The End of Racial Discrimination?

A conservative Supreme Court hears opening arguments today on a pair of high-profile cases involving racial discrimination in college admissions.

Is the Supreme Court finally committed to color-blindness? Finally committed to striking down the age-old scourge of racial discrimination? Finally committed to insisting that Americans are to be judged, as Dr. Martin Luther King dreamed, not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character?

If the rumblings around a pair of cases now before the High Court are to be believed, the answer is yes. Today, the justices will hear oral arguments in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College and SFFA v. University of North Carolina, both of which challenge the racially discriminatory admissions practices of their respective schools. As the Wall Street Journal editorial page notes, the outcome will affect racially discriminatory practices beyond college admissions:

The case is an important moment for American law but even more for the country’s social and political future. America is becoming increasingly diverse. Yet rather than assimilate this melting pot with race-neutral principles, many in our political class want to divide America into racial categories, allocating jobs, benefits and even elections based on race.

The Biden Administration is trying to embed this practice across the federal government and impose it on the private economy. This is a destructive trend that will inevitably lead to more racial balkanization and enmity.

How could it not? One statistical analysis from the North Carolina case noted that an out-of-state Asian-American has only a 6.5% chance of admission compared to 57.7% for an equally credentialed black. Another analysis found that a white out-of-state male with a 10% chance of admission would have his odds improve to 98% if he were black.

Put another way: Students for Fair Admissions, which brought both lawsuits, says: “An Asian American in the fourth-lowest decile [of Harvard’s academic index] has virtually no chance of being admitted to Harvard (0.9 percent); but an African American in that decile has a higher chance of admission (12.8 percent) than an Asian American in the top decile (12.7 percent).”

That’s the difference between equality and equity. Or, as Chief Justice John Roberts put it back in 2006, the “sordid business” of “divvying us up by race.”

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