Why are some racial preferences opponents eager for the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit racial preferences? I want the court to hear Fisher v. Texas to determine how states have applied eight-year-old Grutter v. Bollinger, the case that allows taxpayer-supported schools to use race as a “plus” factor in admissions. Although schools must consider race-neutral alternatives first, at least one—the University of Texas—resumed race-based admissions despite an effective race-neutral process.
The Center for Equal Opportunity’s Roger Clegg also wants the court to take the case. He writes:
“[T]he landscape has changed since 2003, there is much important new evidence, and Fisher raises problems beyond Grutter.
“The first thing to consider is the changing face of America. Take a look at this census chart. It shows that America is increasingly a multiracial and multiethnic country. Over one in four Americans now say they are something other than simply ‘white.’ Blacks are no longer the largest minority group: Latinos are.
“And blacks and whites are the slowest growing populations. Since the last census, the Latino population has grown by 43.0 percent, and the Asian population has by 43.3 percent. The black population has grown by only 12.3 percent, and the white population by only 5.7 percent.
“And it’s interesting that the number of Americans who identify themselves as belonging to ‘two or more races’ has grown by 32.0 percent. That doesn’t even count those Americans, like our president, who are multiracial but for whatever reason declined to identify themselves in that way on the census form.
“In such a country, it is simply untenable for our institutions to classify and sort people on the basis of skin color and national origin, and to treat citizens differently — some better, some worse — depending on which silly little box is checked.
“It is no longer the case that Jim Crow–advantaged whites are being displaced by just-liberated African Americans. Indeed, it is more and more the case that preferences are used to give an advantage to Latinos over Asians — to such an extent that, as one recent Associated Press story documents, Asian students try at all costs to avoid identifying themselves as such on their college admission applications. Now what is the historical justification for that?”
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It is indeed of vital importance that the U.S. Supreme Court hear “Fisher v. Texas.”
While the manufactured excuses for a race-based admissions process should have never trumped the fair-to-all merit-based admissions system in the first place, much additional light has been shed on the purported “justifications” for race-based preferences since 2003.
Roger Clegg enumerates several excellent reasons why the Supreme Court must revisit the issue of racial preferences. The fact alone that “affirmative action” — once intended to facilitate the inclusion of blacks into American civic life — now primarily benefits Latinos over any other ethnic group highlights how a once justifiable policy of nondiscrimination has morphed into one of state-sanctioned discrimination. Even the cloak of “diversity” can no longer hide this grave injustice.
Also, studies have repeatedly shown that preferences given to select “minorities” (such as Latinos and blacks) do little to bridge the academic achievement gap between them and their Asian and white counterparts.
These, and many other factors, warrant renewed scrutiny over “affirmative action” by the highest Court of the land. May “Fisher v.Texas” provide that scrutiny and in the process reveal the unvarnished truth about today’s “affirmative action.”
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