Latest / The Ben Ferguson Podcast / Landmark SCOTUS Decision on Affirmative Action, Senator Ted Cruz Weighs In

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Landmark SCOTUS Decision on Affirmative Action, Senator Ted Cruz Weighs In · The Ben Ferguson Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court has said that racial preferences, also known
0:04
Speaker 1: as affirmative action, is unconstitutional in college admissions. Let me
0:10
Speaker 1: just translate this down for you so you understand exactly
0:13
Speaker 1: what the Supreme Court has said. They said that you
0:16
Speaker 1: cannot consider a person's color of their skin in the
0:21
Speaker 1: admissions process at the university level. The left is beyond furious.
0:30
Speaker 1: They're furious because they absolutely believe that you should be
0:33
Speaker 1: able to get into any school you want to and
0:36
Speaker 1: it should be easy for you to get in based
0:38
Speaker 1: on if you are a minority. But that's what the
0:42
Speaker 1: Supreme Court said is unconstitutional, saying racial preferences in college
0:47
Speaker 1: admissions violate the equal protection clause of the Constitution. The
0:54
Speaker 1: Supreme Court decide this in this historic decision. This will
0:58
Speaker 1: have profound implications for racial preferences in many areas of
1:02
Speaker 1: law as well as public policy. Now, the Supreme Court
1:06
Speaker 1: upheld racial preferences they have called affirmative action, something that
1:12
Speaker 1: has been used in college admissions since there was a
1:17
Speaker 1: court decision back in nineteen seventy eight, and since then,
1:21
Speaker 1: debates have raged about whether to use quotas, a point system,
1:25
Speaker 1: and other ways of favoring one applicant over another solely
1:30
Speaker 1: based on the color of their skin. Now, let me
1:31
Speaker 1: break that down a little bit more free to understand.
1:34
Speaker 1: Many universities, you could have lower test scores, you could
1:37
Speaker 1: have a weaker admissions process, or have a weaker candidate
1:42
Speaker 1: that would then beat out another candidate because they were
1:45
Speaker 1: given so many bonus points for the color of their skin.
1:51
Speaker 1: There are also universities where, no matter how good of
1:54
Speaker 1: a student you were, if you had the wrong color skin,
1:57
Speaker 1: you would not get in because they were hitting quote
2:00
Speaker 1: is that were put in by the university. So let's
2:03
Speaker 1: make it even simpler than that. A university would say, okay,
2:07
Speaker 1: we want forty percent right of our student body, or
2:10
Speaker 1: thirty percent or twenty percent, whatever the numbers they decide
2:14
Speaker 1: to be minority based. So at some point you ran
2:18
Speaker 1: out of positions, regardless of the academic transcript the resume
2:24
Speaker 1: of a student, and they would lose out automatically on
2:27
Speaker 1: a chance to go to the college they desperately want
2:29
Speaker 1: to go to because of a quota system that's in place.
2:34
Speaker 1: The other thing that happened more recently is we were
2:37
Speaker 1: finding out that students who were clearly qualified to go
2:41
Speaker 1: to great institutions were being denied because of a pointed system,
2:46
Speaker 1: a weight system that would allow for minorities to have
2:51
Speaker 1: so much more of a of an ability to go
2:57
Speaker 1: to a school because they were a minority, and there
3:02
Speaker 1: was no way to overcome that. Well, what the Supreme
3:05
Speaker 1: Court is upholding is some approaches while trimming the sales
3:10
Speaker 1: on others. Conservatives have said for a long time that
3:15
Speaker 1: the Constitution does not allow for any of the approaches
3:18
Speaker 1: that I just mentioned, right like, that doesn't allow for this.
3:22
Speaker 1: The Equal Protection Clause the Fourteenth Amendment commands that no
3:25
Speaker 1: state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the
3:29
Speaker 1: equal protection of the laws. The Supreme Court has always
3:33
Speaker 1: acknowledged that the central premise of the Equal Protection Clause
3:37
Speaker 1: is to prevent laws and public policies that discriminate on
3:40
Speaker 1: the basis of race. And what was happening at these
3:43
Speaker 1: universities is you were clearly discriminating against certain people solely
3:48
Speaker 1: based on race and the color of their skin. There's
3:52
Speaker 1: also another part of this. The Fourteenth Amendment, it applied
3:57
Speaker 1: applies only to state governments, which includes state and local
4:02
Speaker 1: public universities. For example, Title nine of the Civil Rights
4:06
Speaker 1: Act of nineteen sixty four also extends racial discrimination to
4:10
Speaker 1: institutions that accept federal tax money, such as in grants
4:14
Speaker 1: and as intuition aid. That applies to almost every private
4:19
Speaker 1: university as well. Okay, now, Students for Fair Admissions, that's
4:25
Speaker 1: the name of this group. They filed a bunch of
4:28
Speaker 1: lawsuits against public and private schools. The Supreme Court eventually
4:33
Speaker 1: took two of them. There was two different challenges. There
4:36
Speaker 1: was a challenge through the admissions policy at the University
4:39
Speaker 1: of North Carolina you would know them as Carolina Blue,
4:41
Speaker 1: you and c. They challenged them under the fourteenth Amendment.
4:46
Speaker 1: And a challenge also was accepted by the Court to
4:49
Speaker 1: a Harvard's policy as well. The Supreme Court held sixty
4:55
Speaker 1: three that UNC's policy is unconstitutioned and held the same
5:01
Speaker 1: regarding Harvard's policy by a vote of six to two.
5:05
Speaker 1: So this was overwhelming that this was struck down. Justice
5:11
Speaker 1: Brown Jackson recused herself from the Harvard case.
5:14
Speaker 2: Just so you know.
5:16
Speaker 1: Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion that was
5:19
Speaker 1: joined by all of the conservatives and also the moderate justices.
5:24
Speaker 1: The majority opinion declared that the Harvard and UNC and
5:27
Speaker 1: I'm quoting Now the Harvard and UNC admissions program cannot
5:31
Speaker 1: be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause.
5:35
Speaker 1: It concludes, quote, the Constitution deals with substance, not shadows,
5:42
Speaker 1: and the prohibition against racial discrimination is leveled at the thing,
5:47
Speaker 1: not the name. A benefit to a student who overcame
5:51
Speaker 1: racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student's
5:56
Speaker 1: courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student who's
6:02
Speaker 1: heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a
6:06
Speaker 1: leadership role or obtain a particular goal must be tied
6:10
Speaker 1: to that student's unique ability to contribute to the university.
6:15
Speaker 1: In other words, the student must be treated based on
6:20
Speaker 1: his or her experiences as an individual, not on the
6:25
Speaker 1: basis of race. In other words, you don't get thirty
6:28
Speaker 1: points on a point system just because you show up
6:31
Speaker 1: with a application that marked de box African American or
6:37
Speaker 1: Indians when going into the college admissions process. Now, many universities,
6:45
Speaker 1: again this is from the majority opinion. Quote many universities
6:48
Speaker 1: have for far too long done just the opposite, and
6:52
Speaker 1: in doing so, they have concluded wrongly that the touchstone
6:57
Speaker 1: of an individual's identity is not challenges based skills or
7:03
Speaker 1: excuse me, challenges, challenges, bested skills built, or lessons learned,
7:10
Speaker 1: but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does
7:14
Speaker 1: not tolerate that choice. So again, the majority opinion here
7:20
Speaker 1: make it clear you judge an individual's identity by challenges, bested,
7:25
Speaker 1: skills built, lessons learned, their academic resume. They're outside at
7:31
Speaker 1: curricular resume. But you cannot judge someone solely based on
7:35
Speaker 1: the color of their skin. The constitutional history does not
7:39
Speaker 1: tolerate that choice. Justice Clarence Thomas also joined Robert's opinion
7:45
Speaker 1: in full, but also wrote separately to highlight the constitutional
7:50
Speaker 1: principle at stake by saying, Clarence Thomas not only did
7:55
Speaker 1: he join the majority opinion, but he also wrote separately
7:59
Speaker 1: to high the constitutional principles that were at stake in
8:03
Speaker 1: this case. He wrote this. In the wake of the
8:07
Speaker 1: Civil War, the country focused its attention on restoring the
8:11
Speaker 1: Union and established the legal status of newly freed slaves.
8:16
Speaker 1: The Constitution was amended to abolish slavery and proclaim that
8:21
Speaker 1: all persons born in the United States of America are
8:25
Speaker 1: citizens entitled to the privileges or immunity of citizenship and
8:32
Speaker 1: the equal protection of the laws because of the second founding,
8:38
Speaker 1: our constitution is color blind and neither knows nor tolerates
8:45
Speaker 1: classes among citizens. All right, I want to also play
8:49
Speaker 1: for you part of my conversation that I had with
8:51
Speaker 1: Center Ted Cruz about this for our podcast that we
8:54
Speaker 1: do Verdict with Ted Cruz, So make sure you download
8:57
Speaker 1: that podcast as well. But here's what he had to
9:00
Speaker 1: say about this.
9:02
Speaker 3: Well, this decision is a major landmark decision. It is
9:06
Speaker 3: a six ' to three decision. The majority opinion is
9:10
Speaker 3: written by Chief Justice Roberts, and this decision strikes down
9:16
Speaker 3: racial discrimination and racial quotas in universities. As you noted,
9:21
Speaker 3: there were two cases that were consolidated. One was the
9:24
Speaker 3: University of North Carolina. Now that is relevant because UNC
9:27
Speaker 3: is a state school, so it is action by the government.
9:30
Speaker 3: And what the court concluded is that the fourteenth Amendment
9:33
Speaker 3: to the Constitution, which protects grants every citizen the equal
9:38
Speaker 3: protection of the laws, that under the fourteenth Amendment, the
9:42
Speaker 3: government cannot discriminate based on race. So every government school,
9:46
Speaker 3: whether you're talking about UNC, whether you're talking about University
9:49
Speaker 3: of Texas, whether you're talking about University of California, if
9:52
Speaker 3: it is a government school, they cannot discriminate based on race.
9:56
Speaker 3: That's a landmark ruling. The other case was Harvard University. Now,
10:00
Speaker 3: Harvard University is not a government school. It is a
10:03
Speaker 3: private university. The Fourteenth Amendment does not constrict what a
10:07
Speaker 3: private university does. The Fourteenth Amendment applies only to government.
10:12
Speaker 3: So the ruling about Harvard University concerned Title seven, which
10:16
Speaker 3: is the landmark civil rights decision, and also Title six.
10:23
Speaker 3: It's actually Title six of the Civil Rights Act of
10:25
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty four, which governs university. And it concluded the
10:29
Speaker 3: same standard applies that under the Civil Rights Act of
10:32
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty four. At likewise, under the Fourteenth Amendment, that
10:37
Speaker 3: racial discrimination is illegal. The consequences are massive. Two days ago,
10:44
Speaker 3: under existing Supreme Court precedent, it was permissible for UNC
10:49
Speaker 3: and for Harvard and for every other school to say,
10:52
Speaker 3: if we like your race, if it's a race that
10:54
Speaker 3: we want to favor, we can give you a benefit,
10:58
Speaker 3: we can give you a plus factor, can favor you
11:02
Speaker 3: entirely because of your race. And if we don't like
11:04
Speaker 3: your race, we can penalize you, we can harm you,
11:08
Speaker 3: we can reduce your chances of admission entirely because of race.
11:13
Speaker 3: The Supreme Court by a six ' to three vote
11:15
Speaker 3: yesterday said that is unconstitutional with state schools, that is
11:19
Speaker 3: illegal with private schools. Discriminating based on race is wrong.
11:25
Speaker 1: When you see this case, how will this change things?
11:29
Speaker 1: Not just in the school admissions process, but now And
11:33
Speaker 1: they've been screaming on TV about this all day long
11:36
Speaker 1: that this is going to destroy minorities chances to succeed.
11:40
Speaker 2: That's clearly not the case in college admissions.
11:42
Speaker 1: In fact, affirmative action has been hurting Asian Americans for
11:46
Speaker 1: quite some time in a major way, not being able
11:49
Speaker 1: to get into some universities with incredible qualifications. They're saying
11:53
Speaker 1: this is also going to destroy this country in businesses
11:57
Speaker 1: and private sector as well.
11:58
Speaker 2: Put that into perspective.
12:00
Speaker 3: Well, this is a landmark change because every university that
12:05
Speaker 3: was engaged in racial discrimination is going to have to
12:08
Speaker 3: change their admissions policies.
12:10
Speaker 2: Now.
12:11
Speaker 3: I fear the vast majority of universities are going to
12:16
Speaker 3: do everything they can to get around and to fight
12:19
Speaker 3: and to engage in massive resistance to this decision. The
12:25
Speaker 3: vast majority of our universities, the faculty and the administrators
12:29
Speaker 3: bizarrely want as a matter of principle as a matter
12:35
Speaker 3: of virtue, they want to discriminate based on race. And
12:39
Speaker 3: the bizarre thing is, look, one of the parades of
12:43
Speaker 3: horribles that you will see leftists, whether Democrats or corrupt
12:48
Speaker 3: corporate media voices or university administrators say, is without discriminating
12:55
Speaker 3: based on race, we will get lily white schools. That
12:58
Speaker 3: that's the spectrum they put forth. Now, they are a
13:03
Speaker 3: host of ways that you can ensure that you have
13:07
Speaker 3: a diverse student body without discriminating on race. The most
13:12
Speaker 3: obvious one that some universities do is to give a
13:16
Speaker 3: preference for low income students, a student who is from
13:21
Speaker 3: a poor family, a student who has struggled to overcome adversity.
13:25
Speaker 3: And I think there's a very reasonable and principled argument
13:29
Speaker 3: that a student who is overcoming adversity, that that's a
13:32
Speaker 3: real sense of accomplishment. That if you grow up with
13:35
Speaker 3: enormous privilege and enormous advantages and you do well, great.
13:39
Speaker 3: But if you're a single mom in a really tough
13:41
Speaker 3: environment and you excel academically, that reflects something positive or
13:47
Speaker 3: beneficial that will produce student bodies that are racially diverse.
13:53
Speaker 3: But what it will not do so the existing university
13:56
Speaker 3: racial preferences benefit African American students and Hispanic students whose
14:03
Speaker 3: parents are rich, who go to a fancy boarding school.
14:05
Speaker 3: But yet they just view it as race. And so
14:08
Speaker 3: if you happen to be a minority student with very
14:10
Speaker 3: significant socioeconomic advantages, you get an enormous boost. And if
14:15
Speaker 3: you happen to be a poor white student, Let's say
14:17
Speaker 3: you're growing up in Appalachia and your parents, no one
14:20
Speaker 3: in the family has ever gone to college, and you
14:22
Speaker 3: work your tail off, well, they don't recognize that. And
14:26
Speaker 3: so if universities want to, they can number one, create
14:30
Speaker 3: a preference for low income students to give an additional
14:34
Speaker 3: benefit to overcoming adversity. They can number two create a
14:39
Speaker 3: benefit if you're the first person in your family to
14:41
Speaker 3: go to college. That's another way that we know will
14:45
Speaker 3: statistically produce a more racially diverse student body. They can
14:48
Speaker 3: number three create a preference if you grow up in
14:51
Speaker 3: a household where English is not the first language. All
14:54
Speaker 3: three of those are non racial proxies that result in
14:59
Speaker 3: a racially diverse toitudoy. Now here's the amazing thing, ben
15:02
Speaker 3: most of our universities don't care. Even if they could
15:07
Speaker 3: get the exact same damn student body they had yesterday
15:10
Speaker 3: in terms of racial breakdown. They affirmatively want to discriminate
15:17
Speaker 3: on race. It shows them I am WO care me roar.
15:21
Speaker 3: And so you're going to see a couple of things happen.
15:25
Speaker 3: Number One, there's a portion of this decision where the
15:29
Speaker 3: majority says, look nothing in this case means that universities
15:33
Speaker 3: cannot consider overcoming adversity, overcoming discrimination, overcoming hardship. What's going
15:41
Speaker 3: to happen is in university essays, the schools are going
15:46
Speaker 3: to try very hard to replicate exactly the affirmative action
15:49
Speaker 3: and quota system they had before. And by the way,
15:52
Speaker 3: if someone is a minority student, every student is going
15:56
Speaker 3: to be coached that they're opening sentence is going to
15:59
Speaker 3: be as a Hispanic kid growing up in hardship, here's
16:05
Speaker 3: the adversity I overcome as an African American. Here's all
16:11
Speaker 3: of the hardships I overcame. That will be the game
16:17
Speaker 3: to get around the system. And here's the second piece.
16:20
Speaker 4: Ben.
16:22
Speaker 3: You may have noticed universities all aroun across the country
16:25
Speaker 3: in the past year announcing that they're eliminating the SAT
16:29
Speaker 3: and the Act announcing that those tests are optional. And
16:33
Speaker 3: you may have wondered why. I mean, look, when you
16:35
Speaker 3: and I went to school, we had to take either
16:37
Speaker 3: the SAT or ACT. It used to be every school
16:39
Speaker 3: required that. Why have they suddenly started getting rid of
16:43
Speaker 3: it in Mass And the answer is simple. Most of
16:47
Speaker 3: the universities anticipated yesterday's ruling. The writing was on the wall.
16:53
Speaker 3: They knew where this was going, and so they knew
16:56
Speaker 3: that come June of this year they were not going
16:58
Speaker 3: to be able to discriminate based on race. And these
17:01
Speaker 3: radicals and universities they want to so much that they said,
17:06
Speaker 3: oh crap. If we have SAT scores, if we have
17:09
Speaker 3: ACT scores, and we keep doing the same thing, we
17:12
Speaker 3: keep admitting people of races that we want a preference
17:16
Speaker 3: whose scores are one hundred, two hundred three hundred points
17:19
Speaker 3: lower than students of different races, well then it's going
17:23
Speaker 3: to be obvious and we're going to get sued and
17:24
Speaker 3: we're going to get nailed and we're going to pay judgments.
17:27
Speaker 3: So the way we avoid it is we just won't
17:30
Speaker 3: collect SAT scores or ACT scores, so there won't be
17:33
Speaker 3: that objective metric. The entire reason the schools are getting
17:38
Speaker 3: rid of these scores is because they want to defy
17:41
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court decision and they want to keep discriminating
17:45
Speaker 3: even though they could get the identically diverse student bodies
17:49
Speaker 3: without racial discrimination. These leftists believe racial discrimination is an
17:55
Speaker 3: affirmatively good thing.
17:57
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Speaker 1: Patriot or Patriotmobile dot com slash ferguson. Justice Jackson, President
19:16
Speaker 1: Joe Biden's nomine of the Supreme Court, dissented in very
19:21
Speaker 1: harsh terms from the decision striking down racial preferences in
19:25
Speaker 1: college admissions decision. Now the full decision and the concurring
19:29
Speaker 1: opinions and the dissents, you can read those online if
19:33
Speaker 1: you want to, But let me just give you some
19:35
Speaker 1: of what she said. Brown accused the Court's six conservative
19:40
Speaker 1: justices of pretending that the US is a colorblind society
19:46
Speaker 1: and ignoring, she says, pervasive radical racial inequalities that persist
19:52
Speaker 1: even in the absence of formal racial discrimination laws. Now,
19:58
Speaker 1: Justice Thomas, as I read for you a moment ago, says, hey,
20:00
Speaker 1: regardless of what you believe, when we amended the constitution
20:04
Speaker 1: right and got rid of slavery, we amended it. The
20:07
Speaker 1: Constitution is color blind. Our laws are color blind. She's
20:11
Speaker 1: saying it shouldn't be that way. She outlined a history
20:15
Speaker 1: of black suffering in America and the descent from slavery
20:19
Speaker 1: to sharecropping, from Jim Crow to redlining, saying, quote the
20:23
Speaker 1: race based gaps that first developed centuries ago are echoes
20:28
Speaker 1: from the past that still exists today. She added quote
20:32
Speaker 1: to demand that colleges ignore race in today's admissions practices
20:36
Speaker 1: and thus disregard the fact that racial disparities may have
20:40
Speaker 1: mattered for where some applicants find themselves today. Is not
20:46
Speaker 1: only an affront to the dignity of those students for
20:48
Speaker 1: whom race matters, it also condemns our society to never
20:53
Speaker 1: escape the past that explains how and why race matters,
20:58
Speaker 1: to the very concept of who merits quote unquote admission.
21:04
Speaker 1: Describing by the way the use of race and admissions
21:06
Speaker 1: at Harvard and the University of North Carolina as a
21:10
Speaker 1: plus factor and ignoring the burdens suffered by Asian Americans
21:15
Speaker 1: and others harmed by the policy, she argued that there
21:18
Speaker 1: were quote universal benefits to using race and college admissions policies,
21:24
Speaker 1: not just for the beneficiaries. She said, quote and the
21:28
Speaker 1: descent do not miss the point that ensuring a diverse
21:33
Speaker 1: student body in higher education helps everyone, not just those
21:38
Speaker 1: who do to their race have directly inherited distinct disadvantages
21:43
Speaker 1: really respect to their health, wealth, and well being, she wrote. Obviously,
21:49
Speaker 1: she was very frustrated. She also argued in The Descent
21:54
Speaker 1: that race blindness will delay the day that every American
21:58
Speaker 1: has an equal opportunity to throw regardless of race, even
22:02
Speaker 1: though the data is actually showing the opposite of that. Now,
22:05
Speaker 1: let me explain what I mean by that. There are
22:07
Speaker 1: countless young women and countless young men, who by the way,
22:12
Speaker 1: are poor, who have not gotten scholarships and have not
22:16
Speaker 1: gotten into amazing universities because they were born with the
22:21
Speaker 1: wrong color skin, and that wrong color is anything but
22:26
Speaker 1: what is described as a minority. Many Asian Americans have
22:30
Speaker 1: also not gotten into universities because they have not been
22:33
Speaker 1: waited at the same level as Hispanic Americans, Indian Americans,
22:36
Speaker 1: and African Americans.
22:38
Speaker 2: That is clearly, I would.
22:39
Speaker 1: Argue, a form of racism when you have one race
22:43
Speaker 1: that you choose to have more students come in or
22:46
Speaker 1: have more waiting than another race. How is that not discrimination?
22:51
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what the justices were saying. They were saying,
22:57
Speaker 1: you can't do this at UNC. You can't do this
23:00
Speaker 1: you are Harvard. You can't do this at other universities
23:02
Speaker 1: where you have a quota system where you decide what
23:06
Speaker 1: you think is the perfect blend of minorities in your university.
23:11
Speaker 1: You can't discriminate against amazing students because they have the
23:17
Speaker 1: wrong color of skin. Right, Racism is racism, and bigotry
23:22
Speaker 1: is bigotry, and having these quotas is not good for
23:26
Speaker 1: America and the government, they're saying, are again our constitution
23:30
Speaker 1: is color blind.
23:32
Speaker 2: The descent. They're saying, no, No, our government.
23:34
Speaker 1: Should absolutely fill quotas and advocate for quotas and decide
23:41
Speaker 1: to pick winners and losers solely based on the color
23:44
Speaker 1: of your skin. Let me go back to the descent, though,
23:47
Speaker 1: they say, quote with let them eat cake obliviousness. Today,
23:53
Speaker 1: the majority pulls the rip chord and announces color blindness
23:57
Speaker 1: for all by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in
24:02
Speaker 1: law does not make it so in life, And having
24:06
Speaker 1: so detached itself from this country's actual past and present experiences,
24:11
Speaker 1: the Court has now been lured into interfering with the
24:14
Speaker 1: crucial work that you see and other institutions of higher
24:19
Speaker 1: learning are doing to solve America's real world problems.
24:22
Speaker 2: I couldn't.
24:22
Speaker 1: By the way, I disagree more with that statement. She
24:26
Speaker 1: says quote no one benefits from ignorance. Although former race
24:31
Speaker 1: linked legal barriers are gone, race still matters to the
24:37
Speaker 1: lived experiences of all Americans in innumerable ways, and today's
24:42
Speaker 1: ruling makes things worse, not better. The best that can
24:45
Speaker 1: be said of the majority's perspective is that it proceeds
24:50
Speaker 1: from the hope that preventing consideration of race will end racism.
24:55
Speaker 1: But if that is its motivation, the majority proceeds in vain.
25:00
Speaker 1: If the colleges of this country required to ignore a
25:02
Speaker 1: thing that matters, it will not just go away, will
25:06
Speaker 1: take longer for racism to leave us, and ultimately, ignoring
25:09
Speaker 1: race just makes it matter worse now. I actually believe
25:13
Speaker 1: the affirmative action breeds racism at the college level because
25:19
Speaker 1: it also undermines minorities that get in on their merits
25:22
Speaker 1: outside of a quota system for the color of their skin.
25:25
Speaker 1: There are people that have come forward saying that they
25:27
Speaker 1: were frustrated when they went to college because they should
25:31
Speaker 1: they were there on their own merits, but people looked
25:33
Speaker 1: at them in class, like whose spot.
25:35
Speaker 2: Did you take?
25:36
Speaker 1: And you're only here because you're a minority and a
25:38
Speaker 1: quota system, not because of how hard you worked. That's
25:42
Speaker 1: undermining the accomplishments of amazing men and women who are
25:45
Speaker 1: minorities right now. In his own concurring opinion, Justice Thomas
25:51
Speaker 1: took on Justice Jackson's dissent, saying this Justice Jackson would
25:58
Speaker 1: replace the second Founder's vision with an organizing principle based
26:02
Speaker 1: on race. In fact, in her view, almost all of
26:05
Speaker 1: life outcomes may be unheasitantly ascribed to race. This lore
26:11
Speaker 1: is not and has never been true. Even the segregated
26:15
Speaker 1: South where I grew up, individuals were not the sum
26:18
Speaker 1: of their skin color than is now. Not all disparities
26:21
Speaker 1: are based on race, Not all people are racists, and
26:24
Speaker 1: not all differences between individuals.
26:27
Speaker 2: Are ascribed to race.
26:29
Speaker 1: Worse still, Justice Jackson uses her broad observation about statistical
26:34
Speaker 1: relationships between race and select measures of health, wealth, and
26:38
Speaker 1: well being to label all blacks as victims. Her desire
26:44
Speaker 1: to do so is unfathomable to me. I cannot deny
26:48
Speaker 1: the great accomplishments of black Americans, including those who succeeded
26:52
Speaker 1: despite long odds. Justice Jackson then builds from her faulty
26:58
Speaker 1: premise to call for action are arguing that court should
27:01
Speaker 1: defer to experts quote unquote and allow institutions to discriminate
27:06
Speaker 1: on the basis of race. Make no mistake, her Descent
27:10
Speaker 1: is not a vanguard of the innocent and helpless. It
27:14
Speaker 1: is instead a call for empower privileged elites who will
27:19
Speaker 1: tell us what is required to level the playing field
27:23
Speaker 1: quote unquote among casts and classifications that they alone can divine. Then,
27:29
Speaker 1: after siling all of us into racial casts and pitting
27:34
Speaker 1: those casts against each other, the Descent somehow believes that
27:38
Speaker 1: we will be able to, at some undefined point, march
27:42
Speaker 1: forward together into some utopian version. Social movements that invoke
27:47
Speaker 1: these sorts of rallying cries historically have ended disastrously. Unsurprisingly,
27:52
Speaker 1: this tried and failed system defies both law and reason.
27:57
Speaker 1: Hell yes to Clarence Thomas for having the guts to
28:01
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Speaker 1: I want you to hear what wins whin some sears
29:36
Speaker 1: had to say about Justice KBJ. Listen to this from
29:42
Speaker 1: Fox News earlier.
29:44
Speaker 7: What would you say to these justices?
29:48
Speaker 4: Well, what you have is a justice who has chosen
29:51
Speaker 4: because she's black and because she's a woman. You know,
29:55
Speaker 4: that's what we're understanding now what a woman is. And Martha,
29:59
Speaker 4: while we're playing these stupid games, I'm saying that education
30:03
Speaker 4: and the lack of it in America has risen to
30:05
Speaker 4: a national crisis. China is not playing these stupid games.
30:09
Speaker 4: China is interested in total world domination, and so is
30:13
Speaker 4: Russia and the rest of them.
30:15
Speaker 2: That's what we have.
30:16
Speaker 4: To be concerned about. Our children are not learning, and
30:19
Speaker 4: in fact, when they do graduate from high school and
30:21
Speaker 4: decide to go on to college, Martha, more than sixty
30:25
Speaker 4: percent of them, according to the statistics, need remedial education
30:29
Speaker 4: that very first year.
30:31
Speaker 2: So you know.
30:31
Speaker 4: How the president is talking about getting rid of student loans, Well,
30:35
Speaker 4: then the children are having to stay one extra year
30:39
Speaker 4: in college based on loans that they've taken for work
30:43
Speaker 4: that they should have completed when they were.
30:45
Speaker 2: In high school.
30:46
Speaker 4: So let's cut that and let's get to what the
30:49
Speaker 4: remedies are. And I'm pulling for school choice. School choice
30:53
Speaker 4: now our children are in need.
30:57
Speaker 1: I love the fact that Lieutenant Government Virginia came Mountain
31:00
Speaker 1: said this saying, let's be clear, there is a Supreme
31:03
Speaker 1: Court justice that was chosen solely based on race, solely
31:08
Speaker 1: based on the cover skin and sex. And that's correct
31:11
Speaker 1: because Joe Biden ran saying, if you let me, the
31:14
Speaker 1: next person I'm gonna play in the Supreme Court will
31:15
Speaker 1: only be a minority woman. He was filling a racial quota,
31:19
Speaker 1: just like universities have been filling racial quotas. And so
31:23
Speaker 1: the point that she made there was spot on. How
31:26
Speaker 1: many great people, how many amazing men or women should
31:32
Speaker 1: have been considered, should have been considered for the Supreme
31:38
Speaker 1: Court that were immediately kicked out because they had the
31:42
Speaker 1: wrong color skin or they were man, because you were
31:47
Speaker 1: totally discriminated against by this President United States of America
31:51
Speaker 1: because he said I'm going after.
31:52
Speaker 2: A quota only. This is the quota.
31:55
Speaker 1: If you don't fit this racial makeup, you will not
31:59
Speaker 1: have a chance at sitting on the Supreme Court.
32:03
Speaker 2: That is the fact of the situation.
32:04
Speaker 1: And the Lieutenant governor in Virginia, African American woman, God
32:09
Speaker 1: bless her for coming out and saying it the way
32:11
Speaker 1: that she did. Because Justice Side of my Or and
32:14
Speaker 1: her descent in the affirmative Action rooming said quote, despite
32:17
Speaker 1: the country's unjustified exercise of power, the opinion today will
32:21
Speaker 1: serve only to highlight the Court's own endpotence in the
32:25
Speaker 1: face of an American America who cries for equality. Resound
32:33
Speaker 1: that's what Justice Side of my Or said, and Sears said, well,
32:37
Speaker 1: what you have is the justice who was chosen because
32:41
Speaker 1: she's black and because she's a woman, who's now saying
32:45
Speaker 1: I don't like that, We're going to change that, because
32:48
Speaker 1: that's why she got the job to fill that quote up.
32:52
Speaker 1: Columbia University president had this to say about what happened
32:57
Speaker 1: with this decision on MSNBC with been carefully to how
33:01
Speaker 1: angry they are over there, sorry.
33:03
Speaker 7: Now, which is really I was not aware of the
33:07
Speaker 7: Columbia Veterans program. That is fascinating because they bring so
33:11
Speaker 7: much experience and leadership qualities and skills, all of the
33:16
Speaker 7: training that they have. I just wanted to read part
33:19
Speaker 7: of Justice Jackson's descent in the UNC case. She did
33:23
Speaker 7: not participate in the Harvard case because of refusal, She writes,
33:26
Speaker 7: to demand that collegees ignore race in today's admissions practices
33:30
Speaker 7: and thus disregard the fact that racial disparities may have
33:33
Speaker 7: mattered for where some applicants find themselves today is not
33:37
Speaker 7: only an affront to the dignity of those students for
33:39
Speaker 7: whom race matters, it also condemns our society to never
33:43
Speaker 7: escape the past that explains how and why race matters,
33:47
Speaker 7: to the very concept of whom merits admission. That, combined
33:51
Speaker 7: with the justices writing that there should be an end
33:53
Speaker 7: date to these policies those that survive, reminds me of
33:58
Speaker 7: the Voting Rights Decision twenty thirteen, which is to assume
34:00
Speaker 7: that at some point society will magically become race neutral,
34:04
Speaker 7: which doesn't happen.
34:07
Speaker 6: So this opens up your question, Andrea opens up the
34:13
Speaker 6: two different philosophies that are reflected in the Roberts and
34:17
Speaker 6: other conservative justices views about how to think about race
34:22
Speaker 6: in America and that of Justices Jackson and Sodamayer and
34:28
Speaker 6: formerly of Justice Ginsburg to Justice Roberts and the others
34:34
Speaker 6: who joined him, Brown versus Board of Education was a
34:38
Speaker 6: great moment in American history, declaring that the Fourteenth Amendment
34:44
Speaker 6: required equal protection and not separate but equal schooling and
34:47
Speaker 6: other programs in the United States and set off the
34:51
Speaker 6: Civil Rights era. That was a great moment, but that
34:56
Speaker 6: was only about stopping racial discrimination. Any kind of effort
35:03
Speaker 6: to overcome the effects of racial discrimination are not allowed
35:08
Speaker 6: in his view. To Justices Jackson and Sodamayer, this is
35:13
Speaker 6: and Thurgood Marshall in the Baki case, this is wrong.
35:16
Speaker 6: Thanking that we've had several hundred years of discrimination against
35:22
Speaker 6: African Americans in particular, and we must as a society
35:26
Speaker 6: find means to try to correct for that because they're ongoing.
35:30
Speaker 6: They haven't stopped. And affirmative action in higher education began
35:35
Speaker 6: exactly for that reason. In the nineteen seventies all across
35:39
Speaker 6: the country, every selective university tried to become more diverse
35:44
Speaker 6: as part of an effort in the country to grapple
35:47
Speaker 6: with the history and ongoing effects of discrimination. In the
35:51
Speaker 6: Baki case, universities were told by Justice Poal, you cannot
35:56
Speaker 6: talk in those terms and ever since and universities have
36:01
Speaker 6: been limited in how they could think about affirmative action
36:04
Speaker 6: to just the diversity rationale, not to the racial justice rationale.
36:10
Speaker 6: So Justice Jackson and Sodamayer our right to say the
36:17
Speaker 6: only way to think about this sensibly is to put
36:21
Speaker 6: it in the context of a history of racial discrimination
36:26
Speaker 6: that continues to this day and requires the work of
36:30
Speaker 6: universities and other institutions to try to overcome it. Affirmative
36:34
Speaker 6: action has been that. So that's a fundamental difference in
36:41
Speaker 6: the ways in which we talk about affirmative action reflected
36:45
Speaker 6: in these opinions.
36:48
Speaker 2: Presently.
36:49
Speaker 7: Bolinger of Columbia University, a leader for decades and decades
36:54
Speaker 7: on this and so many other issues of higher education.
36:56
Speaker 2: It's real. I love it, right, Columbia University. I mean,
37:00
Speaker 2: that's fine.
37:01
Speaker 1: Means to correct for several hundred years of discrimination, and
37:05
Speaker 1: so therefore this is the way to do it.
37:06
Speaker 2: So therefore we should just keep doing it.
37:07
Speaker 1: And if it screws over other minorities, we don't care,
37:10
Speaker 1: because we give ourselves a hug that somehow we've done
37:13
Speaker 1: it right. Paul Butler on affirmative action. Our country is
37:17
Speaker 1: at great risk of returning to quote the old days.
37:22
Speaker 1: I'm taking the case personally. He goes on to.
37:26
Speaker 5: Say, I was really struck at the end of our
37:27
Speaker 5: last hour in that conversation between Andrew Mitchell and Jonathan
37:30
Speaker 5: kpe Hart. And you wrote an op ed in the
37:32
Speaker 5: Washington Post about affirmative action in twenty twenty two, and
37:36
Speaker 5: you write that you got into Yale University and then
37:38
Speaker 5: Harvard Law School because of affirmative action. I mean big
37:42
Speaker 5: picture here, what is the impact do you think this
37:44
Speaker 5: will have on students?
37:47
Speaker 8: So we already know the dramatic and negative impact this
37:51
Speaker 8: will have based on the nine states that have already
37:54
Speaker 8: outlawed diversity in college admissions, and you see a California's
38:00
Speaker 8: elite school, the enrollment of black and Latin X students
38:05
Speaker 8: declined dramatically. There was a brief submitted by universities in
38:10
Speaker 8: this case that suggests that the number of black students
38:13
Speaker 8: of these schools is going to go down to two percent.
38:16
Speaker 8: And yes, Lindsey, I'm taking this case personally. As a
38:20
Speaker 8: black man who graduated with honors from Harvard after being
38:24
Speaker 8: admitted through its affirmative action process, I was as qualified
38:28
Speaker 8: as idiot of mine excellent colleagues, But The reality is
38:32
Speaker 8: that before affirmative action, black people, Latin X people, Native people,
38:38
Speaker 8: we weren't present at these selective institutions, even though we
38:42
Speaker 8: could do the work as well as anybody. And now
38:46
Speaker 8: that the Court has in effect overturned one of the
38:50
Speaker 8: most successful racial justice policies of all time, our country
38:54
Speaker 8: is at great risk of returning to those old days
38:58
Speaker 8: when black and Latin X and Native folks, the people
39:02
Speaker 8: who built this country, are shut out of the opportunity
39:06
Speaker 8: to learn at some of our country's best colleges.
39:12
Speaker 1: Okay, so he gets in, and he says, I got
39:16
Speaker 1: in only because of race, but it was worth it.
39:18
Speaker 1: And the question is, okay, then who got screwed over?
39:23
Speaker 1: Who didn't get in that worked extremely hard because they
39:26
Speaker 1: had the wrong color of skin. Now, I'm glad that
39:30
Speaker 1: he got in. Okay, I'm glad that everybody gets in.
39:32
Speaker 1: But you shouldn't kick other people out just to meet
39:36
Speaker 1: a quota. And that's exactly what the Supreme Court said today.
39:39
Speaker 1: You can't do this. You can't discriminate against other people
39:43
Speaker 1: based on the color of their skin while claiming that
39:46
Speaker 1: this is good for the country. On the issue of discrimination, right,
39:51
Speaker 1: one person can't get discriminated against, so that you can
39:54
Speaker 1: act like you're righting the wrong from what happened in
39:56
Speaker 1: the past to another person. That's not our and our
40:00
Speaker 1: constitution are quote color blind. That is exactly what Clarence
40:05
Speaker 1: Thomas said, and that's exactly what is right in this country.
40:09
Speaker 1: This is going to be a big day for fairness
40:11
Speaker 1: and moving on. And this is also going to be
40:14
Speaker 1: phenomenal for people that get into these institutions based on
40:18
Speaker 1: their merit and not have to worry that they're being
40:21
Speaker 1: undermine or whispered about. Well, are they really here because
40:24
Speaker 1: they deserve to be here. They get here because they
40:26
Speaker 1: got in because of the color of their skin. This
40:28
Speaker 1: is going to fix problems and it's a fabulous thing.
40:33
Speaker 2: Don't forget.
40:34
Speaker 1: Share this podcast with your family and your friends, and
40:37
Speaker 1: I will see you back here tomorrow.