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Affirmative Action Under Fire as Landmark Supreme Court Decision Looms

by Richard Eldred
18 June 2023 3:00 PM

Just as the Supreme Court of America is poised to make a historic decision that could potentially eliminate affirmative action from the university admissions process, contextual admissions promoting inclusivity are gaining traction in universities across the United Kingdom. The Telegraph has the story.

Any day now, America’s Supreme Court will rule in one of the country’s biggest cases since the pro-choice decision of Roe vs Wade. This time the issue is affirmative action, with positive discrimination in favour of African-American, Hispanic-American and Native American candidates likely to be banished from the university admissions process.

If the Supreme Court justices do rule against affirmative action it will mark the end of a 60-year campaign. The ruling comes just as “contextual admissions”, which aim to promote “inclusivity”, take off in U.K. universities.

The U.S. case is the work of Edward Blum, an investor turned legal strategist who believes that racial diversity quotas have fostered injustice, not equality. Using race as a tool by which to judge student admissions “harms everyone”, Blum, 71, says. “You cannot cure the racism of the past with new racism.”

Blum’s case is against Harvard (an Ivy League private university) and the University of North Carolina (which is state-funded), and claims that preferential treatment given to students of African-American, Hispanic-American or Native American heritage over those who are white or Asian-American violates the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause, and also appears to go against the 1964 civil rights act introduced by Lyndon B Johnson, which prohibits race-based discrimination.

One plaintiff is Jon Wang, an 18- year-old with exemplary test scores who was rejected by every elite university he applied to on what he believes are racial grounds. According to Students for Fair Admissions, the campaign group Blum set up in 2014, Wang would have had a 95% likelihood of getting into his chosen universities had he been African-American; those chances were slashed five-fold due to his Asian heritage. “Race in America is one of the most polarising issues we face,” Blum says. “It has no place in the admissions process.”

It is an argument which has a personal resonance for Blum, who is Jewish. Criteria for entry to Harvard were rewritten in 1922 to limit numbers of Jewish students, who then accounted for 21% of the institution’s intake – a group who, like Asian-American students today, received high grades yet suffered “demerits” in their face-to-face interviews. 

“There is a straight line running from the anti-Semitism of the 1920s to the anti-Asian bias that we see at Harvard now,” Blum believes. Many of those losing out today are from working-class families, says Blum. They are not privileged candidates, he insists, but have parents who have laboured as hotel maids, or handymen.

Affirmative action is disrupting the university selection process in Britain, too. Here, however, the division lies along class, rather than race, lines, with the rebalancing act – known as “contextual admissions” – focusing on state school vs privately educated pupils. 

In 2022, 68% of places at Oxford and 72.5% at Cambridge were awarded to state-school pupils – up from 57% and 61% in 2013 (93% of children in England and Wales are state-educated). Last summer, every place for law at Edinburgh University was awarded to students from deprived areas or disadvantaged schools: of 400 applicants living in the country’s poorest postcodes, 168 won a place, while the 555 hopefuls applying from the wealthiest 60% of areas failed to score a single one.

“There’s so much pressure to be able to say, ‘This year we’ve admitted 70% from state schools rather than 55,’” says David Abulafia, historian and life fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. This criteria “is not useful if it results in people who are less capable and less well-qualified being admitted, rather than people who are real high-fliers.”

Worth reading in full.

Tags: Affirmative actionAmericaBritainPositive discriminationSupreme CourtUniversities

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14 Comments
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soundofreason
soundofreason
1 year ago

I also must stress I think leaving Hancock in post is a big mistake – he is a proven liar who nobody believes or should believe on anything and we face going into autumn crisis with the c*nt in charge of NHS still.

Wow! I agree with something that Dominic Cummings said!

Backstabbing, lying bastard that he is.

Last edited 1 year ago by soundofreason
124
-1
varmint
varmint
1 year ago

Diversity = Less White People. ——-Whiteness is ofcourse the Original Sin if you listen to the silly Liberal Progressives and, the social justice warriors and the wokerati, that want to apologise to everyone that isn’t white for every thing a white person ever whispered into his wife’s ear. And heaven forbid if a statue of the disgusting man is not promptly chucked into a river. ——–I sit here and my grandfather had to sit in a bomb shelter under his house and my uncle was torpedoed by U boats in the Atlantic twice and was rescued from the sea. The Nazi’s killed many millions and put them in concentration camps, but guess what. I don’t hate GERMANS. The Germans that live today had nothing to do with war.

91
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago
Reply to  varmint

The problem with Germany as shown these last three years is that they seem to be reverting to 1930’s type.

32
-10
Covid-1984
Covid-1984
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

And I suppose London was a peace rally?…yeah, right 🙄

8
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varmint
varmint
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

I am not sure what you mean. So I won’t pass comment at this point.

4
0
Pembroke
Pembroke
1 year ago
Reply to  varmint

I must admit I haven’t looked but how diverse is the enquiry team? Could the same (about important facts falling through the cracks) be said about them too I wonder?

0
0
10navigator
10navigator
1 year ago

‘Lack of diversity’ wasn’t a problem for Anders Tegnell.

Last edited 1 year ago by 10navigator
100
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soundofreason
soundofreason
1 year ago

Again, the inquiry failed to ask what Lee Cain thought would have changed if the PM had had brown people to advise him? Would the decision have been quicker, more intense lockdown? If so, what is his reasoning that that would be a good thing?

118
-1
A. Contrarian
A. Contrarian
1 year ago
Reply to  soundofreason

Sunak is brown, and he now claims to be anti-lockdown. He’s the wrong sort of brown I suppose.

10
0
TheGreenAcres
TheGreenAcres
1 year ago

I’m utterly amazed that we managed to win the second world war with the lack of diversity we had in the War Cabinet at the time. Mind you, the latest RBL donation campaign leaflet seems to think it was the Indian, Caribbean and Gurkha soldiers that won it – so maybe Lee has a point.

94
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Nearhorburian
Nearhorburian
1 year ago
Reply to  TheGreenAcres

We didn’t win the Second World War.

We failed to achieve the objective for which we ostensibly went to war.

We gained no territory or riches. We didn’t lose as many people as in WW1, but the economic effects were far worse, and WW1 didn’t involve the destruction of our countryside. We were far less free after the war than before.

We avoided defeat because of the RCN.

16
-11
JohnK
JohnK
1 year ago

Well, that was just a trailer! No doubt you’ve been watching the Dominic hearing recently – he’s back on after lunch from 13:45. I’m not commenting on it, except that it was absorbing. Tells its own story.

15
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Sforzesca
Sforzesca
1 year ago

A shame he missed his coveted Churchill moment by not following Sweden.

And as most on here realise, he will be thrown under the bus.

53
-1
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago

https://www.globalresearch.ca/march-9-2022-biden-signed-death-warrant-american-freedom-digital-takeover-financial-system/5838305

The digital takeover of the financial system in the USA via an Executive Order so this country won’t be far behind.

31
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wokeman
wokeman
1 year ago

Really I could decide if they were stupid or evil, Lee Cain is more stupid than evil I’d say. Cummins too really comes across as a gullible thicko with an anger management problem.

Last edited 1 year ago by wokeman
26
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JohnK
JohnK
1 year ago
Reply to  wokeman

He took the opportunity of criticising many of his colleagues as well, rather than admitting his errors. However, he did demonstrate how incompetent the Gov was, in particularly inside No. 10. When it comes to being gullible, he was one of the ones who was like that, being gullible to the academic “experts” on the topic. It demonstrates that this place is a worthwhile cause, rather than paying too much attention to what the bureaucrats might try to do again.

18
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JXB
JXB
1 year ago
Reply to  wokeman

Isn’t stupid evil? Stupids carry out actions they know will be to the detriment of others, but for no tangible gain to themselves. Therefore they do things just for the immiseration of others, that being their joy.

That’s evil.

1
0
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

This term diversity I think people misunderstand what it really means. You can read the real meaning if you refer to corporate business strategies. It is essentially an obvious point, that the bigger the pool you have to draw on the more likely you are to secure talent, hence Indian and Chinese maths graduates etc. There is no suggestion in this strategy that ‘diversity’ is inherently good or even good within a larger social perspective. It is important to read what it actually happening rather then the window dressing.

11
-6
JXB
JXB
1 year ago
Reply to  Jabby Mcstiff

Well no, not really. Diversity means you need people conversant with a particular area of expertise: so in business you want specialists in marketing, sales, accounting, legal, regulatory, production around the table.

It is to be hoped the best talent was hired in the first place and that has nothing to do with race.

With respect to this issue, diversity would mean specialists in virology, epidemiology, infection/contagion control, critical care, immunology… for example, and not political advisors, psychological warfare specialists.

1
0
Marcus Aurelius knew
Marcus Aurelius knew
1 year ago

Lee Cain has one of those faces I would KEEP punching.

21
-2
ELH
ELH
1 year ago
Reply to  Marcus Aurelius knew

Why does he always look grubby?

0
0
Pembroke
Pembroke
1 year ago
Reply to  ELH

Well it appears that he has the faintest of five o’clock shadow (bum fluff?), but you can just picture him in a dirty mac offering sweets to kids too.

1
0
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

Honestly the whole thing is a schtick and not a particularly sophisticated one.

9
0
JXB
JXB
1 year ago
Reply to  Jabby Mcstiff

Quite. Respiratory viruses and the disease they cause, follow long known trajectories. In fact that is true for all known pathogens and the diseases they cause. Millions of words have been written on the subject, umpteen hours of research.

The UK Common Cold Research Unit spent 50 years researching respiratory viruses and trying to find vaccines/cures (unsuccessfully) then closed when there was nothing more to do.

They cannot even use incompetence as an excuse. So something else – it’s clear.

2
0
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

It is a mixture of wanting to feel safe and wanting to belong and do the same thing that everyone else is doing. Nothing wrong with that impulse in certain times. I would say that we are bringing more people to our side.But you shouldn’t wish for total immediate enlightenment. Can you imagine what it would be like if everyone got it at once. It is unstable now the best we can hope for is a gradual release.

7
0
Jane G
Jane G
1 year ago

Listening to Cain and Cummings it is evident that they really were in a bit of a panic, losing their s### over apperntly rising ‘cases’ and could have done with a dose of humility about their own grasp of the situation.
It’s difficult to reason with an idiot totally convinced of their own competence (is that the Dunning-Kruger thing we keep hearing about?)

They would have benefited from a chat with Planet Normal’s ‘George’ or John Iaonnidis for some perspective. Everything is someone else’s fault but the biggest gem for me today was that of the Potemkin meetings: ministers strutting into Downing St for meetings whose outcome was already settled. (Just like this Inquiry!)

10
0
JXB
JXB
1 year ago
Reply to  Jane G

But if you look at the stats, the number of ‘cases’ – aka positive PCR tests was very low in February, March, April, actually starting to decline in March.

Deaths peaked in the first week in March, declining thereafter into April, virtually gone by May as were positive tests.

Infection to death is on average 21 to 28 days, therefore if deaths peaked first week of March, infections peaked first week of February.

Respiratory virus epidemics follow a known, distinct trajectory with period of low level activity, sudden exponential rise, peak, then steady decline – called a Gompertz Curve.

The death curve could be time shifted approx one month back, to indicate early infections started in December 2019, rose exponentially in January 2020, peaked in early February and declined thereafter through March.

With all the alleged experts and over a century of acquired knowledge and experience from around the World with respect to respiratory viruses and their spread, it is quite impossible they did not know – via their advisors – this.

I refuse to believe the cover story – novel virus, we panicked, didn’t know what to do, diversity of views.

4
0
Covid-1984
Covid-1984
1 year ago

When they can smuggle a befuddled cretin like Biden into the White House, what chance has the rest of the world got. After 2 weeks I concluded that that they were trashing the economy for the flu. Any one with a modicum of intelligence could see that. But the idle millions lapped it up.

12
0
JXB
JXB
1 year ago
Reply to  Covid-1984

It actually was less serious than ‘flu. ‘Flu is often serious and fatal in the young, particularly babies and infants. The risk from CoVid for the young was approaching zero.

CoVid was only a high risk for end of life individuals with existing medical conditions.

1
0
A. Contrarian
A. Contrarian
1 year ago

So presumably he has some sort of evidence that countries with a more “diverse” decision-making panel (presumably in black countries, more diverse means less black and more white – or is white universally bad, and black countries should in fact strive for less diversity?) did “better” during covid?

4
0
JXB
JXB
1 year ago
Reply to  A. Contrarian

I don’t think he was using the modern perversion of the word ‘diversity’

0
0
JXB
JXB
1 year ago

Any manager worth his salt cavasses a diversity of views in order to make the best informed decision.

I don’t see how there can be a diversity of views if there are not present a diversity of individuals.

0
0

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