Thursday, June 29, 2023

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

Chief Justice Roberts penned those words in his majority opinion in the Parents Involved v. Seattle School District school desegregation case back in 2007.  Today the Supreme Court applied those words to higher education in the Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard case.  The newest member of the Court, Justice Jackson, isn't a fan of the ruling, and Justice Thomas is having none of her silliness:

"Though Justice Jackson seems to think that her race-based theory can somehow benefit everyone, it is an immutable fact that ‘every time the government uses racial criteria to ‘bring the races together,’ someone gets excluded, and the person excluded suffers an injury solely because of his or her race,'" Thomas wrote. 

"Justice Jackson seems to have no response—no explanation at all—for the people who will shoulder that burden. How, for example, would Justice Jackson explain the need for race-based preferences to the Chinese student who has worked hard his whole life, only to be denied college admission in part because of his skin color?" Thomas questioned.

I once read, but as yet have not found evidence supporting, that Governor Reagan was once told that if affirmative action were not applied, UC Berkeley would have too many Asians.  His response was along the lines of "so what?"  Even if the story is apocryphal, I still like it.

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