Michael Barone: We Don’t Need Racial Quotas to Showcase America’s Diversity

Judge Elena Kagan, an ordinarily fluent and unperturbed Justice, seemed to be struggling with the oral argument of the Supreme Court case challenging the University of North Carolina’s racial admissions preferences and quotas.

Questioning the counsel for those suing the university, she said — and I’m eliminating the interjections she, like other smart people, used in extemporaneous discourse — “That gets us back to the question of what universities can do to achieve racial diversity, even without being explicit about racial classifications. Your brief is (saying) it just doesn’t matter if our institutions look like America.”

Though she doesn’t say so, Justice Kagan — and everyone else desperate to uphold racially discriminatory admissions to colleges and universities — has something specific in mind when she says, “look like America.”

This is partly because selective colleges and universities are, as the justice explained, “the pipelines to leadership in our society. It might be military leadership.” (Justice Kagan, as dean of Harvard Law School in the days before don’t ask-don’t tell, barred military recruiters off campus but took extra care to accept military veterans as students. “It might be business leadership. It might be leadership in the law.”

It was certainly the path to the Supreme Court. Eight justices currently serving are graduates of Yale and Harvard law schools, which have two of the highest test scores. Amy Coney Barrett, a Notre Dame law graduate, is the exception.

The supporters of the racial census regime would like the percentage of Hispanics and blacks identifying with the system to match the percentage in the national population who are identified as such in the decennial census, which is largely self-administered.

Problem is, almost all students in those schools come from the top 1% and 2% of cognitive abilities, as measured using IQ tests or the SAT, ACT or LSAT exams. This was long required for applicants to be admitted to selective colleges or law school. People who are lower in the rankings often struggle to understand the quality of instruction.

They are not culturally biased. And yes, they are highly related to college and law school grades as well as professional performance. Charles Murray, American Enterprise Institute colleague and author of the 2021 book is a good place to start. “Facing Reality,” This was almost all ignored by book critics who were unwilling to confront its uncomfortable truths.

One of these inconvenient truths, however, is that Americans with cognitive abilities above 2% or 1% are not the best. “look like America.”

A small percentage of the population are classified as Jews or Asians. If scholars were to look closer at these individuals, I believe they would see an especially large number of people who are Ashkenazi Jewish. They are a result of a combination of cultural and genetic factors.

Conveniently, the top 1 percent or 2% of Americans also have significantly lower proportions of certain ethnic groups, as well those often classified as Hispanic and black than the American population. However, there are not many, as shown in the work by Justices Clarence Thomas (in order of seniority), Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Jackson. Or President Barack Obama.

America’s elite colleges and universities have discriminated against applicants from ethnic groups that are heavily represented in the top 1 percent or 22% of the population. From the 1920s through the 1960s, they admitted only small quotas of Jews each year — a history Justice Kagan is surely familiar with.

Recent discrimination has been intensified against Asians. The high test scores of Asians are offset by the low personality scores given by admissions office interviewers or alumni.

It is not yet clear if the Supreme Court’s likely ruling against discrimination in this area will succeed. To perpetuate this discrimination, university administrators have been openly lying and deceiving. It is evident that this decision will not stop black people and Hispanics achieving high academic achievements in academic fields.

For the fact is that the top 1% or 2% of Americans in any field of endeavor — the National Basketball League or Nobel Prize-winning scientists, Grammy Award-winning musicians or Olympic athletes — don’t “look like America.” They are people from diverse backgrounds who produce diverse forms of excellence when taken together.

Preferences and quotas that are racially biased in higher education or elsewhere violate our historic civil right laws. They reduce the chances of the deserving and cast doubt upon the true achievements of the intended beneficiaries. They are the enemy of true American diversity, not their friend.

Michael Barone, a senior political analyst at the Washington Examiner, is a resident fellow at American Enterprise Institute and a long-time co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.

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