5-Hour Court Debate Over Affirmative Action Disagreement Full Discussion Shows AA’s Injustice to Asian Americans
[The Epoch Times, November 2, 2022](The Epoch Times reporter Cai Rong New York reported) The U.S. Supreme Court heard on Monday (October 31) in the admissions discrimination case against Harvard and North Carolina universities. Six conservative justices and three The liberal judge engaged in a full five-hour debate with the case’s lawyers over the practice of racial affirmative admissions, the most polarizing hearing to date.
Here are some interesting views, facts and arguments from both sides, and how people in the Chinese community feel about it.
The scope and meaning of AA has changed
Several conservative justices have repeatedly asked the question of when race will no longer be considered in college admissions. The justices pointed to the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger case, in which then-Justice O’Connor made it clear that “racially conscious admissions policies” were temporary and “must be restrained in a timely manner.” , arguing that racial preference is unlikely to be needed after 25 years (end 2028).
A point made at the hearing was that affirmative action (AA) was unconstitutional for racial remediation programs, according to precedent. But colleges and universities now use AA only to promote racial diversity, not to address past discrimination. In other words, with a new use for AA to “promote diversity,” does that 25-year time limit go away?
Conservative female justice Amy Coney Barrett asked UNC defense representative Ryan Park: “What if it’s still difficult to create a diverse student body in 25 years?” Will the year still defend it? Is it indefinite? Will it continue endlessly?”
Yu Jinshan, honorary chairman of the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce, said that the questions asked by the judge are worth thinking about. The entire conversation made the AA’s differences very clear, and also showed where the AA is unfair to Asian Pacific Americans.
Yu Jinshan said that when affirmative action measures (AA, literally translated as support measures) were introduced decades ago, they did not include diversity of skin color. The biggest goal of AA at that time was to make up for previous mistakes and to “get a start for some people.” The equality that will allow him to go to college and that his children will have the same opportunity to compete with others 25 years from now. Diversity now becomes an equality of outcomes.”
He said that in the past, some specific students were given extra points and discounts. “It used to be to compensate the injured ethnic group, to get the equality of the beginning, and to not hurt anyone. Now it is to achieve diversity in a way that hurts others. “
Ethnic and Cultural Experience
Returning also to the aforementioned 2003 landmark case “Groot v. Bollinger”.
Attorney Cameron Norris, who represented plaintiff Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) suing Harvard University, stated in his arguments that in the 2003 college affirmative action case “Groot v. Bollinger”, Groot assumed race Just a plus, but now race is a minus for Asians because Harvard obviously downgrades Asians personally.
Second, Groot assumes that applicants are considered individuals, not representatives of ethnic groups, but Harvard makes you tick to belong to that ethnic group, a check based on racial preference. Third, Groot assumed that colleges would seriously consider race-neutral admissions options.
Norris therefore asked the court to overturn the case of “Groot v. Bollinger” and ruled that “Harvard was wrong.” “We are against the use of race as a plus or minus in admissions,” Norris said.
In this regard, Liberal Justice Elena Kagan cited a hypothesis put forward by conservative Justice Samuel Anthony Alito that when African-American immigrant students face admissions, they write articles explaining how they face different cultures, Is it allowed?
That should work, said Patrick Strawbridge, an attorney for the plaintiffs who opposed the AA, “because in this case the preference is not based on race but cultural experience.”
Cagan said immediately, “Race is part of culture, and culture is part of race, isn’t it? It’s the same thing after all.”
In response, Brooklyn blogger Ling Fei used an example to argue that if a white man grew up in a Chinese family, would his culture be white or Chinese? “Culture is only related to the environment you grew up in, and does it have to do with the color of your body?”
Quotas, discrimination, duck testing
Conservative Justice Samuel Anthony Alito argued that Harvard gave Asian-American applicants low personal scores (measures of courage, kindness, empathy, etc.). This practice of individual scoring began in the 1920s to reduce Jewish enrollment.
“Asian student applicants have the lowest individual scores of any other group,” Alito asked. “What’s going on here?”
Harvard attorney Seth Waxman sought to downplay the figures into “slight numerical discrepancies” and said so-called personal ratings were not a major part of the process. “It’s not statistically different,” Waxman said.
Alito countered: “If it doesn’t matter, why would you do this (to assign a low personal score to Asians)?”
The hearing also discussed that if affirmative action is ruled unconstitutional, the Harvard model would not change white enrollment, increase Asian enrollment, and reduce black and Latino enrollment.
In this regard, Yu Jinshan said that even if race is only one measure among many factors, the voiceover is all about quotas, “whether it’s small or big, the results are exactly the same.” “You can veto a student by 5%, 100% can also reject a student.” “Whether North Carolina or Harvard, it is packaged into a fixed quota system in this way, but the name of the quota is not used.”
Yu Jinshan said that fixing diversity as a ratio and deliberately achieving a ratio is discrimination. The reason why the name “quota” is avoided is because “it is obvious discrimination to engage in quotas, and it is obviously excluding some people who meet the standards but are not in the quotas, so they use fancy things to hide the goal of quotas. So no one talks about quotas now. , but they explicitly talk about black people more, less than before.”
Yu Jinshan: “Harvard recruits students to racially discriminate against Asians. The practice is quota, and the goal is quota, which is basically discrimination. The United States cannot blatantly engage in admission quotas, but in fact its goal has been set: I want 15% of blacks. , 20% of Asians, which is already a quota. The American proverb says that if you walk like a duck and quack like a duck, you are a duck.”
Racial factor is just one of more than 40 factors that NC State University vets for admissions, said Ketanji Brown Jackson, a new liberal black woman judge. She worries that if “universities can consider all other backgrounds and personal characteristics of applicants, but not race,” it “may create more equal protection issues than actually address them.”
In this regard, Yu Jinshan said that liberal judges now emphasize skin color and quota system. If you use their logic, the entire United States has a quota system, then why does each basketball team not deserve a few Asians?
Judge Jackson said students could create more “equal protection” issues if they couldn’t show their racial background on their applications. Yu Jinshan retorted that “equal protection” should be to protect all people, everyone should receive equal protection, instead of defining the weak by those in power, protecting a small number of people and harming others to encourage growth.
Ling Fei believes that many ideas of the left cannot justify themselves, so they have special double standards. “When we talk about diversity in schools, they steal the concept of racial diversity; when you talk about race, they steal it for the disadvantage of class; when you talk about the racial diversity of NBA basketball teams, they steal another The concept of front-end says to diversify when the standard has been met.”
Zhao Yukong, chairman of the Asian American Education Alliance, said that if the end of the AA will have any impact on society, look at California and other nine states that have enacted affirmative action bans. Since California banned affirmative-action admissions at public colleges 24 years ago, black student enrollment rates have fallen, but graduation rates have remained the same. Because the black students who were encouraged by the seedlings reluctantly entered the school and did not adapt, some changed from science and engineering to liberal arts, and some dropped out of school. So there are still so many graduates.
He said that its positive impact is that “after the abolition of AA, American society will truly exercise its responsibility and focus on how to solve the problem of backward primary and secondary schools in cities. This is the solution.” ◇
Responsible editor: Li Yue#