I appeared on March 1, 2023, on Chicago’s Morning Answer with Dan Proft and Amy Jacobson (no relation) a show I have been on many times and which I enjoy.
The discussion started with a reference to this tweet:
Then the discussion turned to our the launch of EqualProtect.org.
PROFT (03:59):
What’s your response to the college admissions flap as a lot of parents are befuddled by the academic records their kids have put together, and then the schools that they can gain entrance to with those records?
WAJ (04:16):
Well, we get a lot of reports of similar sort of things. It’s hard to know kind of nationwide or on a mass scale what’s happening, but certainly the statistics that have come out in the Harvard case, you just cited some of them, and they were really foundational to the Asian students. bringing that lawsuit, do seem to indicate that there is racial discrimination in college admissions. And of course, we see it in many different areas, and that’s one of the reasons that we form the Equal Protection Project, because we’re seeing that the foundational goal of our society from the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the laws down to local ordinances, which is non-discrimination, is being cast aside for political reasons, by people who feel there should be certain racial mixes in various jobs in various universities and elsewhere.
So this concept that we’re not going to discriminate on the basis of race, which we should all be striving for, is being cast aside by this concept that we need to achieve a particular racial mix in a particular job or a particular university, and therefore we’re going discriminate against either white people or Asian people or whoever it happens to be.
And that’s just so damaging to our country. It really tears us apart. That’s why we launched Equal Protection Project, which is equalprotect.org is the website.
AMY JACOBSON (05:40):
But do you understand why Harvard’s doing, I mean, if there’s nothing in place, the entire student body would be Asian or mostly, not all. I shouldn’t say that, but is that just, am I wrong in that thinking?
WAJ (05:51):
Well, I don’t know. I certainly don’t think the entire would be, but it would be relative to the population disproportionately of Asian background. But I guess the question is, so what? If you have certain measurements that you consider to be legitimate measures of merit, whether it’s grades or SAT scores or whatever it happens to be, and one group happens to outperform others, so what’s wrong with that?
Our view is as long as each individual is being treated fairly without regard to race, then group outcomes don’t matter. We don’t buy into, I don’t accept, that group measurements are the way to measure fairness. The way to measure fairness is how each individual is treated, which is what, at least until now, the law has always required. While there was a carve out, a little bit of an exception for higher ed, which may go away soon with the US Supreme Court decision in the Harvard case. But individual fairness is what matters. That’s what the Constitution guarantees. That’s what our laws guarantee. And the fact that one group may outperform another is really not a measure of anything. And it’s certainly not a measure of discrimination.
You can’t assume that there is discrimination just because different groups have different outcomes. And all of the people who say, well, what else could it be? Well, you’re asking us to prove, disprove a negative. Why don’t you prove how a particular person was discriminated against? Don’t just assume it.
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PROFT (10:13):
So equalprotect.org, this project you’re launching, um, I’m sort of surmising from what you just mentioned about the Providence School system that your soliciting people who have been discriminated against, like the Providence School system example and, equalprotect.org is gonna provide legal representation to, uh, fight these sort of discriminatory policies.
WAJ (10:37):
Well, right now we’re looking more at policies and procedures, things that affect large numbers of people. We’re not gonna provide, necessarily, legal representational ourselves. We may find it for people. But if you have a very specific employment problem that’s kind of specific to you, that’s probably not something that we would get involved in. On the other hand, if there is a policy in your school district, there’s a policy in your governmental entity that is affecting a large number of people, then you know, we do certainly want to hear reports of that. And if we can get it resolved without the need for a lawsuit, so much the better. Sometimes a letter resolves it, sometimes a publicity resolves it. Sometimes when bad practices are exposed, people stop doing it, but sometimes they don’t.
But we have seen many governmental policies. The Biden administration had one that was stricken down by the courts for, again, loan forgiveness, but it was only for non-white farmers. Not for white farmers. And [the court] struck that down? So this is, we are mostly focused on policies and procedures that are affecting a large number of people. But if you do have a problem, you know, you certainly can reach out to us, us, and we might be able to connect you to somebody. But that’s our main focus, is not being employment lawyers. Our main focus is stopping bad policies and procedures that are now spread everywhere in society
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