Affirmative Action No More

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Supreme Court strikes down college affirmative action programs

The court ruled that both programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution and are therefore unlawful. The vote was 6-3 in the UNC case and 6-2 in the Harvard case, in which liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was recused.

Affirmative action, i.e. systemic racism, is a bad idea on several levels. Firstly, it’s simply racist; it foment distrust and discord. Second, it’s not only unfair to those who are excluded, it’s unfair to many of those it purports to help. For example:

Harvard is an elite institution in part because it’s *difficult.* Just because you get in doesn’t mean you get through. It’s my understanding that the curriculum and grading policies there are such that you have *got* to be the best of the best. but if you got in while being the best of the mid, your chances of making it through a Harvard degree are in serious doubt. How much debt did you put your family in to go to a school you’re very likely going to fail out of? After you’ve been made to feel inadequate *and* impoverished, are you going to go to the mid-level school you should’ve in the first place, or are you going to simply bail on the whole thing?

When I was getting ready for college, I had dreams of going to MIT or Stanford or the like. My advisors, fortunately, were both smart and honest and, indeed, *good* enough to tell me that that was an insane notion. I was *not* at that level. It would have been ruinous to try, even if I had someone squeaked in. Fortunately, I didn’t have some institutionally racist program in place to bend the rules to jam my piddly ass into a program I was ill-suited for.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, it’s unfair to society: by driving away the best and brightest in favor of the mediocre, society is denied the opportunity to be served by the best and brightest in their best capabilities.

Let’s see if cities burn.

One response to “Affirmative Action No More”

  1. Jeff Wright Avatar
    Jeff Wright

    Don’t sell yourself short.
    I think the guys at MIT would love to have your talent