Asians Got Pimped: SCOTUS’s Affirmative Action Decision Lifts Tribalism Above Achieving The Dream
Let’s not sugar coat it, the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) Affirmative Action decision pits Asians against African Americans. Sadly, for the country because relationships between many Asian and African American communities are already strained. At times violently so. Tragically, because stereotypes have been reinforced instead of these two communities shared values being affirmed. Worse, the strategy used to achieve the SCOTUS decision undermines these communities’ ability to collaboratively rebuke tribalism as rational for dominant culture imposed limits on who achieves the American dream.
Context Matters
Asian and African American communities shouldn’t be distracted however. They should, as it is said, keep their eyes on the prize. This Affirmative Action decision was a victory for white supremacy. No one else wins! To achieve this end, chief protagonist and conservative legal strategist Edward Blum has spent well funded decades fine tuning strategies to successfully overturn the principle safeguarded allowing historically disadvantaged populations’ access to education at institutions they desire to attend.
Both communities are well served to know that this decision is not a majority decision. It was jerrymandered. Ironic, as that’s the phrase Blum himself uses to describe affirmative action in college admissions. And though there may be disagreement on how to get there most Asians and African Americans strongly support diversity.
Jeff Chang’s opinion piece in The Guardian (July 1, 2023) offers keen insight. Of, Michael Wang, whose failure to get into Harvard became Blum’s poster child, he writes “(Michael Wang) recently conceded: ‘A part of me regrets what I’ve put forward.’ His frustration is now our national tragedy.” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/01/asian-americans-affirmative-action-supreme-court
A Court Decision More Than Fifty Years in the Making
The SCOTUS decision in Brown v Board of Education of Topeka (1954) intensified, if not incited, those supporting school segregation. To such an extent that so called “white flight schools,” many with ties to Christian faith, increased around the country. The fact, however, that these schools retained receipt of public funding, by way of their Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax exempt status, meant many students remained barred from attending publicly funded schools because of their race. It also meant anti-discrimination laws were being broken because of a statutory loophole.
The lawsuit filed in 1969 by the Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights Under the Law on behalf of William Green and other black parents, was the first to challenge that IRS loophole. The suit charged that Mississippi private Christian schools could not exclude Negro children and still qualify for tax exemption. The resulting SCOTUS ruling, in 1971, led to a the IRS’s denial of tax exemptions for all Mississippi schools practicing segregation.
“Especially jarring,” Sally Steenland (Center for American Progress, March 27, 2013) wrote, “was the fact that their schools took no government money, leading them to believe they had the right to act according to their beliefs and make independent decisions. The result: Evangelicals owed the government lots of money in back taxes. And equally bad: In their mind, this ruling meant the federal government could barge into their schools and tell them what to do.” www.americanprogress.org/article/the-religious-right-wasnt-created-to-battle-abortion/
As if proof was needed, when the IRS threatened in 1975 to revoke the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University because it didn’t allow interracial dating among its students many Religious Right conservatives were incensed. Seeing opportunity, perhaps, Heritage Foundation co-founder Paul Weyrich’s coalition building finally bore fruit. He successfully “helped engineer the union between the Republican Party and the Christian Right, (and) coined the phrase ‘moral majority,’ ” as Elaine Woo wrote in Weyrich’s obituary, L.A. Times (December 19, 2008).
That coalition, fortified by Jerry Fallwell, Trent Lott, Newt Gingrich and others, prompted president Reagan to try reversing a decade of the IRS’s anti-discriminations policy enforcement. Reagan’s efforts were greeted by a firestorm of protests. Weyrich did not relent, however, his coalition led Bob Jones University to challenge the 1971 SCOTUS decision.
The Supreme Court, in 1983, Bob Jones University v United States, upheld it’s 1971 decision, stating that a private educational institution’s tax-exempt status could be revoked by the IRS if it found their policies to be “contrary to established public policy,” meaning discriminatory, even if those policies are based on religious beliefs.
“The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.”
Maya Angelou
In reality this Affirmative Action decision has had many champions over a long period of time. Reagan was the first hope. Trump the next. Finally, it took, Senate Majority Leader McConnell’s block of president Obama’s SCOTUS appointment; his rush to give Trump another appointment before the end of his term; Edward Blum’s pimping of Asians; and some would say lavish gifts to Supreme Court justices to achieve what Paul Weyrich started.
Yet, Chief Justice Roberts Left An Opening
For a long time many colleges and universities argued that diversity strengthens/enriches the academic environment, enhances students ability to achieve needed work place skills/competencies, and provides for a better educated citizenry. In SCOTUS’s Affirmative Action decision, Chief Justice Roberts majority opinion specifically says that’s not good enough.
And indeed, the inability to concretize affirmative action’s goals and public benefit it offers society is no longer enough. In these divisive times ‘common good’ arguments carry little sway. Seemingly, Affirmative Action’s polarizing hype does more to define the gulf between the ivory tower in which higher education is often accused of occupying and the lives being lived by many J.D. Vance describes in his book Hillbilly Elegy.
But Chief Justice Roberts provides what might be considered a road map. In his majority opinion he writes,” …nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university.” I say might, because only after the fact data can prove the opinion’s worth.
As Comedian and Talk Show Host Bill Maher says, “New Rules!”
Philosophical arguments aside, SCOTUS’s Affirmative Action decision resets the guard rails on higher education’s self-determination/self-governance ability. What practitioners have to focus on is how to attend to the new rules while accomplishing stated objectives. Something, that admittedly will be challenging as schools in the nine states that have already banned “race” as a factor in college admissions have found. So writes Melisa Korn (Wall Street Journal, June 29, 2023) Can Colleges Be Racially Diverse Without Affirmative Action? Experience Suggests No. “Nine states that banned race-conscious admissions find alternatives tend to leave Black and Hispanic students underrepresented” https://apple.news/AtGZM5ga-Su6Zv6q1m5v6ew.
To achieve acceptable levels of college admissions by diverse student populations, what Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion did was force an alliance, between perspective students and the colleges and universities to which they apply. An alliance based on self-disclosure and trust: if I tell you who I am will you let me in. Interesting right! Also fraught with enough potential litigation to tie courts up for decades. No one should need reminding, these are not trusting times. And we know what happens when people fight over leftovers. Only the cook wins! The cook knows that also!
Building bridges between aspirants and college admissions decision makers could work though. If directions are clear (and followed), well worn paths are created and reported, and results are well defined and achieved. Nothing prohibits students, parents and guardians from joining with high education institutions directly to insure admissions from diverse talent pools exist.
Results, however, should focus not only on admissions. Getting in is not the goal. In this, the opinion of Justice Antonin Scallia rings true, only affirmative action is served when a student is admitted that has little chance of graduating. The goal is graduation. Anything less turns students, any student, into salmon, flailing against the rocks swimming upstream never to see their dreams spawn.
Resources
For Most Asian Americans, Diversity is a Core Value — Even If a Loud Minority Contests It, Jeff Chang, (The Guardian, July 1, 2023) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/01/asian-americans-affirmative-action-supreme-court
Green v Connally 330 F. Supp 1150 (D.D.C. 1971) https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/330/1150/2126265/
The Religious Right Wasn’t Created To Fight Abortion, Sally Steenland (Center for American Progress, March 27, 2013) www.americanprogress.org/article/the-religious-right-wasnt-created-to-battle-abortion/
Paul Weyrich, Religious Conservative and Ex-President of the Heritage Foundation, Dies at 66, Elaine Woo, L.A. Times (December 19, 2008) https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-weyrich19-2008dec19-story.html
Bob Jones University v United States, Michael P. Bobic 1983 (The First Amendment Encyclopedia, Middle Tennessee State University) https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/37/bob-jones-university-v-unitedstates#:~:text=United%20States%20(1983)&text=the%20Associated%20Press)-,The%20Supreme%20Court%20determined%20in%20Bob%20Jones%20University%20v.,are%20based%20on%20religious%20beliefs.
Reagan Advisers Missed School Case Sensitivity, Martin Schram and Charles R. Babcock, (January 17, 1982) https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1982/01/17/reagan-advisers-missed-school-case-sensitivity/86c03521-1881-42f3-bd29-9944ebf51427/
Can Colleges Be Racially Diverse Without Affirmative Action? Experience Suggests No. “Nine states that banned race-conscious admissions find alternatives tend to leave Black and Hispanic students underrepresented” Melisa Korn (Wall Street Journal, June 29, 2023) https://apple.news/AtGZM5ga-Su6Zv6q1m5v6ew
Highlights of the Affirmative Action Opinions and Dissents, Charles Savage (NY Times, June 29, 2023) https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/us/politics/affirmative-action-ruling-highlights.html
With Remarks In Affirmative Action Case, Scalia Steps Into ‘Mismatch’ Debate, Anemona Hartocollis (NY Times, December 10, 2015) https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/11/us/with-remarks-in-affirmative-action-case-scalia-steps-into-mismatch-debate.html
