful granite memorial to him close to where he delivered that speech. He inspired us to build a country true to our Constitution, true to that vision. We can’t do that by judging our children’s worth to attend college based upon the color of their skin.