SCOTUS Affirmative Action Case, Or White Girl Demands Affirmative Action For Mediocre White Kids

I have no idea why this case is back in the hands of the Supreme Court. Okay, I do have an idea, and, if I doubted my initial reaction, the Conservative Justices cleared that up for me.

Antonin Scalia:

There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-­Americans to to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-­advanced school, a less — a slower­-track school where they do well.

One of the briefs pointed out that most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas. They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re — that they’re being pushed ahead in — in classes that are too — too fast for them.

That statement is stunning with its sweeping assumptions, especially when you consider the woman, Abigail Fisher, was a mediocre student with mediocre SAT scores.

Before I continue with Scalia’s racial profiling of black and Latino college students, let’s look at the facts around Abigail Fisher and this case.

It’s true that the university, for whatever reason, offered provisional admission to some students with lower test scores and grades than Fisher. Five of those students were black or Latino. Forty-two were white.

Neither Fisher nor Blum mentioned those 42 applicants in interviews. Nor did they acknowledge the 168 black and Latino students with grades as good as or better than Fisher’s who were also denied entry into the university that year.

Notice how her problem is with the five (5!) black and Latino students and not the 42 white students who were accepted ahead of her. Those 42 white students were obviously accepted due to merit, unlike the five (5!) black and Latino students.  And what about those 168 black and Latino students with grades as good as or better than Fisher’s who were also denied entry into the university? Guess we’ll just toss that 168 number onto the pile of the 42 white students who beat her out.

The NYT’s article is worth your time to read.

Here’s how their admissions process works. First, the university admits all public high school seniors in Texas who graduate in the top 10 percent of their class. These students constitute the overwhelming majority of the entering class — about 80 percent the year Ms. Fisher applied. Applicants who miss this cutoff and lack other exceptional academic credentials, as Ms. Fisher did, move to another stage of the process that evaluates the whole person.

At this stage, the university reviews the applicants’ academic and personal achievement, including aspects of their background — whether they have special family responsibilities, come from a single-parent family or one that speaks a language other than English, along with many other factors, including race. Each applicant receives a composite score for academic performance and personal achievement, which together determine admission. (None of the personal factors are individually scored.)

Because race is considered in the context of a person’s life experiences, any applicant can benefit. In fact, a white student who attended a majority-black high school may stand out based on the relatively unique perspectives that experience can provide in a starkly segregated state like Texas.

College admissions is an art and a science. It has to be since if we just go by the numbers (GPA and SAT) many students are still going to be rejected – Ms. Fisher among them. Would we set up a lottery and draw names from a hat? And isn’t it interesting that Ms. Fisher, and her lawyer, cite all those extracurricular activities (the fuzzy art side) she participated in. They have to because Ms. Fisher’s grades and SAT scores simply weren’t good enough.

Here’s Ms. Fisher’s words:

“There were people in my class with lower grades who weren’t in all the activities I was in, who were being accepted into UT, and the only other difference between us was the color of our skin,” she says. “I was taught from the time I was a little girl that any kind of discrimination was wrong. And for an institution of higher learning to act this way makes no sense to me. What kind of example does it set for others?”

Truth is, her race wasn’t a factor. Her grades and SAT scores were. And notice how she only focuses on the five (5!) black and Latino students and not the 42 white students who got in instead of her, let alone the 168 black and Latino students with grades as good as or better than Fisher’s who were also denied entry into the university. I cannot stress this point enough, and I have to stress it since Ms. Fisher and her lawyer completely ignore it.

But the real question is would she have been accepted if not for those five (5!) students. Um… no.

Even among those students, Fisher did not particularly stand out. Court records show her grade point average (3.59) and SAT scores (1180 out of 1600) were good but not great for the highly selective flagship university. The school’s rejection rate that year for the remaining 841 openings was higher than the turn-down rate for students trying to get into Harvard.

As a result, university officials claim in court filings that even if Fisher received points for her race and every other personal achievement factor, the letter she received in the mail still would have said no.

If we want to play by Ms. Fisher’s rules than not only wouldn’t she have been accepted to UT, but she would have been further down the list – behind those black and Latino students with grades better than Fisher’s who also weren’t accepted. Hey, if she wants to cite merit as grounds for acceptance she just lost her spot again… and again… and again. Basically, Ms. Fisher (whose injury comes down to the 100.00 application fee) wants special treatment. She could have worked harder in school and snagged one of those top 10% spots, but she didn’t. Basically she is saying, “My GPA and SAT were subpar, but I should be accepted to UT – ahead of any black and Latino applicants – because I’m white.”

Back to Supreme Court Justices. Scalia’s comments that are beyond offensive. Amanda Marcotte of Salon hits the nail on the head:

Fisher’s case only makes sense if you assume that people of color are inherently less worthy than white people. How else do you justify an argument that assumes that every white person should have been given a shot before minority students do?

This assumption of the inherent superiority of white people, even above those people of color who have more appealing applications, was reflected in Antonin Scalia’s remarks during today’s case.

Instead of telling her where to shove it, the Supreme Court sent Fisher’s case back to the appeals court. Now she and her lawyers are back again. This time, they’ve tweaked their argument a bit, trying to argue that diversity itself is an illegitimate goal for schools and, to add a bit of extra nastiness sauce to it, they’re claiming that diversity is bad for students of color.

In other words, Fisher and her lawyers are concern-trolling the Supreme Court.

[…]

When you read about this case, it quickly becomes self-evident why the admissions committee didn’t think Fisher had some hidden potential that wasn’t reflected in her grades. Fisher, however, has decided her unparalleled genius is going unnoticed because of the notorious racism against white people. But since that argument hasn’t gotten her very far, her lawyer, Edward Blum, is now trying a different tactic to argue that schools should admit mediocre white people over talented students of color: His claim is that  giving students of color an opportunity somehow hurts them.

[…]

“Rigorous judicial review,” Blum’s new petition argues, “would have revealed that UT’s ‘qualitative’ diversity interest is in fact illegitimate.  It depends on the assumption that, as a group, minorities admitted through the Top Ten Percent Law are inherently limited in their ability to contribute to the university’s vision of a diverse student body, merely because many come from majority-minority communities.”

Translated from legalese to English: It’s supposedly racist to let students of color with middling grades  into UT Austin, because you’re assuming they can’t do better. It’s a particularly rich argument, considering that Fisher is arguing that she should have been given the first shot, before any students of color, at getting in with middling grades.

[…]

Blum’s argument says more about his and Fisher’s racial prejudices than it does about the school. It’s they who assume that non-whites students must have been given a leg up because they couldn’t hack it on their own. But when it comes to Fisher, they employ a different assumption, believing, against all evidence to the contrary, that she must be good enough to deserve a spot. There’s a word for casually assuming the worst about people of color while assuming the best, even in the face of contrary evidence, of white people.

Forgive the cut and pasting, but Marcotte sums it up perfectly.

Scalia wasn’t the only Conservative Justice to raise eyebrows.

Alito: “It’s kind of the assumption that if the—if a student—if a black student or a Hispanic student is admitted as part of the top 10-percent plan, it has to be because that student didn’t have to compete against very many whites and— and Asians.”

Wow. There’s that nasty assumption again – the assumption that black and Hispanic students (no matter what their GPA/SAT are) are naturally inferior to whites… and Asians. (Love the way Alito quickly tacked on “and – and Asians” at the end.)

Roberts asked, “What unique perspective does a minority student bring to a physics class?” as if black and brown students exist in a physics class for the sole purpose of expanding a white students perspective and not, you know, to learn physics.

Roberts also wondered when all this Affirmative Action stuff would be done? I can answer that. Affirmative Action will end when 1) racism ends, 2) Legacy admissions and donor admissions ends, and, most importantly, 3) we fund all our K-12 schools equitably so every student has access to education that makes them competitive. I have been pointing out for ages how Choice, Charters, Magnets and the Neighborhood Schools Act have created high poverty schools and how the children in those schools are placed at a disadvantage. Scalia’s solution is for these children to go to a “less-advanced school, a less—a slower-track school where they do well.”

U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli pointed out that Scalia’s plan was basically Separate but Equal (or rather, unequal):

“If you look at the academic performance of holistic minority admits versus the top 10 percent admits, over time, they—they fare better,” he said. “And, frankly, I don’t think the solution to the problems with student body diversity can be to set up a system in which not only are minorities going to separate schools, they’re going to inferior schools.”

It was quite clear that Scalia and Alito begin with the premise that black and Latino students are naturally inferior to white students. That’s vile. It’s also a lie, one that mediocre student Abigail Fisher believes with all her heart. Should have hit the books harder, Abigail, and you wouldn’t have been in this position. Talk about entitlement.