The Supreme Court will soon decide whether to hear a case concerning Harvard’s race-conscious admissions policy. Kenny Xu writes:
The Supreme Court will soon consider whether to take up the long-awaited Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard case, which pits Harvard’s race-conscious admissions process against a group of Asian-American applicants who don’t fit into Harvard’s idea of “favored minorities.” The central idea behind the case is whether Harvard’s use of race to create what it sees as a “diverse” class runs afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
If there is one area in which the American elite seems to be moving in lockstep, it is increasing racial diversity. Many Fortune 500 businesses now operate Diversity and Inclusion offices. Every selective college is quick to tout its “diverse student body.” These initiatives sound good in theory, but the movement for racial diversity too often comes at the expense of hiring or admitting the most qualified candidate. Increasingly, the qualified candidate who gets denied is Asian-American—member of a minority group still considered, for diversity purposes, not in need of rescuing.
The reason why Harvard admissions officers don’t consider Asian-Americans a “minority” for assistance purposes is because in their eyes, Asian-Americans are too successful to be helped. As a group, Asian-Americans are socioeconomically on par with whites; educationally, they outpace whites (though there is nationwide variation, just as there is among any racial group). Yet, Asian-Americans did not gain their status in this country because of inherited “privilege”—as many on the left allege whites have done—but through a relentless focus on academic preparation and self-sufficiency. As I write in my upcoming book An Inconvenient Minority, “Asian American students compete hard for their educational opportunities . . . Poor and rich Asians alike study an average of thirteen hours per week, more than twice as much as the typical non-Hispanic white student who studies a mere 5.5 hours per week at home.” Harvard prefers to ignore the reality of Asian-American students’ hard work and preparation—that is, their merit—and instead treat them in the admissions process as if they were a privileged group.
[Kenny Xu, "Diversity—Unless You’re Asian,” City Journal, June 3]
