Chief Justice Roberts famously wrote that “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
That simple and correct formulation exposes how racial discrimination in the name of anti-racial discrimination perpetuates the problem. It’s a problem inherent in affirmative action based on race, which, whatever the goals, is a form of racial discrimination.
The Trump administration just took a big step towards incorporating Justice Robert’s wisdom on racial discrimination.
The NY Times reports, Trump Administration Reverses Obama on Affirmative Action:
The Trump administration will encourage the nation’s school superintendents and college presidents to adopt race-blind admissions standards, abandoning an Obama administration policy that called on universities to consider race as a factor in diversifying their campuses, administration officials said.Last November, Attorney General Jeff Sessions asked the Justice Department to re-evaluate past policies that he believed pushed the department to act beyond what the law, the Constitution and the Supreme Court had required, Devin M. O’Malley, a Justice Department spokesman said. As part of that process, the Justice Department rescinded seven policy guidances from the Education Department’s civil rights division on Tuesday….In a pair of policy guidance documents, the Obama Education and Justice departments told elementary and secondary schools and college campuses to use “the compelling interests” established by the court to achieve diversity. They concluded that the Supreme Court “has made clear such steps can include taking account of the race of individual students in a narrowly tailored manner.”
The Trump administration’s decisions on Tuesday brought government policy back to the George W. Bush administration guidances. The Trump administration did not formally reissue Bush-era guidance on race-based admissions, but, in recent days, officials did repost a Bush administration affirmative action policy document online.
That document states, “The Department of Education strongly encourages the use of race-neutral methods for assigning students to elementary and secondary schools.” …
The Trump administration’s plan would scrap the existing policies and encourage schools not to consider race at all. The new policy would not have the force of law, but it amounts to the official view of the federal government. School officials who keep their admissions policies intact would do so knowing that they could face a Justice Department investigation or lawsuit, or lose federal funding from the Education Department.
The investigation into and lawsuit regarding discrimination against Asians at Harvard highlights how the Trump administration is aligning itself with a total non-discrimination policy in education.
Racial discrimination in the name of diversity has become so fundamental a part of the ethos of higher education that university administrators and activist groups will not let it go easily.
Add it to the list of liberal fears now that Trump gets to nominate a successor to Justice Anthony Kennedy, and possibly others in the coming years:
In total, the DOJ scrapped guidance on 24 policies affecting topics like education, housing finance and criminal justice. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the rescissions were necessary because the guidelines “were issued improperly or that were simply inconsistent with current law.””In the Trump administration, we are restoring the rule of law,” Sessions said in a statement.Democrats pounced, noting that the rescissions come roughly a week before Trump is expected to announce his pick to succeed Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is slated to step down on July 31. The Harvard University case is widely expected to reach the Supreme Court, and the Democrats are concerned that Kennedy’s replacement will prove more hostile to race-based programs like affirmative action.”The President,” Richmond said, “is sending a message to his future nominee and to his base that he and his administration don’t care about diversity and will actively work to turn back the clock.”
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