Justices,
Please Take the Harvard Case
The Court needs to affirm the principle of racial equality or the U.S. will re-segregate.
By The Editorial Board
Nearly every day we learn of another case of governments or others setting policy based on the color of one’s skin. This is contrary to the equal rights fought for and won in the Civil War and civil-rights movement, and the Supreme Court has a rare and valuable chance to reaffirm that principle if it decides to hear the appeal in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
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The particulars concern whether Harvard discriminates against Asian-Americans in its admissions decisions. Harvard won in the lower courts but the Asian-American plaintiffs have appealed to the High Court. The larger stakes are whether the Supreme Court will wink as America divides in ways that have proved so destructive in the past.
The temptation will be for the Justices to give Harvard a pass given its contentious subject. The High Court has already taken cases on gun rights and abortion for the next term starting in the autumn. And you can imagine the reluctance to add the combustible issue of race to the docket.
This would be a mistake, and not only on the merits of this case. As Justice Clarence Thomas pointed out in 2018 when the Court passed on Kansas and Louisiana laws involving Medicaid funds for Planned Parenthood clinics, Supreme Court Justices are given lifetime tenure precisely so that a “politically fraught issue” will not prevent them from applying the law neutrally.
This is what is at stake in Harvard. In America today the principle that drove the civil-rights movement—equality for all—is fast giving way to the view that race must be a dominant factor in every decision from college admission to eligibility for a federal farm program to the makeup of corporate boards to who gets priority for a Covid vaccine.
Harvard’s claim that it doesn’t discriminate against Asian-Americans is self-evidently false. In the name of diversity, it favors blacks and Hispanics for admission while pretending that this won’t penalize applicants whose race is unfavored. The discrimination manifests itself in the much higher SAT scores required of Asian-Americans, as well as a subjective personality rating system that consistently assigns Asian-Americans far lower scores.
It is true that the racial discrimination alleged in Harvard isn’t the same as that of the Jim Crow South. In that era federal government intervention was required to break the state-enforced discrimination against black Americans. Race preferences were rooted then in the false claim of African-American inferiority.
No one thinks Harvard is discriminating because of animosity toward Asian-Americans, much less because it believes they are inferior. But it is no less ugly when, say, a talented Chinese-American young woman is denied an equal shot at Harvard because of her skin color—and told she must accept this in the name of diversity or to correct for some historic wrong she had no part in.
The Supreme Court should address this—not least because of its own role in allowing this allocation by race. The issue continues to roil college admissions because in a series of cases—from Bakke (1978) to Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) to the two Fisher v. University of Texas (2013, 2016) cases—the Court has hedged on the central issue. The Justices sometimes say the use of race is tolerable for one reason or another, and sometimes it is not.
The way to settle this is for a Court majority to embrace the plurality opinion of Chief Justice John Roberts in a 2007 case involving schools in Seattle: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
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Taking the Harvard case is arguably more important than deciding either the gun or abortion cases. If the Justices abdicate on the race issue now, the virus of racial separatism will spread ever more deeply into American life. In a few years it may be much harder to eradicate without considerable social harm. The U.S. would slide toward the racially divisive politics of countries like Malaysia, where government bias by race is ingrained in law and policy to unhappy effect.
The Justices should know there is overwhelming public support for the principle of racial equality, rather than the “racial equity” standard that uses government to dictate outcomes by race. A 2019 Pew survey found that 73% of Americans say “colleges and universities should not consider race or ethnicity when making decisions about student admissions.” The number is 62% for blacks and 65% for Hispanic-Americans.
Citizens in two of the nation’s most left-leaning states—Washington and California—recently rejected ballot initiatives that would have allowed racial preferences for state hiring, contracts and university admissions. In California the measure was defeated 57%-43% and lost in 52 of 58 counties.
The 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection of the law, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act makes discrimination by race illegal. What the plaintiffs ask is for the Court to affirm, at long last, that these words mean what they say.
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TNLM
GEORGE FLOYD, WHAT ONE YEAR HAS BROUGHT
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There's a Real Simple Reason Why the COVID Lab Leak Theory Was Dismissed by the Liberal Media.
And:
There's a Real Simple Reason Why the COVID Lab Leak Theory Was Dismissed by the Liberal Media.
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From a college standpoint Americans are becoming dumber and less capable of reasoning but from a street smart standpoint Americans are wise enough to know not to work if these numbers are factual:
Subject: Welfare vs. Working
No wonder some states want more federal money!
Have you ever wondered why very few Hawaiians are working when you visit those islands? All but a few States on the following list are strongholds ---so go figure!
The Cato Institute released an
updated 2016 study showing that welfare benefits pay more than a minimum
wage job in 33 American states, and the
District of Columbia.
Even worse, welfare pays more than $15 per hour to stay home in 13 states.
According to the study, welfare benefits have increased faster
than minimum wage. It's now more profitable to sit at home and watch TV
than
it is to earn an honest day's pay.
Hawaii is the biggest offender, where welfare recipients earn
$29.13per hour, or a $60,590 yearly salary for doing nothing.
Here is the list of the states where the pre-tax equivalent "salary" that
welfare recipients receive is higher than having a job:
1. Hawaii : $60,590
2. District of Columbia :$50,820 l
3. Massachusetts : $50,540
4. Connecticut : $44,370
5. New York : $43,700
6. New Jersey : $43,450
7. Rhode Island : $43,330
8. Vermont : $42,350
9. New Hampshire:39,750
10. Maryland : $38,160
11. California : $37,160
12 Oregon : $34,300
13. Wyoming : $32,620
14. Nevada : $29,820
15. Minnesota : $29,350
16. Delaware : $29,220
17. Washington : $28,840
18. North Dakota : $28,830
19. Pennsylvania : $28,670
20. New Mexico : $27,900
21. Montana : $26,930
22. South Dakota : $26,610
23. Kansas: $26,490
24. Michigan : $26,430
25. Alaska : $26,400
26. Ohio : $26,200
27. North Carolina : $25,760
28. West Virginia : $24,900
29. Alabama : $23,310
30 Indiana : $22,900
31. Missouri : $22,800
32. Oklahoma : $22,480
33. Louisiana : $22,250
34 South Carolina : $21,910
35. Wisconsin
36. Arizona
37. Virginia
38, Nebraska
39. Colorado
40. Idaho
41. Maine
42. Georgia
43. Utah
44. Illinois
45. Kentucky
45. Florida
47. Texas
48. Idaho
49. Arkansas
50. Tennessee
51. Mississippi
Hawaii, DC , and Massachusetts
pay more in welfare than the average wage folks earn there.
Is it any wonder that they stay home rather than look for a job.
Time for a drastic change... Americans are not stupid .
Note that California is $18.50 an hour. Are we Nuts or what? How do
we un-do this type of stupidity ?
Now if you think that's bad, read about these salaries:
Salary of retired United States Presidents - $180,000 FOR
LIFE
Salary
of House/Senate...$174,000 FOR LIFE.
Salary of Speaker of the House ..$223,500 FOR LIFE!
Salary of Majority/Minority Leader $193,400 FOR LIFE!
Average Salary of a teacher ... $40,065 Average Salary of Soldier DEPLOYED
IN AFGHANISTAN.. $38,000.
Nancy Pelosi will retire as a Congress Person at $174,000 Dollars a
year for LIFE- - plus she will retire as SPEAKER at $223,500 a year -
- plus she will receive an additional $193,400 a year for when she was
Minority Leader. The fact that she has become rich while in office
notwithstanding, that's $803,700 Dollars a year for LIFE including FREE medical
which is not available to us.... the taxpayers. She is just one of
the hundreds
of Senators and Congresspersons that float in and out of Congress
every year!
I think we found where the cuts should be made!
AND , can you imagine paying AOC these sums for life. HORRORS!!!!!!!
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This is the future life of Re-Greta:
If more people would educate themselves and really learn all the uses of petroleum they might not want to eliminate it so quickly!
One crisp winter morning in Sweden, a cute little girl named Greta woke up to a perfect world, one where there were no petroleum products ruining the earth She tossed aside her cotton sheet and wool blanket and stepped out onto a dirt floor covered with willow bark that had been pulverized with rocks. “What’s this?” she asked.
Pulverized willow bark,” replied her fairy godmother.
“What happened to the carpet?” she asked.
“The carpet was nylon, which is made from butadiene and hydrogen cyanide, both made from petroleum,” came the response.
Greta smiled, acknowledging that adjustments are necessary to save the planet, and moved to the sink to brush her teeth where instead of a toothbrush, she found a willow, mangled on one end to expose wood fiber bristles.
“Your old toothbrush?” noted her godmother, “Also nylon.”
“Where’s the water?asked Greta.
“Down the road in the canal,” replied her godmother, ‘Just make sure you avoid water with cholera in it”
“Why’s there no running water? ”Greta asked, becoming a little peevish.
“Well,” said her godmother, who happened to teach engineering at MIT, “Where do we begin?” There followed a long monologue about how sink valves need elastomer seats and how copper pipes contain copper, which has to be mined and how it’s impossible to make all-electric earth-moving equipment with no gear lubrication or tires and how ore has to be smelted to a make metal, and that’s tough to do with only electricity as a source of heat, and even if you use only electricity, the wires need insulation, which is petroleum-based, and though most of Sweden’s energy is produced in an environmentally friendly way because of hydro and nuclear, if you do a mass and energy balance around the whole system, you still need lots of petroleum products like lubricants and nylon and rubber for tires and asphalt for filling potholes and wax and iPhone plastic and elastic to hold your underwear up while operating a copper smelting furnace and . . .
“What’s for breakfast?” interjected Greta, whose head was hurting.
"Fresh, range-fed chicken eggs,” replied her godmother. “Raw.”
“How so, raw?” inquired Greta.
“Well, . . .” And once again, Greta was told about the need for petroleum products like transformer oil and scores of petroleum products essential for producing metals for frying pans and in the end was educated about how you can’t have a petroleum-free world and then cook eggs. Unless you rip your front fence up and start a fire and carefully cook your egg in an orange peel like you do in Boy Scouts. Not that you can find oranges in Sweden anymore.
“But I want poached eggs like my Aunt Tilda makes,” lamented Greta.
“Tilda died this morning,” the godmother explained. “Bacterial pneumonia.”
“What?!” interjected Greta. “No one dies of bacterial pneumonia! We have penicillin.”
“Not anymore,” explained godmother:
“The production of penicillin requires chemical extraction using isobutyl acetate, which, if you know your organic chemistry, is petroleum-based. Lots of people are dying, which is problematic because there’s not any easy way of disposing of the bodies since backhoes need hydraulic oil and crematoriums can’t really burn many bodies using as fuel Swedish fences and furniture, which are rapidly disappearing - being used on the black market for roasting eggs and staying warm.”
This represents only a fraction of Greta’s day, a day without microphones to exclaim into and a day without much food, and a day without carbon-fiber boats to sail in, but a day that will save the planet.
Tune in tomorrow when Greta needs a root canal and learns how Novocain is synthesized.
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