Academia, Constitutional Law

Federal Judge Upholds Harvard’s Race-Based Admission Criteria

As previously discussed the controversy over the race-based criteria used Harvard University’s undergraduate admissions program and whether it discriminates against Asians. Not only do the criteria limit Asian-American students to 20 percent of the class but the plaintiffs alleged that such students are routinely given low scores on “personal ratings” to further reduce their admission numbers. U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston has now rejected those claims and upheld the admissions criteria, writing in the 130 page opinion that “The court will not dismantle a very fine admissions program that passes constitutional muster, solely because it could do better.” This case could prove a major new challenge to race-based admissions as it now works up to the court of appeals.

Students for Fair Admissions had brought the lawsuit.

The court acknowledged that the criteria resulted in Asian Americans being admitted at a lower rate than white students. White students have a 7-8 percent acceptance while Asian-American students have a 5-6 percent rate.

Burroughs acknowledged that Asian American applicants “would likely be admitted at a higher rate than white applicants if admissions decisions were made based solely on academic and extracurricular ratings.”

Parts of the opinion seem inconclusive and speculative. For example, on the personal ratings, Burroughs states

“The disparity in personal ratings suggests that at least some admissions officers might have subconsciously provided tips in the personal rating, particularly to African American and Hispanic applicants to create an alignment between the profile ratings and the race-conscious overall ratings that they were assigning. It also possible, although unsupported by any direct evidence before the court, that part of the statistical disparity resulted from admissions officers’ implicit biases that disadvantaged Asian American applicants in the personal rating relative to white applicants, but advantaged Asian American over whites in the academic rating.”

That seems like a judicial shrug on a critical allegation of discrimination.

The problem is that the Supreme Court has made an utter mess of this area with 5-4 decisions that left more questions than answers. In Grutter v. Bollinger, the Court divided 5-4 on the question in upholding the admissions criteria for Michigan Law School. However, even the author of the 2003 majority opinion, Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, stated that she did not believe the use of race would be acceptable for more than a couple decades more. The Court ruled that it “expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” O’Connor’s statement was ridiculed by other justices (and others) since the constitutionality of affirmative action should not have an expiration date like one-percent milk.

The court does say that “The process would likely benefit from conducting implicit bias trainings for admissions officers, maintaining clear guidelines on the use of race in the admissions process, which were developed during this litigation, and monitoring and making admissions officers aware of any significant race-related statistical disparities in the rating process.”

That may not be enough. The case could prove the vehicle for forcing the Supreme Court to grapple again with this issue.

Here is the opinion: Harvard Admissions Opinion

132 thoughts on “Federal Judge Upholds Harvard’s Race-Based Admission Criteria”

  1. One thing I like about The National Football League is that it isn’t run on affirmative action. The league is 67% black. Too bad the rest of society wasn’t run like this. Not that the rest of societies endeavors would be 67% black, but that we would allow the cream of society to rise to the top. If the vast majority of Harvard’s incoming freshmen would be Asian, so be it.

  3. Just finished reading Judge Burroughs Ninety-Five Theses … er …. findings of fact and conclusions of law and the clincher is deeply ensconced in the last lines like a great boil:

    “For purposes of this case, at least for now, ensuring diversity at Harvard relies, in part, on race conscious admissions. Harvard’s admission program passes constitutional muster in that it satisfies the dictates of strict scrutiny. The students who are admitted to Harvard and choose to attend will live and learn surrounded by all sorts of people, with all sorts of experiences, beliefs and talents. 𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒐𝒑𝒑𝒐𝒓𝒕𝒖𝒏𝒊𝒕𝒚 𝒕𝒐 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒃𝒆𝒚𝒐𝒏𝒅 𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒆, 𝒂𝒔 𝒘𝒉𝒐𝒍𝒆 𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒊𝒗𝒊𝒅𝒖𝒂𝒍𝒔 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒖𝒏𝒊𝒒𝒖𝒆 𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒆𝒙𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆𝒔. 𝑰𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔, 𝒂𝒕 𝑯𝒂𝒓𝒗𝒂𝒓𝒅 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒆𝒍𝒔𝒆𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒎𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝒖𝒔, 𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒅𝒂𝒚, 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒐𝒊𝒏𝒕 𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒘𝒆 𝒔𝒆𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒆 𝒊𝒔 𝒂 𝒇𝒂𝒄𝒕, 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒅𝒆𝒇𝒊𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒇𝒂𝒄𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒇𝒂𝒄𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒔 𝒖𝒔 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒊𝒎𝒑𝒐𝒓𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒕, 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒘𝒆 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒚𝒆𝒕. Until we are, race conscious admissions programs that survive strict scrutiny will have an important place in society and help ensure that colleges and universities can offer a diverse atmosphere that fosters learning, improves scholarship, and encourages mutual respect and understanding.” [emphasis mine]

    Judge Allison is kind enough to Law-Splain to us that we are hopeless bigots and that all minorities are defined purely by their race alone which, in turn, defines their — and our — intrinsic worth. How woke! Oh, we can move past our bigotry one day, but for now, legally approved discrimination against the better qualified future doctors, lawyers, Senators, engineers and leaders in general is the order of the day. Want the best doctor? No the wokiest is all you are entitled to? Want a Harvard-class lawyer? Good luck, we’ll give you a diverse one who just might be but his admission grades won’t show it.

    And may we, my Lady, know when the long-sought after day of enlightenment will be upon us? Or by what criteria will you decide and graciously announce it, my Liege?

    Scorn from the royal bench to such indolence: “Shut up! We’ll tell you when you need to know. Until then, you Asian kids and those not within our favor can just suck it up and make do as best you can. Must be some cake around here for your solace! Your lives are nothing compared to the virtue we so obviously wear like the new robes of the Emperor. Will of the People? That’s a matter of probate law not government, my dear “work hard to get ahead” vassals!”

  4. (music to the tune of The Jets)
    If you are smart you can fart.
    You can fart all the way.
    From you first grade class to your Harvard days.

    The Ivy League stinks and you can’t make it worse.
    So fart when you get there and let in a hearse.

  5. Harvard would be 99 percent Asian if they admitted solely on SAT scores and grades in high school.

    1. that’s an exaggeration. and you know, it’s to be applauded that Asians work hard, white people should work harder. take the cell phones away from the kids and sit them down and help them do homework, every night, just maybe?

      I believe IQ is a big factor, but studying hard and staying focused on homework versus other distractions, is a bigger factor.

      Malcolm Gladwell’s chapter on the work ethic that comes from rice cultivating regions of Asia, is very interesting, Outliers a popular book and for once a good one

      In earlier generations, Jews were very successful, as a group. Gladwell’s got a good chapter on them too. White gentiles should look to many of their positive cultural habits with admiration and as a positive example instead of running them down for being successful.

      I can think of plenty of negatives about other social groups, but working hard and going hard for education are not negatives.

      Thomas Sowell had a good book on disapora peoples and how they fit into other societies. Forget the name. Amy Chua’s book “World on Fire” is interesting too.

      there is no way around group competition. and in the end there is no way around work.

    2. @liberty2nd

      Actually Harvard would be around 52% Asian if admissions were totally determined by merit.

      Leftists also want only skin deep diversity, not diversity of opinion.

      antonio

  6. I really hate this misconception that diversity is skin deep. That makes as much sense as claiming that a team composed of a blonde, a brunette, a red head, and a black haired person is diverse. No. It’s colorful.

    A team is tasked with creating an African festival. It is composed all of black people, each from a different region of Africa, and each with entirely different first hand knowledge, cultural, and artistic traditions to bring. That team is diverse.

    A second team is composed all of white people. Each has a PhD or specialty in a different area – African paleolithic art, modern African dance, the mountain and lowland gorilla, African ecology, the leading expert on Ptahhotep, tribal unrest, reclaiming desertification. That team is diverse.

    Another team is created. It consists of a project manager, event coordinator, building contractor, engineer, promoter, marketing specialist, city coordinator, parks and rec representative, music coordinator, lighting specialist, a rep from the local arts council, and various other specialist. This team is composed of various genders and races. It is diverse, but not because of the skin or hair color of its members.

    Each of these teams would use their combined diversity of expertise to bring something different to the table. All the teams together would put on a fantastic festival. Zero has to do with skin color. The ethnicities of the first team were assets, not the race, because of the first hand cultural knowledge each participant brought.

    Okay, this hypothetical thought exercise was laborious, but hopefully it demonstrated what diversity actually means. It’s not superficial.

    1. I have a friend who is a “white guy” from South Africa. He is deemed an African American. A light skinned negro guy was on TV yakking about his lineage. His half black great great grandfather fought for the South in the Civil War. Does this guy get reparations? Should Obama get reparations if he was born in Kenya?
      Diversity is a word of many thought processes. People who talk like New Yorkies are diverse from people from Ohio. Bill Clinton is diverse from yorkie Trump. Jimmie Carter is diverse from Johnny Kennedy. JFK supposedly hailed from Massachusetts yet his accent is from the Bronx where he lived as a kid. “My bruder Bobby.” Recall that phrase?

  7. Very disappointed in this ruling. Hope they appeal. Hope they have the funds to appeal.

    Why is it so hard to condemn racism when it impacts any group other than African Americans or Latinos? Don’t discriminate against Asians. If their family values emphasize academics and extra curricular learning, and it pays off, do not punish the children who made good choices throughout their school career.

    So what if a merit based application system allows in more Asians than other groups, if they earned it?

    “Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, stated that she did not believe the use of race would be acceptable for more than a couple decades more.” Why is it ever acceptable?

    1. Freedom of speech, thought, religion, belief, press, promulgation, assembly, socialization and every other conceivable, natural and God-given right and freedom per the 9th Amendment absolutely provide Americans the right and freedom to choose, to discriminate and to be as racist as they want to be, statue law against property damage and bodily injury notwithstanding.

      Governmental commandment and the “dictatorship of the proletariat” are principles of the antithetical and wholly unconstitutional Communist Manifesto.

      People may be free or despots may dictate but you cannot have both.

    2. Karen S “why is it ever acceptable?” To account for and combat the institutionalized racism that was prevalent in society in the 60s and appears present to this day. Segregation, Jim Crow, disparities in criminal justice (where to this day Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans routinely face harsher sentencing than their white counter parts [I have to think that if this “opioid epidemic” were playing out among mostly black and brown people, society would still accept them being hauled off en masse as it played out in the 80s and 90s]) were all present when Affirmative Action was passed. In the 90s you’d still find white only/colored only signs on the occasional bathroom or fountain south of the mason dixon, tiger woods was still banned from certain golf courses and politicians on both side matters of the aisle still celebrated discriminatory criminal justice policies. Why was any of that ever acceptable? What would your suggestion be to quickly combat that? Allow Universities, run by whites raised in a system that taught racial superiority for generations, to continue to ignore the circumstances that prevent minorities from gaining easy entry through legacy (which at some schools accounts for a third of entrants) to continue implicit preferential treatment towards white applicants?

      Sandra Day merely states the obvious. If Affirmative Action was the solution to combat decades of racist policies, and the goal was to generate a diverse campus, at some point it’s purpose would become self sustaining and afford black and brown applicants the same opportunities through connections, legacy and admissions no longer raised in a segregated society. I don’t know if her estimate of 20 years was rooted in any facts or just her personally held belief, but if you look at the age of those who graduated prior to integration, by 2023 they’d all be senior citizens or dead and no longer in power. So perhaps the thought was that institutionalized racism would finally be on its way out of America’s system. Still in 2003 when she wrote her opinion, Bob Jones University still had a ban on interracial dating so it may have been wishful thinking at some universities.

      I wish there were nearly this much outrage over the college admissions scandal involving the wealthy elites. In some of these cases Universities used the applicants ancestors as slave labor, sold them down river to keep the university afloat and don’t consider the descendants legacy or offer them much needed financial aid for admissions if they do. It’s a messed up situation and I’d personally prefer to attend a University with a diverse student body as opposed to a relatively homogeneous one. In spite of squeeky digging up the most ridiculous stories she can find to make light of the fact that we’re not out of the woods yet with racism (no math isn’t racist…who in their right mind would think that!? I’m pretty sure I can find some wack job far right conservative writer trying to make a name for himself claiming fossils are a myth if I try hard enough), some good has come out of this thread. An acknowledgement by some that diversity is more than just skin deep. That even among the racial categories we break ourselves into, there exist differences and discrimination. At the root of that is the truth. Race is a made up social construct. It’s no more significant than a tribe, or the color of an organ, for the skin is merely an organ. We all share common ancestry whether from a biblical perspective or a scientific one. Hopefully our future descendants in this melting pot we call american can look at us and shake their heads at their ancestors and the dividing lines we draw between one another, and at that time we truly live in a color blind society. These comments of personally held beliefs on racial superiority by some here (not you Karen) are not helpful in that endeavor nor toward the argument that affirmative action is no longer needed to create diversity/fight racism.

      1. For fear of losing all credibility let me correct the record. Bob Jones University lifted the ban on interracial dating in the 3rd month of 2000. The class of 2004 was the first class not to experience the ban, and the president who was pressured to lift the policy (and still found the need to defend it as rooted in scripture) left in 2005, but it was still incorrect to say BJU still banned interracial dating when O’Conner wrote her opinion in 2003.

        Also I’ve found numerous typos and inconsistencies in my earlier post (it’s where it should be its being the most common…I don’t know why my phones autocorrect defaults to some). So apologies in advance if there are more in here. Probably won’t return to this thread but hope it continues to remain civil as enigma continues to take many to school on history. As a math adjunct who strongly believes in the fairness of universal math, I take issue with Squeeky’s post but will refrain from responding directly for fear of the thread devolving/derailing…

        1. CK07 – as a mathematician who believes there is only one right answer to each math problem, turn off auto-correct and add Grammarly to your phone. Grammarly will underline suspicious spellings and then you can make the choice. Grammarly comes in a free version (which I use on my phone and computers).

          1. Paul—what’s up? I needed Grammarly about a decade ago.

            Somehow my dictionary was deleted off my phone, thus I am getting all sorts of weird spellings, with no corrections.

            I will be adding Grammarly today. Thanks, Paul.

          2. Paul, thanks for the suggestion. I really need it on my phone not my PC, but if it works well here I suppose I can explore it there. Maybe as a result of having two fat thumbs, typing too fast or posting too late early or after work I always find myself wishing I could go back and edit the spelling in my posts here and on a couple other boards. I remember thinking the other day “I didn’t write that” where words like ‘unrequited’ might show up where I swore I wrote ‘unrefuted’ and if I subtracted one or two words from a sentence it might make sense (but I hope it does anyway). Of course it could be a result of me spending too much time in the UK and interchanging between British and American spelling, and the phone not recognizing one or the other…so long story short I’ll check out grammarly (which my fat thumbs just spelled as hrammarly, grammars, and ‘heals my’ (thanks to auto correct on that one) before I got it right).

            1. CK07 – you HAVE to turn off auto-correct. 😉 However, good luck with Grammarly.

        2. Bob Jones is a private institution with fewer than 2,000 students. If you don’t like the ban on inter-racial dating, I suggest you enroll somewhere else.

          1. XIV: Well is over with now, but this was a school that was receiving government tax subsidies until Reagan (who was being heavily lobbied by Trent Lott an Stromm Thurmond to fight it) was pressured by the NAACP to allow the IRS to stop it as they had been directed under the Carter Administration. So we were paying for decades for policies which appeared to violate the 14th amendment against protected classes.

            For a small school they also seem to graduate a disproportionate number of congressmen/women and governors. It may be worth a look.

      2. Why was any of that ever acceptable?

        Maybe for the same reason “No Irish Need Apply” used to be acceptable. That the subject people themselves were pretty cheesy. You know, the “deplorables” of the day. After slavery ended, blacks began to lift themselves out of that, and by the 1960s had made great strides. Most Americans began to see that it was wrong to disparage a whole race, and make them sit in the back of the societal bus.

        But then – The Great Society. Which, I think the leading Democrats of the day knew would screw up blacks, and make them dependent on welfare. But blacks themselves are also complicit in this because THEY TOOK THE DOUGH. The Democrats would just buy their votes for a few beads. This helped put more Democrats in the Senate, because of the crooked votes coming out of the poor black neighborhoods in big cities,

        Now, in my opinion, about half the blacks in the country, at least, are not good enough to even get to ride the bus. And, where ideas of white supremacy were once based on a rigged system – a system that did not permit good and intelligent black to achieve what your average white could achieve, without a lot of effort – now white supremacy is based on the actions of the blacks themselves. Your average black inner city unwed mom was once a racial stereotype but is now just a fact of life. Their communities are full of violence, stupidity, and crime. And it is their own damn fault. They do not have to have illegitimate children. They could get married first, and stop fooling around in school. They could decide to bring their children into a world with two parents and two incomes. They could have a loving community instead of one where drugs are rampant, and you could get killed for your Jordans. In other words, “racism”, “white supremacy” or whatever you choose to call it is pretty much just a realistic assessment if one has their eyes open. Situational awareness, if you will.

        It can not end until people quit making excuses for these monkeys, and they have to assume responsibility for their own choices.

        Squeeky Fromm
        Girl Reporter

        1. Squeeky:
          In best Trump voice “you talkin to me!?”

          Well you’re not wrong that discrimination against Irish, Italians, Catholics, Jews etc was common throughout US history, I just don’t remember seeing it accepted wholesale by the government (except for a brief period during WWII with Japanese internment camps) except against Blacks and Native Americans, with slavery, the trail of tears, enforced reservations and segregation. It’s like America had a raging hate boner against its darker hued denizens.

          As for the Great Society, it would seem to me the flooding of the streets with military grade weapons (including AK-47s and submachine guns as well as sniper rifles, all of which have been recovered in police raids from New Orleans to Chicago), imported drugs, and then the war on drugs (lobbied heavily by the right despite opposition from the left, Tip O’Neill had no choice but to relent when Celtics draft pick and Washington native Len Bias OD’d on his “first” hit of cocaine), were far more destructive to the black community than anything LBJ tried to do. Food stamps, welfare and other government assistance programs are just as common in the Native American community, while many whites also benefit from government assistance or once did (including Mitt Romney’s family, and look how he turned out).

          I don’t agree with your opinion but will share my own. Instead of giving tax breaks to the wealthy, allowing tax loopholes for the informed, and implementing the reductions to the graduated income tax scale passed under Reagan and Nixon (before whom, taxes on top earners wealthy were 70%+ and 90%+ respectively), were America to instead have flooded “white” communities with drugs the way opioids pervade them now, and locked the same adult male percentage in with violent offenders for 20 years, left AKs, SKs, Uzis etc on freights mysteriously stopped there for their teens to pick up as the now “man of the house”, and ensured they were banned from most government and financial jobs when they got out without implementing sufficient means for rehab, the effects would be slightly less than positive.

          Situational awareness sounds more like selective awareness on your part if your excuse is to blame the left on one hand yet ignore the right’s involvement in the war on drugs, basically saying anything but the New Deal is an excuse for the plight of the black community. Saying it all plays a role is one thing. Saying none of it did, however inaccurate, would sound less partisan.

          Also those “monkeys” are you too squeeky. They’re as much your relatives as they are Stevie Wonder’s. Maybe a few more generations removed but your attitude, lack of empathy and viewing it as a separate part of the human race don’t help. If affirmative action can be implemented to accurately measure hardship instead of race in all for it. I also empathize with the plight of those affected by the opioid epidemic. This is all of our problem as it’s an American problem. As are the plights of the black and Latino community. Telling them to figure it out themselves will only have destructive effects on society whereas making it a truly even playing field makes for a better USofA.

      3. To account for and combat the institutionalized racism that was prevalent in society in the 60s and appears present to this day.

        1. Because there is no such thing as ‘institutionalized racism’.

        2. Because you could not demonstrate with properly constructed regression analyses that people are unfair to blacks in systematic ways that matter enough that you can measure them.

        3. Because college admissions preferences don’t address any of the black populations peculiar problems

        4. Because even if I accepted any of your premises, it wouldn’t explain systematic discrimination in favor of Chicanos and others, who were a small sliver of the population in 1965.

        5. I take it CK07 is the adolescent child of a college dean, and his mother is now using his handle.

        1. XIV:
          1. Semantics.
          2. Fairly certain I could however when I speak with direct reference to the 60’s I don’t have to. It was already done in Brown v….
          3. That seems to be quite the subjective opinion. Though I agree if you mean it is insufficient to address the problems at the root cause.
          4. Maybe it wouldn’t explain why affirmative action gave preferential treatment to those who were not segregated on equal terms, but an acknowledgement of historic discrimination in favor of whites and against minorities meant some measure was needed to address and combat it that while not perfect, would wind up benefiting several minority populations.
          5. Now that’s just a personal attack. I’d never let my mother use my handle (or type on my cellie)! I have a reputation to uphold with all of the other CoolKids

          1. FYI:

            “This is absurd x XIV” isn’t an attorney.

            Mike Appleton and mespo are both lawyers. Mike Appleton posts very rarely, but is still listed as a “guest blogger.” Mespo is the only attorney who posts with any regularity, AFAIK.

            1. Anonymous, thanks for the info.
              I think I’m supposed to be a lawyer or something somewhere, though as an infant or adolescent according to XIV, I can’t be a barred attorney where the legal requirement to sit for the bar is 21. Of course, even if it’s true that I’m a lawyer, I’m not a US constitutional lawyer, like Turley. So I’ll stick to math.

          2. 1. Semantics.

            “Institutionalized racism” is the go-to incantation when lawfare artists cannot locate any actual institutional policies or acts by specific agents which are demonstrably unfair to anyone. It’s a fraud.

            2. Fairly certain I could however when I speak with direct reference to the 60’s I don’t have to. It was already done in Brown v….

            Fairly sure you couldn’t. In any case, < 6% of the working population entered the labor force prior to 1974.

            3. That seems to be quite the subjective opinion. Though I agree if you mean it is insufficient to address the problems at the root cause.

            No, it’s not a ‘subjective opinion’. It merely requires you hold to an ordinary person’s priorities and not a college dean’s priorities. An ordinary person is concerned with rates of violent crime in slum neighborhoods, with ineffectual discipline in slum schools, with the lack of fixed performance standards in slum schools, with the waste of time and effort on half-assed academic schooling in lieu of vocational-technical schooling, and with the waste of time and effort incorporated into stuffing ill-prepared youngsters into higher education and systematically mismatching students and institutions among those who are college material. They’re also concerned with perverse incentives incorporated into common provision. College deans don’t care about any of this, because they’re a degenerate occupational guild and only want Numinous Negroes for decoration.

            4. Maybe it wouldn’t explain why affirmative action gave preferential treatment to those who were not segregated on equal terms, but an acknowledgement of historic discrimination in favor of whites and against minorities meant some measure was needed to address and combat it that while not perfect, would wind up benefiting several minority populations.

            No measure was ‘needed’ except to please race grifters and college deans. Again, there weren’t many mestizos in the United States against which to be ‘discriminated’ and you’re just assuming, not referencing observed reality. Even if there were, it hardly matters. In 1928, about 6% of each cohort passed through baccalaureate granting institutions. The share of any coarse demographic segment who lost out to ‘discrimination’ in higher ed was tiny.

            5. Now that’s just a personal attack. I’d never let my mother use my handle (or type on my cellie)! I have a reputation to uphold with all of the other CoolKids

            Yeah, and one you deserve. You people go about casting aspersions on others, but give no evidence of being anything but worthless institutional apparatchiks. Go away. Be extinct.

            1. XIV:
              1. So you realize I’m talking about the 60s when affirmative action was first enacted. Prior to that legally enforced segregation was the law of the land. Jim Crow was the law of the south. Redlined housing practices were still perfectly legal. You may want to look up the definition and history of the things I mention before you claim institutional racism is a made up concept. Your response here sounds uneducated.

              2. Of course < 6% of the workforce entered prior to 1974. Besides the fact that most people have to work to make a living, the average retirement age in the US is 62. Yet the average age of CEOs is 60. What percentage of those who advanced to the top are minorities? Women? It’s mostly been a case of white men promoting other white men to the top. Networking, connections, and discriminatory practices all have a role to play in opportunities for advancing in the work force. If you want to start with modeling simulations, go download some statistics off of the EEOC website and chug some statistics on cases with meritorious resolutions based on race into R, Excel, MatLab or whatever it is you’re using for your regression analysis, then explain why there were over 30,000 such cases last year alone (and that excludes charges filed at state or local fair labor agencies).

              3. Saying “college admissions don’t address any of the black populations peculiar problems” isn’t subjective? Let’s start with the word “any”. That would mean absolutely no problems in the black community are addressed via college admissions. Move on to the word “peculiar”. Who’s to say what problems are peculiar? You? Based on what criteria? That in itself would seem to make it a subjective claim. I can state it addresses some of the issues regarding income inequality and lack of job opportunities and probably spend more time than it’s worth to try and convince you that you’re wrong, but I don’t feel like it. I do feel like pointing out that you made a subjective statement however and wasted a lot of time trying to prove otherwise without accomplishing much of anything.

              4. Not sure why you’re referencing the Great Depression era when we’re talking about laws enacted in the mid 60s but I suppose that was all you could find on the subject. You can look up the historical stats on graduation rates demographics income based on education etc from the 1940s on at nces.ed.gov. Hope that’s some help to whatever point you’re trying to prove in your long winding rant against college deans. It sounds like you feel that one of them wronged you.

              5. Be extinct? Cast my aspirations on others? I deserve personal attacks? It sounds like you were fired by a dean or feel you disappointed one. It’s okay.

  8. “You can’t handle the truth!”

    – Colonel Jessup
    _____________

    The very private Harvard University is private property. James Madison defined private property as “that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.” Private property is none of the government’s business or purview. College admissions, rent control, unfair housing laws, non-discrimination laws and every other form of governmental intervention and dictatorship is unconstitutional. Central planning, control of the means of production (i.e. regulation), redistribution of wealth and social engineering are all unconstitutional principles of antithetical communism. You can’t grasp the depth, magnitude and profundity of American freedom. The American Founders provided maximal freedom to individuals while they severely limited and restricted government to the role of merely facilitating that freedom of individuals through the provision of security and infrastructure.

    “No person shall be…deprived of…property,…nor shall private property be taken for public use,…”
    _____________________________________________________________________________

    5th Amendment

    No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

    1. Actually, my first thought when I saw this was, wait…Harvard is private, they can do whatever the blank they want.

      If they only wanted to admit students with parents that had over a certain threshold of money, they could do that too.

      They obviously don’t, but….ya know…

      Now, if it’s a public institution, that’s a whole other story.

      Even after the scandal with college admissions, I guarantee USC and other private institutions are still letting in legacy students and doing pay to play. This has been a staple of University of Spoiled Children, as well as many Ivy Leagues, that let in celebrities, etc.

      Why is this going on? Bc Billionaire parents are funding the schools next library or research lab.

      The billionaire child knows by HS that they don’t have to work a day in their life if they don’t want to…and if they do work, it’s bc they’re bored.

      1. – Private property can be run anyway its owners choose.

        – Public institutions of education must admit by the sole objective criterion of its discipline: Intellectual capacity as demonstrated by GPA and intellectual achievement.

        It’s merit that matters and, from the perspective of objectivity in public education, merit is the sole criterion. Race and all other criteria are incoherent bias, irrelevant, subjective, not rational and not indicated.

  9. last october’s coverage

    https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/at-trial-harvards-asian-problem-and-a-preference-for-white-students-from-sparse-country

    i guess capping jewish admissions in the 1920s at harvard was bad but capping asian admissions today is ok

    and there was a concern that the Jewish populations of ivys, which were over represented in the 80s, are falling. that’s from their end. oh this gets really complicated huh? might as well just raffle off admissions a lottery might be more fair than whatever bogus system the harvard honchos have in place now

    https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/272350/the-vanishing-ivy-league-jew

    makes for some really fun “diversity studies” huh?

    remember the slogan which gets you an A on your essay exam: — “diversity is our greatest strength!”

  10. i dont really care if this helps the blacks or not. I’m not black, and I don’t feel guilty about whatever their problems are or were. Sorry! Not very Christian of me, I know, but it’s just me! What I do care, is that it’s unfair to qualified whites and asians and that’s enough to make me mad.

    Any normal self interested person would either want to live in a society where there’s a level playing field– or if not– at least be lucky enough to be in the socalled privileged group.

    Here, white people are in the unenviable position of being in a historically privileged group, which is not a de facto targeted group. This will breed more of that sentiment which people call “Racism” which is a natural group instinct of self preservation.

    Oh, and be sure, RACISTS welcome decisions like these, because it proves their points. The Left just keeps putting more gas in the engine of what they claim to be worried about! Perplexing.

    1. You seem to be missing the point that the maximum percentage allowed for Asian students is there to protect white admissions. So are the legacy admissions. The minimum percentages of other minorities are treated as maximums and in effect place caps on minority students. White students should have little fear of being displaced by minorities unless they are poor and average. The rich and average have other options.

      1. You seem to be missing the point that the maximum percentage allowed for Asian students is there to protect white admissions.

        Well, if there were more Orientals and East Indians at Harvard, there would be fewer students of other categories, and the deduction would be allocated over the other categories. Since whites are the largest category and since the blacks and hispanics have a floor maintained through various kludges, the reduction will come out of the hide of the white applicants.

        Kind of a trivial point.

      2. i had a long post typed out about how white guys get downgraded compared to others at universities in a hundred ways, and how patronage can open doors but mostly it just cancels out the negatives, but hey, white guys already know this, and other people are going to deny it. so whatever. affirmative action is swell for everybody except white guys and not it seems asians too.

        what kind of society condemns racism out of one side of its mouth and then downgrades whites and asians out of the other? oh, American, that’s what kind

        1. Mr Kurtz – As you started working on your post, you probably looked at it and decided how much it sounded like whining that the people, specifically white guys, (in America in particular) have more advantages than any group in the world.

          It is somewhat true that you are losing some of the advantages you have. Only because some other subsets are getting rights/power as well that once exclusively belonged to white guys. Probably the biggest single hurt was when women got the right to vote. Minorities got the right too for a while, then they practically didn’t, then they mostly did on paper but the battle to minimize/disallow their votes has been paramount ever since. Most of the colleges in America once served almost only white guys (some only served white girls so white guys could have places to visit.
          Please go ahead and list those “hundred ways” white guys get the short end of the stick. I could use a good laugh today. Should your time be limited, I’d settle for the Top Ten.

          1. ha, well yeah i hate whiners.

            I hypothesize that white women are the ones with the best advantages right now in the West if you ask me. flat out. Damn sure not men. But, I could be wrong. I haven’t thought too much about it.

            Historically, I think you’re right about suffrage being a big hit to white male privilege. For sure. Maybe a really big miscalculation. I am not sure what the thinking was there. Ann coulter said it was a big mistake. She may be right.

            Thanks for the invitation, to whine some more, but I decline. College admissions is the relevant example. Right now, I feel like other things are a bore to discuss.

            1. I guess the big number two after college admissions would be, affirmative action programs in employment.

              Feel free to try and prove some systemic discrimination in favor of white guys. I could use some cheering up today! Thanks in advance.

              —————

              I think the thing that has caused the worst disparate impact on black men in america the past few decades has been the war on drugs. Apparently, mostly because black guys like to use crack versus powder cocaine? if I understand the arguments correctly. Not that white people are any model of sobriety these days. …..Sometimes I feel like maybe I’m racist, but I’m sure not a white supremacist because I have two eyes and can see a miserable moral, spiritual, and physical degradation prevalent among whites today. Sad, true! Maybe I’m just an equal opportunity hater, not sure.

              I’m generally against punitive drug prohibition schemes, but not because of disparate racial impact. Call me racist but that doesn’t keep me awake at night whatsoever. I still am in favor of limited legalization, certainly of pot, maybe psychedelics too, as it just seems to me to that aggressively punish substance use and abuse by law, usually results in a negative tradeoff in social resources. The idea of keeping users and even sidewalk small time dope dealers in jail for decades seems ridiculous and unfair, just in general.

            2. That white female cop in Dallas that actually got convicted for murder after killing the black man in his own apartment sure fails to see her advantage. The judge tried to show the jury the way after ruling she could use the Castle Doctrine (stand your ground) even though it was HIS home. After she was convicted, she got 10 yearsv(for murder) and is eligible for parole in 5, No telling what other factors might come intoplay, I bet she doesn’t serve more than 2 years. Felicity Huffman got two weeks for bribing her stupid kid’s way into school. A black woman got 5-years for using ba different address so her kid could go nto a better school.
              Go ahead abd stick to college admissions. After being at 100% white guys, there was only one direction to go.

              1. why do you say “actually?” i saw a conviction coming. it was a huge awful stupid homicidal mistake, at best, an easy case of negligent homicide. not sure how they got murder out of it,…but the sentence is really at the manslaughter level anyways, so doesnt really matter too much. she’s lucky to only pull 10, could have easily been 20.

                I’m not sure what the rules are for parol in texas, I would not assume that she’s going qualify to get out in five.

                    1. I’m sure she didn’t wake up that morning planning to kill someone. I could see a lesser charge. I can’t see how the judge said the Castle Doctrine could have been considered by the jury. It was an invitation to let her off.

                    2. I think she definitely over-reacted for someone having a gun on her. If I had walked into my home and there was some black rascal sitting there eating something at my table, my gun would have been out of my purse in like 2 seconds. But I would not have shot unless he tried to rape or kill me or something.

                      There have been like two occasions when I had my hand on my gun inside my purse, but I was not attacked so I did not shoot anybody.

                      As a cop, I think she should have had better fire discipline than that. Manslaughter is more appropriate in my opinion.

                      Squeeky Fromm
                      Girl Reporter

              2. Felicity Huffman is not a person I like. Tack on five years more and Lock her up.

                1. Stacey Dash called 911 on her white husband and they took her to jail. He graciously isn’t filing charges. I could have told her all those years of kissing white ass on Fox News wouldn’t do her any good when it mattered.

                  1. I dont watch tv, never heard of her. just looked her up. nice face. looks fierce. but i dont weigh in on domestic quarrels, leave that to the courts. presumption of innocence.

                    2. Enigma, thanks for sharing the essay. I dont care about this lady one way or another, but it’s interesting. This essay of yours is a clever work which uses derision and shame to enforce racial solidarity. I can understand that. I don’t consider you petty. Your have tribal instincts, which are natural and healthy. I can’t fault this in human nature, then I cant fault it in you. People have a sense of community interests.

                      But is such allowed to a white author? What if, hypothetically, a white essayist, with a tone of schadenfreude, wrote a similar essay, about a white woman marrying a black man, and then publicly adopting liberal causes, and then things went bad? What if he used a term that you did not– but you hinted at it– race traitor? Perhaps the author would be then called a horrible racist. Other white people would be the first to cast stones– not at the object of derision, but at the terrible author. Of course other people would hop on the bandwagon. that author would have no future as an essayist, outside the fringe.

                      Maybe there’s something to discuss there, or maybe not.

              3. enigma – I think the murder charge was overkill (no pun intended), manslaughter was the correct charge. I would not have allowed the Castle Doctrine and I think the jury was right to disregard it. She screwed up royally and needs to pay a price, the question is how high a price for someone who put in a 13 1/2 day, parked on the wrong level and walked into the wrong apartment and killed an innocent man?

                1. When she found the door to the unit open, she should have called for backup and/or verified where she was. There was the red doormat, apparently — which should have been a big tip-off.

                2. I think the cover-up and the video of the officers on the scene turning off their body cameras and huddling up to get their story together probably helped. One way to weigh her sentence; she got ten years of which she may serve five. The innocent man is dead.

                  2. enigma – I feel horrible for the man who was killed and his relatives. With good behavior she may serve less than 5.

              4. enigma:

                “Go ahead abd stick to college admissions. After being at 100% white guys, there was only one direction to go.’
                ****************

                I guess you mean it killed HBCs. You know if I got you a bullhorn and a better haircut, I’d swear it was 1963 in Alabama. Just change the colors.

                1. HBCUs are neither dead or irrelevent. They still produce a disproportionate number of doctors, lawyers, and leaders. They have always struggled and had opposition yet they persevere.
                  The thing that has perhaps hurt them the most is the acceptance of black athletes on predominantly campuses which is now seen as the most likely path to professional sports. Black college football and basketball teams are less of a source of publicity and pride than before which affects people coming back to campus and fundraising. I was disappointed President Obama didn’t do more for them. I think he was too concerned about being seen taking on black issues as the first black President. Just my opinion.

                  1. You’re Pollyannish:

                    “We have a few bright spots in the community, but by and large the overall sector is struggling,” said Johnny Taylor, President and CEO of the Thurgood Marshall Fund, the only national organization that supports all HBCUs. “The underfunding problem cannot be overstated.”

                    https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/what-future-america-s-historically-black-colleges-universities-n725811

                    “Over time, the percentages of bachelor’s and master’s degrees awarded to Black students by HBCUs have decreased. For example, HBCUs awarded 35 percent of the bachelor’s degrees and 21 percent of the master’s degrees Black students earned in 1976–77, compared with 14 and 6 percent, respectively, of bachelor’s and master’s degrees Black students earned in 2016–17 (source, source, source, and source). Additionally, the percentage of Black doctor’s degree recipients who received their degrees from HBCUs was lower in 2016–17 (11 percent) than in 1976–77 (14 percent) (source, source, and source).”

                    1. Several things can be true at the same time. Underfunding has been a fact since the first HBCU in the 1850s. Except for possible Howard, Spelman, and Morehouse, all private institutions not dependent on the whims of mostly white regents. Funding has always been critical, especially when considering the reliance of funding factors in accreditation including percentage of alumni giving and target amounts. Despite that, they produce a disproportionate amount of doctors, lawyers, and leaders, just as they always have.
                      I wasn’t talking about MAsters and Doctoral degrees as many HBCU grads choose to go elsewhere for there advanced degrees.

        2. what kind of society condemns racism out of one side of its mouth and then downgrades whites and asians out of the other? oh, American, that’s what kind

          A society that tolerates a great deal of humbug. Academics are great manufactories of it, and the administrators at their institutions are worse.

          Impersonal educational institutions are ill-equipped to engage in social work projects above and beyond providing cross-subsidized schooling. There isn’t much excuse for this, especially in the public sector. However, the impulse to do so demarcates in-groups and out-groups among a certain sort of bourgeois, so it persists. The judiciary permits and commands it in spite of opposition from the broad public, because they fancy legitimate government is the work of peers, which ordinary people are not.

          Restoring democratic institutions (and a system of natural liberty) is going to be bloody.

      1. wow, major cultural appropriation! bunch of white dudes made some wampum on that one. lol

        did you catch that lyric “way of life, tomahawk and bowie knife” — wasn’t Jim Bowie a white guy?

        i like “Run for the hills” by Iron Maiden better, along these thematic lines

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86URGgqONvA

      2. mespo….LOL
        Do I love this? And HOW!

        but it just doesn’t seem right not listening to it on a transistor radio.

            1. Cindy:

              “Now you’re talkin’, mespo. Neat-o!”

              ***************************

              You can’ have a good ol’ teen dance party — much less a boss game of Twister — without one.

        2. Cindy Bragg – Sooo, did Liz Warren have electrolysis to remove her mustachio?

          1. Paul:
            Yep, the bangs were the dead give-away! That’s a young Bernie on the drums and who couldn’t see Joe Biden on the organ. The latter never had a conversation about playing it, either.

              2. mespo….Yes! helmet hair is dead ringer for Mayor Pete.

                When I was a teeny bopper, it took several shampooings and a Silkwood style hazmat hose-down to wash the Aqua Net out of my hair!

              3. mespo P.S. Laura Ingraham has the best yet nickname for
                Liz. W.: Spitting Bull 🤠

  12. “Race based” is a term used in America usually directed at black vs. white so called “races”. Is an American Indian from the Sioux Tribe a difference race or different ethinic group from a white guy? Is one tribe different from another. Is an American Indian Sioux related to an Indian from India? Could one “discriminate” against another. Do the Osage Indians discriminate against Cheyanne? Do Creoles discriminate against Acadians? Do Germans discriminate against the Irish?
    Do not be so easy on your answers. Remember the movie Blazing Saddles. The Mayor agreed to let the freed slaves who were moving west into the town as it was about to get attacked by some tribe. Then the Mayor said: “But Not The Irish!” Was that race based? Ethnic based? Movie based?
    Be careful out there.

    And Harvard: Judge not! least you shall be judged.
    And Yale alums: Your itShay stinks just like the Sioux itShay stinks.
    And Ivy League: Go back to where you came from.
    And snots on a leash: Ask not what your country can do for you.
    And those who liked JFK: But not the Irish!

    What this country needs is to elect its first Black President. And get by all this stuff from the past. But not one who went to Harvard or Yale. Not one from New Jersey.

  13. Affirmative action has devolved into exactly what its critics said it would — quotas. It’s an affront to merit based admissions, equal protection and common sense. More insidiously it fosters the bigotry of low expectations and renders suspect any degree conferred on a minority member — a true disservice. It breeds dissention and mistrust and turns educators into thumb-on-the-scale social engineers — a job they are unqualified to perform given their normative view of things. In a phrase, it’s a disaster of judicial origin and needs to be overruled as O’Connor implied with her expiration date. Guilt is a poor criteria for judicial decision-making.

    1. You understand it allows numbskulls in higher ed bureaucracies to engage in social work projects. If they admitted people according to their grades and test scores, hardly anyone there would be a client in need of a patron. They’d be the patrons of a fee-for-service enterprise. That’s a social role higher education apparatchiks would rather not have as theirs.

      1. If the admissions office of most places ran sensibly, those employed there would be a couple of spreadsheet jockeys who spent most of their time engaged in data entry. For oversight, you’d have some quants on the faculty auditing their work.

      2. Those employed in the dean of student’s office would be concerned with student misbehavior and with the direction of students who were failing academically or beset with general issues.

      3. Those employed in the personnel office would be concerned with posting vacancies, managing the benefits and compensation program, collective bargaining, formal grievances and the EAP programs.

      4. Those employed on the vocational faculties would be preoccupied with occupational training, which has just about zero to do with social and cultural issues (the counseling and social work programs excepted).

      5. Those employed on the academic and arts faculties would teach within discrete disciplines (for most of which race-class-gender is a tangential concern one concern among many). You’d have no inter-disciplinary programs and no victimology programs. If you had any cross-subsidized programs, they’d likely be foreign languages or classics.

  14. O’Connor’s statement was ridiculed by other justices (and others) since the constitutionality of affirmative action should not have an expiration date like one-percent milk.

    It should have an expiration date if it was not a constitutional decision in the first place.

  15. The biggest problem in all this is that black children are being born now at an illegitimate rate of 77%. Even higher in hotbeds of slavery, Jim Crow and Institutionalized Racism such as Minneapolis. (84%)Therefore the pool of educable black kids is in steady decline. They are born into one parent/one income families, or what you call “inter-generational” welfare situations. Their mothers, in huge degree,are not much more than ill-tempered gorillas, who had them for both attention, and various welfare benefits. It is not the poor little black kids faults that they were born into this mess, but the sad truth is that as a group, they will be pretty much worthless for anything except manual labor, or low-skilled work. There is probably not a government program that could fix the problem, and the only thing that is doable and viable, is to cut off all sorts of welfare aid to unwed mothers, and hopefully remove some of the incentives to this ridiculous and trashy behavior. But even that would still take generations to wash out the already condemned black lower classes. There are not enough social workers in the universe to intervene, and not much they could do outside of removing black kids from their mothers at a young age and placing them with decent white families.

    Because of this situation, the pool of college-educable blacks will continue to decline. Even the black kids who are born into decent black families have an admiration for the low-class blacks. Think Trayvon Martin here. So, to maintain the fiction that Democrats’s policies work (Black girl magic, dontcha know), the test scores will have to be fiddled with until and unless SCOTUS slaps the sorry crap down for good.

    I think the whole Great Society crap has ended up making the Old Time Segregationists look smart, in retrospect. Which is sad.

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Fromm

    1. )Therefore the pool of educable black kids is in steady decline.

      There is no secular decline in the performance scores of black youth on standardized tests. Nor is there notable inter-generational downward mobility. As for indices of social pathology, they improved pretty steadily for 25 years and one crucial metric (the employment-to-population ratio) has continued to improve.

        2. Squeeky – those of us who watched The Wire (available on DVD) knew it was based on actual events. 🙂

          1. Was there an episode about this? I am pretty sure it is going on all across the country. I mean you can either flunk about half the blacks, or just pass them out into the world.

            Squeeky Fromm
            Girl Reporter

            2. Or…tell blacks who are barely literate they are little geniuses, toss them into college with other races who perform better, where the blacks are destined to fail. And who/what do progressives blame for black failure in college?: “It’s all whitey’s fault, because RAYcis!”

        3. IOW, the data are faked if they’re emotionally unappealing to you.

          1. No. Reality is what it is. Data is only as good as it is. You take great pains to condemn the educational system in this country, and rightfully so in my opinion. Do you think these same people are not above just passing the black kids along to avoid the appearance of racism??? Why are we even discussing this on a thread that is all about black kids getting special treatment to get into Harvard??? Duh! Wake up.

            Squeeky Fromm
            Girl Reporter

            1. You keep coming back even when you haven’t anything intelligent to say. Reality is not what you pull out of your rancid little ass.

              1. Well, if you do not believe me, then maybe you should google “social promotion” or, here is you a start!

                “So year after year before I addressed this concern in my class, I dug a little “deeper” into my student’s data from kindergarten to eighth grade. Eventually after reviewing all of the student records and in all of that data (attendance, test scores, etc.) I realized the real issue.

                Most of my students were in high school due to social promotion.

                Even more disturbing was that many students were entering high school with reading levels at (or below) a sixth grade level. In addition, there were students who had attended summer school from every summer from 3rd grade until 8th grade! The only thing that stood in between these students entering high school was a retention hearing during the summer after their eighth grade year with their counselors and a representative from the high school they were “zoned” for. That’s right in order to move to another grade level all students had to do was show up with their parents and promise to do better in high school and they were approved to come with their class the following fall.

                Social promotion is apparently the gift that continues to give long after middle school.

                According to Ed Week, social promotion is defined as the practice of passing students along from grade to grade with their peers even if the students have not satisfied academic requirements or met performance standards at key grades. Practiced in most middle schools in the south, the practice’s effectiveness is often questioned by high school teachers where students are expected to actually earn credits in order to graduate.

                Despite me being shocked by my research, social promotion is nothing new for me working in an urban school. Every year in August we are met with the same bewildered group of ninth graders eager to start high school, but completely clueless with how different the world of obtaining credits really is compared to their previous schools. In addition, as we give students a battery of tests during the first several weeks of school, we find students who are barely reading at a 3rd grade level and who seriously lack skills in computation and literacy.

                In addition to the academic issues, we also notice a pattern in behavior with these same students such as:

                lack of organization
                immaturity with the opposite sex
                the lack of accountability for their academics while in high school
                the complaining about the amount of work given in high school and subsequently have to ask for extra credit
                an indifference when they fail several core classes.

                The task of trying to correct the above behaviors is not only draining, but is something that can not be effectively addressed unless there is a pipeline from kindergarten to high school that supports students who are not academically or behaviorally ready.

                https://www.huffpost.com/entry/social-promotion-is-not-a_b_5896120

                Squeeky Fromm
                Girl Reporter

                1. Squeeky – the last school I worked at tested all incoming students and over 90% regardless of race scored at or below the 4th grade level. The test only went to the 4th grade so we did not know how far down they went. We were required to remediate them and get them to pass a high stakes English and Math test in 4 years.

                  1. Blacks medical students enrolled at the Historically Black Colleges and Universities medical schools (e.g. Howard, Meharry, Moorehouse) as well as many state universities with MD schools like mine, score at the bottom of the list, significantly below the national mean, of the USMLE Step 1 and Step 2 “Board” exams. I feel badly for them at my university because they want to do well and they want to do good and honorable work in medicine, particularly in their home of record. However they were accepted to medical school while poorly equipped with the necessary skills to succeed and in the end they are poor physicians with heavy financial debts

                    1. Squeeky – the breakdown was roughly 1/3 to 1/2 Hispanic, 1/4 to 1/3 black and 1/4 to 1/3 other. It really depended on how things were going with the other public schools and who they were throwing out, cause we got them next, or at least some of them.

              2. Absurd, you really have no way of knowing if Squeeky’s ass is rancid, or little.

            2. Squeeky – using this judge’s criteria, shouldn’t Liz Warren get extra Electoral votes for being both a woman and a Native American?

              1. On a related matter, more biographical fabulism courtesy Elizabeth Warren:

                https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2019/10/03/hmmm-warren-invent-sexist-termination-autobiography/

                I’m remembering Geraldine Ferraro’s complaint that a job offer had been withdrawn when her new employer found out she was getting married. What she didn’t say was that she’d been hired to work at the New York County DA’s office and that office had prosecuted her new in-laws’ real estate firm the previous year (original indictment had over 100 counts).

    2. While we’re at it, the share of black births which are out of wedlock is 69.4%, which is precisely what it was in 2005. (The share in 2000 was 68.5%; in 1990, 66.5%; in 1984, 61.5%). See National Vital Statistics Reports, v. 67:8 (7 November 2018) and also (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2011/007.pdf) for historical data.

      1. You are using 2010 numbers. It is now 2019, and the black illegitimate birth rate is over 77%:

        More than three quarters of African American births are to unmarried women, nearly double the illegitimacy rate of all other births, according to new federal data.

        The National Center for Health Statistics said that in 2015, 77.3 percent of non-immigrant black births were illegitimate. The national non-immigrant average is 42 percent, and it was 30 percent for whites.

        https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/77-black-births-to-single-moms-49-for-hispanic-immigrants

        Squeeky Fromm
        Girl Reporter

        1. No, if you bothered to look at the link, those are 2017 numbers. And those are the most recently published. Incompetent.

            1. The link is to the historical data. The citation is to the current data.

              Here,

              https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr67/nvsr67_08-508.pdf

              You click on the ‘List of Detailed Tables’ in the directory and it will take you to the list. It’s Table no. 9, which you’ll find on image no. 25 of the pdf file.

              I can see your employers must really value your research skills.

              2. OK, I looked at your cite, and you are right that it says 69%. BUT, my 77% is coming from the same source ultimately:

                https://cis.org/Camarota/Births-Unmarried-Mothers-Nativity-and-Education

                Which gives unwed births at 354941 out of 458,893. This is for 2015. The classification is non-hispanic blacks.

                The ultimate source cited is the same as yours: (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data_access/vitalstatsonline.htm)

                My GUESS is that there is some kind of classification difference. I am happy with 77%, but will keep trying to get a more definite answer.

                Squeeky Fromm
                Girl Reporter.

              3. OK, I think I have the answer. My study is for non-immigrant blacks. That is 77%. But your study apparently includes the immigrant blacks, who have a much lower illegitimate birth rate. Here is the link again so you can play with the numbers yourself!

                https://cis.org/Camarota/Births-Unmarried-Mothers-Nativity-and-Education

                If you add the immigrant blacks to the native blacks, you get 399,955 unwed births out of 566,994. That drops the rate to pretty close to your number.

                So, I am going to keep on using 77%, since that is for the group I am usually jumping on, the American blacks!

                Squeeky Fromm
                Girl Reporter

                1. If you travel to Miami and interact with immigrant blacks, you will learn how they detest American blacks. I once called a Haitian taxi driver African American and it got heated in a matter of seconds. Cuban Blacks, Bahamian blacks, Dominican Blacks, et al all have contempt for American Blacks. This is a generalization of course much like American Blacks like Enigma generalize when it suits them

                  I have a friend in Puerto Rico who is a Catholic priest and identifies as Mulato. But dont call him Black American or the Puerto Rican in him will be unleashed

    3. As bad as Black segregationists are and were, they were not about ramping up black abortions to the tune of 40% of all American babies murdered in cold blood before birth being black, which is what progressive policies have given us since LBJ’s so called Great Society (so says Kaiser Foundation report).

  16. You know the judge is biased when the judge calls it a “very fine admissions program”, BTW, did this judge go to Harvard?

  17. At least the judge is being honest. It basically comes down to lowering standards so lower performing blacks and browns can get admitted.

    Kind of similar to changing certain laws because these same groups particularly blacks cannot obey them.

    Funny how these same virtue signaling liberals do not offer their own kids places at elite schools.

    antonio

      1. @mrkurtz

        There may be some truth in this. Many schools are known to admit legacies.

        Doesn’t invalidate the premise that the admittance of poorly qualified minorities does no one a service. The minorities themselves or the legal system.

        Have a look at the link.

        https://isteve.blogspot.com/2007/08/law-school-affirmative-action-gail.html.

        I realize this is anecdotal but it was an open secret (and fact) that almost every black in my law school was on academic probation at one time or another in their law school career.

        The blacks admitted to Harvard Law will certainly be in the top 10% of IQ and SAT scores for blacks but in the bottom 10-25% in class rank. These are students who might do well in a tier 3 – 4 school but cannot keep up at that level.

        Of course, virtue signaling white liberals could care less at the result. They still get invited to the right social events and receive the obligatory pat on the back.

        antonio

  18. Turley writes: “The constitutionality of affirmative action should not have an expiration date like 1% milk.” Why not? I thought that the constitutional basis for AA was the 13th Amendment, which gave Congress the authority to ‘enact legislation necessary to make-up for the badges and incidents of slavery.’ After more than a half century of AA, it would seem that any black descendant of a slave who hasn’t taken advantage of these opportunities and preferences simply isn’t going to. In fact, that is the reason the government shifted away from AA to “diversity.” AA was premised on a history of disadvantage, and once that disadvantage has been overcome by large numbers of college-educated, middle-class and professional blacks, there is no longer any constitutional basis for these programs. Thus were created the “diversity” programs, premised on questionable assumption that there is inherent value in having people of different ethnicities, genders and sexual confusions in your classes and workplaces,

  19. Sounds like the judge made up his mind, then considered the evidence.

    No wonder so many Americans are suspicious of our judges.

    Thanks to Pres. Trump, the judiciary has a chance to regain our trust.

  20. IOW, the federal judge in a spirit of collegiality is going to feed the delusion of Harvard and other rarefied elements of higher education that they’re too excellent to be held to standards enacted by mere legislators.

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