The Placebo Of Affirmative Action – by Andrew Sullivan

Rarely have we been so surprised by a focus group, wrote the New York Times Patrick Healy and Adrian Rivera last month. The two were shocked that the twelve college students they d picked for a Gen-Z focus group turned out to hold some deeply skeptical views on affirmative action.

When asked if they supported a program that used race or ethnicity as one of many criteria in admissions to college, only one put up his hand. Among the reasons the others (of both sexes and most races) gave for opposing the use of race:

I feel like, by introducing affirmative action, that would further otherize that population that s receiving that benefit because it could be looked at as, Oh, look at that. They re only here because of this. &  The biggest issue with affirmative action is that it implies that people of color wouldn t be able to get that position on their own & Affirmative action really doesn t fix the overall socioeconomic disparities between the groups that lead to those problems in the first place

And there you have the issue in the simplest form. In a civilization like America, rooted in the rights and opportunities of the individual, no one really wants to believe they achieved what they achieved simply because they are a member of a group.

via andrewsullivan.substack.com

Well, SCOTUS will have a chance to do that this term should they choose to apply the Constitution according to its terms. I’m skeptical but it could happen. Nobody would benefit more than Asian-Americans, who are more discriminated against in education than Jews ever were, at least partly because they are much more numerous.