CDZ University of Texas Admissions

[jwoodie]

Aside from the racial basis question before SCOTUS, how does any public/governmental agency get away with having a secret procedure for determining how benefits are distributed? It seems that UT's discretionary admission procedure should be invalidated on that basis alone. Thoughts?

 

[Mac1958]

Details? Link?

 

[Luddly Neddite]

What are you talking about?

 

[jwoodie]

Details? Link?

Fisher v. University of Texas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Picaro]

Aside from the racial basis question before SCOTUS, how does any public/governmental agency get away with having a secret procedure for determining how benefits are distributed? It seems that UT's discretionary admission procedure should be invalidated on that basis alone. Thoughts?

Apparently universities are allowed to discriminate on the basis of race and ethnicity. California's university system does so openly. It's all part of the distortion of the 'Affirmative Action' clauses in Civil Rights legislation beginning with the Nixon administration in 1969. Quotas were explicitly made illegal in the original legislation, but then magically became 'legal' in the Nixon administration's deliberate adoption of quotas for political gains.

See Hugh Davis Graham's The Civil Rights Movement for particulars, a very good book on the history of the politics surrounding the implementations of those Acts and tells exactly where they started going wrong. Washington was treated to the spectacle of the great Liberal Patrick Moynihan being the lone member of the Nixon administration opposing quotas, while the 'conservative' Nixon appointees were all for them.

Basically the premise of quotas is that it's okay to racially discriminate against whites and Asians in all cases when it comes to university admissions or any other activity covered by Civil Rights legislation, even though quotas are prohibited by law, at least according to lunatics masquerading as 'progressives' or 'leftists'.

 

[320 Years of History]

As I understand it, whether she were a minority and qualified for affirmative action consideration or not, Ms. Fisher wasn't ever going to be admitted to UT Austin because her grades weren't good enough.

In 2008, the year Fisher sent in her application, competition to get into the crown jewel of the Texas university system was stiff. Students entering through the university's Top 10 program — a mechanism that granted automatic admission to any teen who graduated in the upper 10 percent of his or her high school class — claimed 92 percent of the in-state spots.

Fisher said in news reports that she hoped for the day universities selected students "solely based on their merit and if they work hard for it." But Fisher failed to graduate in the top 10 percent of her class, meaning she had to compete for the limited number of spaces up for grabs.

She and other applicants who did not make the cut were evaluated based on two scores. One allotted points for grades and test scores. The other, called a personal achievement index, awarded points for two required essays, leadership, activities, service and "special circumstances." Those included socioeconomic status of the student or the student's school, coming from a home with a single parent or one where English wasn't spoken. And race.

Those two scores, combined, determine admission.

Even among those students, Fisher did not particularly stand out. Court records show her grade point average (3.59) and SAT scores (1180 out of 1600) were good but not great for the highly selective flagship university. The school's rejection rate that year for the remaining 841 openings was higher than the turn-down rate for students trying to get into Harvard.​

Ms. Fisher should just get over it. She clearly wasn't a top performer in high school seeing as her GPA was below 4.0 (I presume she didn't take AP classes, or if she did, she didn't do well in them) and her 1180 SAT score isn't anything special either.

The matter of affirmative action may or may not be in play, but Ms. Fisher is hardly the person who can claim to have been slighted by it. It'd be different if she had a a final GPA exceeding 4.0, or if she met the "top 10%" criteria and still was denied admission, but she didn't.

As to the OP's question about "how a public organization gets away with...", well, I suggest one read the legal briefs and opinions submitted in Fisher or other similar cases. You'll find your answers there.

 

[martybegan]

As I understand it, whether she were a minority and qualified for affirmative action consideration or not, Ms. Fisher wasn't ever going to be admitted to UT Austin because her grades weren't good enough.

In 2008, the year Fisher sent in her application, competition to get into the crown jewel of the Texas university system was stiff. Students entering through the university's Top 10 program — a mechanism that granted automatic admission to any teen who graduated in the upper 10 percent of his or her high school class — claimed 92 percent of the in-state spots.

Fisher said in news reports that she hoped for the day universities selected students "solely based on their merit and if they work hard for it." But Fisher failed to graduate in the top 10 percent of her class, meaning she had to compete for the limited number of spaces up for grabs.

She and other applicants who did not make the cut were evaluated based on two scores. One allotted points for grades and test scores. The other, called a personal achievement index, awarded points for two required essays, leadership, activities, service and "special circumstances." Those included socioeconomic status of the student or the student's school, coming from a home with a single parent or one where English wasn't spoken. And race.

Those two scores, combined, determine admission.

Even among those students, Fisher did not particularly stand out. Court records show her grade point average (3.59) and SAT scores (1180 out of 1600) were good but not great for the highly selective flagship university. The school's rejection rate that year for the remaining 841 openings was higher than the turn-down rate for students trying to get into Harvard.​

Ms. Fisher should just get over it. She clearly wasn't a top performer in high school seeing as her GPA was below 4.0 (I presume she didn't take AP classes, or if she did, she didn't do well in them) and her 1180 SAT score isn't anything special either.

The matter of affirmative action may or may not be in play, but Ms. Fisher is hardly the person who can claim to have been slighted by it. It'd be different if she had a a final GPA exceeding 4.0, or if she met the "top 10%" criteria and still was denied admission, but she didn't.

As to the OP's question about "how a public organization gets away with...", well, I suggest one read the legal briefs and opinions submitted in Fisher or other similar cases. You'll find your answers there.

The question remains that without the "special circumstances", would she have gotten in or not.

When it comes to AA in admissions, it is unfortunately a zero sum game, and the person getting the boost is getting in over someone who didn't, someone who as of now is way too young to have ever been part of the system that was responsible for the systemic discrimination in the first place, for the benefit of someone who never experienced said systemic discrimination.

 

[Picaro]

Is The "Top 10" Plan Unfair? - CBS News

Not fair is exactly how Elizabeth Aicklen describes her experience with the "Top 10" plan.

"Everyone in my family has gone to U.T. I've lived in Austin for my whole life. I love it," says Aicklen, who took a lot of advanced placement classes to improve her class rank.

Elizabeth's problem, if you can call it that, was that she went to Westlake, the most competitive public high school in Austin, filled with overachievers from upscale families.

Did kids talk about their ranking all the time? Were they thinking of it constantly? "All the time," says Aicklen. "After every test or every final, people were pulling out their calculators."

Aicklen had a 3.9 GPA, and she still didn't make the top 10 at her school.

...

But 80 miles away in San Antonio, Torres' high school, Fox Tech, was vastly different. There were fewer challenging courses, less competition, and many kids from poor families. Torres had a 3.4-3.5 GPA, which put her in the top 10 percent of her high school. She didn't take any advanced placement classes.

If Torres had gone to Westlake, she'd barely have made the top 50 percent. And if Aicklen had gone to Fox Tech, she might have been the valedictorian. As for SAT scores, Aicklen also scored hundreds of points higher than Torres.

"My scores didn't matter. It was just - I was in the top 10 percent, so I was admitted automatically," says Torres.

"I've had emails and letters and phone calls from people who literally have changed schools because their kid was in too competitive a high school, and knew they couldn't graduate in the top 10 percent," says Wentworth.

The Propublica hit piece on Fisher's lawyer naturally leaves out the inconvenient stuff.

More on the issues here, though it also avoids complete analysis in favor of arriving at the 'correct' PC orthodoxy:

The Texas Ten Percent Plan’s Impact on College Enrollment

Note that sniveling about college admissions and making them more 'diverse' means less attention directed at how badly school systems suck in many neighborhoods and school systems. When your 'top ten percent' automatically qualify for college admissions this lessens the pressure to provide real education and implement real reforms at the critical levels, where ludicrous pop sociology experiments still rule the administrations policy as gospel.

 

[320 Years of History]

As I understand it, whether she were a minority and qualified for affirmative action consideration or not, Ms. Fisher wasn't ever going to be admitted to UT Austin because her grades weren't good enough.

In 2008, the year Fisher sent in her application, competition to get into the crown jewel of the Texas university system was stiff. Students entering through the university's Top 10 program — a mechanism that granted automatic admission to any teen who graduated in the upper 10 percent of his or her high school class — claimed 92 percent of the in-state spots.

Fisher said in news reports that she hoped for the day universities selected students "solely based on their merit and if they work hard for it." But Fisher failed to graduate in the top 10 percent of her class, meaning she had to compete for the limited number of spaces up for grabs.

She and other applicants who did not make the cut were evaluated based on two scores. One allotted points for grades and test scores. The other, called a personal achievement index, awarded points for two required essays, leadership, activities, service and "special circumstances." Those included socioeconomic status of the student or the student's school, coming from a home with a single parent or one where English wasn't spoken. And race.

Those two scores, combined, determine admission.

Even among those students, Fisher did not particularly stand out. Court records show her grade point average (3.59) and SAT scores (1180 out of 1600) were good but not great for the highly selective flagship university. The school's rejection rate that year for the remaining 841 openings was higher than the turn-down rate for students trying to get into Harvard.​

Ms. Fisher should just get over it. She clearly wasn't a top performer in high school seeing as her GPA was below 4.0 (I presume she didn't take AP classes, or if she did, she didn't do well in them) and her 1180 SAT score isn't anything special either.

The matter of affirmative action may or may not be in play, but Ms. Fisher is hardly the person who can claim to have been slighted by it. It'd be different if she had a a final GPA exceeding 4.0, or if she met the "top 10%" criteria and still was denied admission, but she didn't.

As to the OP's question about "how a public organization gets away with...", well, I suggest one read the legal briefs and opinions submitted in Fisher or other similar cases. You'll find your answers there.

The question remains that without the "special circumstances", would she have gotten in or not.

When it comes to AA in admissions, it is unfortunately a zero sum game, and the person getting the boost is getting in over someone who didn't, someone who as of now is way too young to have ever been part of the system that was responsible for the systemic discrimination in the first place, for the benefit of someone who never experienced said systemic discrimination.

??? The school has low single digit acceptance among students not admitted under "Top 10." The woman's high school grades weren't "all that." The school's admissions personnel stated she wouldn't have gotten in under any circumstance. I don't have any reason to disbelieve the admissions department's statement, and I don't see there as being a good reason to be surprised that she didn't get accepted given the difficulty of being admitted among the "general population" segment of applicants to U.T. Austin. Indeed, I suspect there are other students who had better grades and test scores than Ms. Fisher and who also didn't get admitted, and we don't see them griping, to the extent of bringing suit no less, about it.

What are going to have now...every time a non-minority student who has "better than mediocre, but not stellar" credentials and who doesn't get admitted to a very selective public university is going to be seen as legitimate if/when they assert that they didn't get in because a minority student did?

Red:
It is, but the entirety of college admissions, and job offers and all manner of things, are zero-sum games. Affirmative action doesn't have anything to do with that; the fact that there is a fixed number of places available is what makes it be a zero-sum game, so to speak.

 

[jwoodie]

As I understand it, whether she were a minority and qualified for affirmative action consideration or not, Ms. Fisher wasn't ever going to be admitted to UT Austin because her grades weren't good enough.

In 2008, the year Fisher sent in her application, competition to get into the crown jewel of the Texas university system was stiff. Students entering through the university's Top 10 program — a mechanism that granted automatic admission to any teen who graduated in the upper 10 percent of his or her high school class — claimed 92 percent of the in-state spots.

Fisher said in news reports that she hoped for the day universities selected students "solely based on their merit and if they work hard for it." But Fisher failed to graduate in the top 10 percent of her class, meaning she had to compete for the limited number of spaces up for grabs.

She and other applicants who did not make the cut were evaluated based on two scores. One allotted points for grades and test scores. The other, called a personal achievement index, awarded points for two required essays, leadership, activities, service and "special circumstances." Those included socioeconomic status of the student or the student's school, coming from a home with a single parent or one where English wasn't spoken. And race.

Those two scores, combined, determine admission.

Even among those students, Fisher did not particularly stand out. Court records show her grade point average (3.59) and SAT scores (1180 out of 1600) were good but not great for the highly selective flagship university. The school's rejection rate that year for the remaining 841 openings was higher than the turn-down rate for students trying to get into Harvard.​

Ms. Fisher should just get over it. She clearly wasn't a top performer in high school seeing as her GPA was below 4.0 (I presume she didn't take AP classes, or if she did, she didn't do well in them) and her 1180 SAT score isn't anything special either.

The matter of affirmative action may or may not be in play, but Ms. Fisher is hardly the person who can claim to have been slighted by it. It'd be different if she had a a final GPA exceeding 4.0, or if she met the "top 10%" criteria and still was denied admission, but she didn't.

As to the OP's question about "how a public organization gets away with...", well, I suggest one read the legal briefs and opinions submitted in Fisher or other similar cases. You'll find your answers there.

The question remains that without the "special circumstances", would she have gotten in or not.

When it comes to AA in admissions, it is unfortunately a zero sum game, and the person getting the boost is getting in over someone who didn't, someone who as of now is way too young to have ever been part of the system that was responsible for the systemic discrimination in the first place, for the benefit of someone who never experienced said systemic discrimination.

??? The school has low single digit acceptance among students not admitted under "Top 10." The woman's high school grades weren't "all that." The school's admissions personnel stated she wouldn't have gotten in under any circumstance. I don't have any reason to disbelieve the admissions department's statement, and I don't see there as being a good reason to be surprised that she didn't get accepted given the difficulty of being admitted among the "general population" segment of applicants to U.T. Austin. Indeed, I suspect there are other students who had better grades and test scores than Ms. Fisher and who also didn't get admitted, and we don't see them griping, to the extent of bringing suit no less, about it.

What are going to have now...every time a non-minority student who has "better than mediocre, but not stellar" credentials and who doesn't get admitted to a very selective public university is going to be seen as legitimate if/when they assert that they didn't get in because a minority student did?

Red:
It is, but the entirety of college admissions, and job offers and all manner of things, are zero-sum games. Affirmative action doesn't have anything to do with that; the fact that there is a fixed number of places available is what makes it be a zero-sum game, so to speak.

Your pseudo-intellectual filibusters are getting tiresome, especially the Blue/Red shtick. Mathematically, your argument amounts to asserting that one can subtract from the whole without reducing its value. Good luck with that.

 

[320 Years of History]

As I understand it, whether she were a minority and qualified for affirmative action consideration or not, Ms. Fisher wasn't ever going to be admitted to UT Austin because her grades weren't good enough.

In 2008, the year Fisher sent in her application, competition to get into the crown jewel of the Texas university system was stiff. Students entering through the university's Top 10 program — a mechanism that granted automatic admission to any teen who graduated in the upper 10 percent of his or her high school class — claimed 92 percent of the in-state spots.

Fisher said in news reports that she hoped for the day universities selected students "solely based on their merit and if they work hard for it." But Fisher failed to graduate in the top 10 percent of her class, meaning she had to compete for the limited number of spaces up for grabs.

She and other applicants who did not make the cut were evaluated based on two scores. One allotted points for grades and test scores. The other, called a personal achievement index, awarded points for two required essays, leadership, activities, service and "special circumstances." Those included socioeconomic status of the student or the student's school, coming from a home with a single parent or one where English wasn't spoken. And race.

Those two scores, combined, determine admission.

Even among those students, Fisher did not particularly stand out. Court records show her grade point average (3.59) and SAT scores (1180 out of 1600) were good but not great for the highly selective flagship university. The school's rejection rate that year for the remaining 841 openings was higher than the turn-down rate for students trying to get into Harvard.​

Ms. Fisher should just get over it. She clearly wasn't a top performer in high school seeing as her GPA was below 4.0 (I presume she didn't take AP classes, or if she did, she didn't do well in them) and her 1180 SAT score isn't anything special either.

The matter of affirmative action may or may not be in play, but Ms. Fisher is hardly the person who can claim to have been slighted by it. It'd be different if she had a a final GPA exceeding 4.0, or if she met the "top 10%" criteria and still was denied admission, but she didn't.

As to the OP's question about "how a public organization gets away with...", well, I suggest one read the legal briefs and opinions submitted in Fisher or other similar cases. You'll find your answers there.

The question remains that without the "special circumstances", would she have gotten in or not.

When it comes to AA in admissions, it is unfortunately a zero sum game, and the person getting the boost is getting in over someone who didn't, someone who as of now is way too young to have ever been part of the system that was responsible for the systemic discrimination in the first place, for the benefit of someone who never experienced said systemic discrimination.

??? The school has low single digit acceptance among students not admitted under "Top 10." The woman's high school grades weren't "all that." The school's admissions personnel stated she wouldn't have gotten in under any circumstance. I don't have any reason to disbelieve the admissions department's statement, and I don't see there as being a good reason to be surprised that she didn't get accepted given the difficulty of being admitted among the "general population" segment of applicants to U.T. Austin. Indeed, I suspect there are other students who had better grades and test scores than Ms. Fisher and who also didn't get admitted, and we don't see them griping, to the extent of bringing suit no less, about it.

What are going to have now...every time a non-minority student who has "better than mediocre, but not stellar" credentials and who doesn't get admitted to a very selective public university is going to be seen as legitimate if/when they assert that they didn't get in because a minority student did?

Red:
It is, but the entirety of college admissions, and job offers and all manner of things, are zero-sum games. Affirmative action doesn't have anything to do with that; the fact that there is a fixed number of places available is what makes it be a zero-sum game, so to speak.

Your pseudo-intellectual filibusters are getting tiresome, especially the Blue/Red shtick. Mathematically, your argument amounts to asserting that one can subtract from the whole without reducing its value. Good luck with that.

I'm sorry, but I don't at all understand how the math analogy you note corresponds to what I wrote.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Prediction: 4 to 4 tie at SCOTUS. Lower ruling thus affirmed. End of AA.

 

[Picaro]

Prediction: 4 to 4 tie at SCOTUS. Lower ruling thus affirmed. End of AA.

You're probably right, and it's a shame. AA as originally conceived was, and still would be, a wonderful thing, and re education would force school and tax authorities to raise education standards in minority districts to the same levels they were in majority white neighborhoods. Instead, minority politicians and those currying their favor distorted the intent in favor of the much easier quota approach, and more lucrative for politicians and their cronies, black, brown, and white, and essentially selling out their own constituents, as if dumbing down the entire education system to meet some proportional number bureaucrats can point to is going to help those minorities who weren't able to join the middle class flight out to the Burbs get genuine educations.

As Moynihan frequently pointed out in the political battles of the late '60's, middle class black minorities were in effect holding their own less fortunate 'brothers and sisters' hostages and as a club to threaten and extort the white power structure for its own personal political and economic gain, while allowing both the Federal and local governments 'outs' to avoid the burdens required to effect real change for those 'left behind'.

Ending AA is the equivalent of tossing the baby out with the bath water.

 

[CremeBrulee]

When did admission to UT-Austin become so difficult? I went there and didn't even have to take SATs to get in.

 

[320 Years of History]

When did admission to UT-Austin become so difficult? I went there and didn't even have to take SATs to get in.

I dont' know for sure, but I surmise it was around the 1980s or 1990s when it became clear that being a state institution didn't necessarily mean a school provided a lower quality of research or education, and in turn, many public universities began to boost their criteria for admission. I recall my parents' chagrin/dismay when I told them I'd chosen a public university for my graduate work. They were shocked that I'd not chosen to go to an Ivy League school or MIT, Stanford, etc. Times, they are a changin'.

 

[jwoodie]

When did admission to UT-Austin become so difficult? I went there and didn't even have to take SATs to get in.

Not when but why:

1. Increasing cost of private universities.

2. Admitting more foreign students who are charged out-of-state tuition.

3. Admitting more students on the basis of diversity.

As a result, there has been greater demand for a shrinking number of placements available to other students.

P.S. I could mention my graduation from UCLA along with two masters and a law degree, but that would be gauche.

 

[martybegan]

As I understand it, whether she were a minority and qualified for affirmative action consideration or not, Ms. Fisher wasn't ever going to be admitted to UT Austin because her grades weren't good enough.

In 2008, the year Fisher sent in her application, competition to get into the crown jewel of the Texas university system was stiff. Students entering through the university's Top 10 program — a mechanism that granted automatic admission to any teen who graduated in the upper 10 percent of his or her high school class — claimed 92 percent of the in-state spots.

Fisher said in news reports that she hoped for the day universities selected students "solely based on their merit and if they work hard for it." But Fisher failed to graduate in the top 10 percent of her class, meaning she had to compete for the limited number of spaces up for grabs.

She and other applicants who did not make the cut were evaluated based on two scores. One allotted points for grades and test scores. The other, called a personal achievement index, awarded points for two required essays, leadership, activities, service and "special circumstances." Those included socioeconomic status of the student or the student's school, coming from a home with a single parent or one where English wasn't spoken. And race.

Those two scores, combined, determine admission.

Even among those students, Fisher did not particularly stand out. Court records show her grade point average (3.59) and SAT scores (1180 out of 1600) were good but not great for the highly selective flagship university. The school's rejection rate that year for the remaining 841 openings was higher than the turn-down rate for students trying to get into Harvard.​

Ms. Fisher should just get over it. She clearly wasn't a top performer in high school seeing as her GPA was below 4.0 (I presume she didn't take AP classes, or if she did, she didn't do well in them) and her 1180 SAT score isn't anything special either.

The matter of affirmative action may or may not be in play, but Ms. Fisher is hardly the person who can claim to have been slighted by it. It'd be different if she had a a final GPA exceeding 4.0, or if she met the "top 10%" criteria and still was denied admission, but she didn't.

As to the OP's question about "how a public organization gets away with...", well, I suggest one read the legal briefs and opinions submitted in Fisher or other similar cases. You'll find your answers there.

The question remains that without the "special circumstances", would she have gotten in or not.

When it comes to AA in admissions, it is unfortunately a zero sum game, and the person getting the boost is getting in over someone who didn't, someone who as of now is way too young to have ever been part of the system that was responsible for the systemic discrimination in the first place, for the benefit of someone who never experienced said systemic discrimination.

??? The school has low single digit acceptance among students not admitted under "Top 10." The woman's high school grades weren't "all that." The school's admissions personnel stated she wouldn't have gotten in under any circumstance. I don't have any reason to disbelieve the admissions department's statement, and I don't see there as being a good reason to be surprised that she didn't get accepted given the difficulty of being admitted among the "general population" segment of applicants to U.T. Austin. Indeed, I suspect there are other students who had better grades and test scores than Ms. Fisher and who also didn't get admitted, and we don't see them griping, to the extent of bringing suit no less, about it.

What are going to have now...every time a non-minority student who has "better than mediocre, but not stellar" credentials and who doesn't get admitted to a very selective public university is going to be seen as legitimate if/when they assert that they didn't get in because a minority student did?

Red:
It is, but the entirety of college admissions, and job offers and all manner of things, are zero-sum games. Affirmative action doesn't have anything to do with that; the fact that there is a fixed number of places available is what makes it be a zero-sum game, so to speak.

If she didn't have a real case, then why is she at the Supreme Court at this point? And your confidence in an admissions department that is trying to cover its own backside is lacking in merit to say the least.

In each College, there is only X amount of Freshmen slots. by the information given in this suit so far, Fischer was denied a spot, but someone who go help in their score because of their race got in. That is the crux of the lawsuit, and the only real question in this matter.

 

[320 Years of History]

If she didn't have a real case, then why is she at the Supreme Court at this point? And your confidence in an admissions department that is trying to cover its own backside is lacking in merit to say the least.

In each College, there is only X amount of Freshmen slots. by the information given in this suit so far, Fischer was denied a spot, but someone who go help in their score because of their race got in. That is the crux of the lawsuit, and the only real question in this matter.

That's perhaps a much better question than the one suggested by the OP. It's certainly the question that was foremost in Justice Kennedy's (the Justice who replaced Justice O'Connor) mind when he remarked that the Court is again hearing the same case with no new content.

That said, I still do not see that Miss Fisher failed to gain admission to UT Austin because of her race. The university generates two-component "mark" (word I have chosen to provide linguistic distinction from high school test "scores" and SAT test "scores") for applicants not admitted under the "Top 10" program: (1) school grades and standardized testing grade/scores and (2) a personal achievement index which is based on several things, among them race, the quality of thought and composition in two essays, socioeconomic status, leadership, activities, service, the student's being from a single parent home, and the student's being from a home where English isn't spoken.

Using that mark:

• The university offered admission to 42 students who had a lower mark than Miss Fisher.
  • Five of them were were minority individuals and the rest were white.
• 168 Minority students with marks equal to or better than Miss Fisher were also denied admission.

Accordingly, it's very difficult to credibly assert that Miss Fisher was denied anything as a result of her race. The admissions process at any university is necessarily discriminatory....admissions personnel have to discriminate among whom they'll admit and whom they will not. Some applicants are discriminated for and receive admission and some are discriminated against it and are denied admission. Thus the question at issue here, thus why the Court may be taking up the matter, isn't really about Miss Fisher, but rather about whether the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment allows race to be used as a reparative means for helping minorities overcome the legacy of racism they face in the U.S.

Of Bakke, Justice Blackmun wrote, "In order to get beyond racism, we must first take race into account. There is no other way." Now we have Edward Blum and Miss Fisher (a pawn really) arguing in direct opposition to Swann, in which the Court stated the government could not mandate colorblindness when doing so would defeat the integration requirement of Brown v. Board of Education.

Mr. Blum and his advocates assert, correctly in my mind, that the Constitution is colorblind. The thing is that while that document is, people are not, and the reason they are not is because of the legacy, as Justice Blackmun put it, of behavior and thinking U.S. citizens manifest because of race. Truly, what people see, what they focus on and often enough fear, is differences, race just happens to be one of the "big ones" among them. Religion is another. If we come to have a society that in the main (I realize that a 100% target is not necessary or likely) sees differences as just that rather than ascribing to the differences the host of positive and negative qualities they do currently, I'd be okay with the principle Blum and Fisher advocates.

The thing is that right now, we don't live in a colorblind society. (And, no, I don't mean that folks shouldn't notice differences, only that they should not act or hold beliefs based on irrelevant ones like race.) We live in one whereby individuals do discriminate -- sometimes favorably, sometimes not -- based on race; however, these days, the discrimination is not overt as it was prior to the civil rights era. Moreover, unlike in prior years where statistically shown negative impacts of a given policy or act was sufficient to show that unfair discrimination, that is now insufficient to show discrimination.

Given the above, in my mind, the key question then is whether, in 2015 and the foreseeable future, there remains a need to make reparations for some 250 or so years of discrimination, and if so, is the public university admissions process one of the means for doing so? Based on my observations both in and outside the U.S. and over the past 45 years (I'm in my late 50s), I think the answer is "yes." (I don't have time now to identify my observations, but I'll gladly do so if someone asks what they are.)

 

[martybegan]

If she didn't have a real case, then why is she at the Supreme Court at this point? And your confidence in an admissions department that is trying to cover its own backside is lacking in merit to say the least.

In each College, there is only X amount of Freshmen slots. by the information given in this suit so far, Fischer was denied a spot, but someone who go help in their score because of their race got in. That is the crux of the lawsuit, and the only real question in this matter.

That's perhaps a much better question than the one suggested by the OP. It's certainly the question that was foremost in Justice Kennedy's (the Justice who replaced Justice O'Connor) mind when he remarked that the Court is again hearing the same case with no new content.

That said, I still do not see that Miss Fisher failed to gain admission to UT Austin because of her race. The university generates two-component "mark" (word I have chosen to provide linguistic distinction from high school test "scores" and SAT test "scores") for applicants not admitted under the "Top 10" program: (1) school grades and standardized testing grade/scores and (2) a personal achievement index which is based on several things, among them race, the quality of thought and composition in two essays, socioeconomic status, leadership, activities, service, the student's being from a single parent home, and the student's being from a home where English isn't spoken.

Using that mark:

• The university offered admission to 42 students who had a lower mark than Miss Fisher.
  • Five of them were were minority individuals and the rest were white.
• 168 Minority students with marks equal to or better than Miss Fisher were also denied admission.

Accordingly, it's very difficult to credibly assert that Miss Fisher was denied anything as a result of her race. The admissions process at any university is necessarily discriminatory....admissions personnel have to discriminate among whom they'll admit and whom they will not. Some applicants are discriminated for and receive admission and some are discriminated against it and are denied admission. Thus the question at issue here, thus why the Court may be taking up the matter, isn't really about Miss Fisher, but rather about whether the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment allows race to be used as a reparative means for helping minorities overcome the legacy of racism they face in the U.S.

Of Bakke, Justice Blackmun wrote, "In order to get beyond racism, we must first take race into account. There is no other way." Now we have Edward Blum and Miss Fisher (a pawn really) arguing in direct opposition to Swann, in which the Court stated the government could not mandate colorblindness when doing so would defeat the integration requirement of Brown v. Board of Education.

Mr. Blum and his advocates assert, correctly in my mind, that the Constitution is colorblind. The thing is that while that document is, people are not, and the reason they are not is because of the legacy, as Justice Blackmun put it, of behavior and thinking U.S. citizens manifest because of race. Truly, what people see, what they focus on and often enough fear, is differences, race just happens to be one of the "big ones" among them. Religion is another. If we come to have a society that in the main (I realize that a 100% target is not necessary or likely) sees differences as just that rather than ascribing to the differences the host of positive and negative qualities they do currently, I'd be okay with the principle Blum and Fisher advocates.

The thing is that right now, we don't live in a colorblind society. (And, no, I don't mean that folks shouldn't notice differences, only that they should not act or hold beliefs based on irrelevant ones like race.) We live in one whereby individuals do discriminate -- sometimes favorably, sometimes not -- based on race; however, these days, the discrimination is not overt as it was prior to the civil rights era. Moreover, unlike in prior years where statistically shown negative impacts of a given policy or act was sufficient to show that unfair discrimination, that is now insufficient to show discrimination.

Given the above, in my mind, the key question then is whether, in 2015 and the foreseeable future, there remains a need to make reparations for some 250 or so years of discrimination, and if so, is the public university admissions process one of the means for doing so? Based on my observations both in and outside the U.S. and over the past 45 years (I'm in my late 50s), I think the answer is "yes." (I don't have time now to identify my observations, but I'll gladly do so if someone asks what they are.)

From the Volokh Conspiracy, on why the question of her other qualifications doesn't matter.

Why it does not matter whether Abigail Fisher would have gotten into the University of Texas in the absence of racial preferences

The Supreme Court has never required plaintiffs challenging racially discriminatory policies under the Fourteenth Amendment to prove that they would have gotten some material benefit in the absence of the discrimination they were subjected to. As the Court put it in Grutter v. Bollinger, a well-known 2003 decision on affirmative action in higher education, “[w]henever the government treats any person unequally because of his or her race, that person has suffered an injury that falls squarely within the language and spirit of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection.” The Court was even clearer in the 1993 case of Northeastern Florida Chapter of Associated General Contractors v. City of Jacksonville, a challenge to racial set-asides in government contracting: “When the government erects a barrier that makes it more difficult for members of one [racial] group to obtain a benefit than it is for members of another group, a member of the former group seeking to challenge the barrier need not allege that he would have obtained the benefit but for the barrier in order to establish standing.”

The other question is "When does it end?". Why do people who were not born during times of systemic de jure discrimination still pay for the sins of their fathers?

 

[320 Years of History]

The other question is "When does it end?". Why do people who were not born during times of systemic de jure discrimination still pay for the sins of their fathers?

Because the people who have descended from the people who suffered overt discrimination still pay for the sins of the fathers of whom you wrote.



The fact is that racial discrimination still exists. We know that one isn't born with a sense of racial discrimination, so we thus know too that parents continue to pass on to their kids the bias they too were taught. From watching the video above, it's clear to me that some folks who hold unfairly biased attitudes seem to have little to no chagrin about doing so, although they seem to know to be discreet about manifesting them.

(Sometimes I think the days of overtly expressed bias, and the folks who expressed it so, were better and the racists possessed of greater integrity. At least back then one knew well and at first blush with whom one was dealing.)

As I shared in my profile for this site, and as my ID implies, my family have been in the U.S. (colonies) since the late 1600s. I have more than my fair share of racist ancestors, and right up to my parents, their disdain-/hate-filled ideas were taught from generation to generation. It was only when my parents had the presence of mind to realize that their own racist views were deleterious to my being a better person than they that someone in my family actively committed to not passing their own bias on to their child.

They were effective enough at doing so that I didn't discover until my late 20s that they had unfairly biased views that accrue from race. They don't let them appear often, but they did again not long ago when they learned one of my kids intended to marry outside our ethnicity. They got past it, but that they had not fully overcome them was nonetheless clear.

I'm not ashamed of my ancestry. It is what it is and I had no control over it. I nonetheless realize that there are plenty of folks like me who have ancestors who passed on their bias. I know too that minorities (racial, ethnic, or religious) today still feel the effects of the irrational bias that has been passed on in families through the years.

Did our, my, ancestors create circumstances that make things harder for some folks today? They did. But then we are doing the same thing, and not just with regard to social issues like racism. I'm sure you can identify several areas whereby we have opted to "mortgage" our kids' or grandkids' futures, to defer resolving a problem, rather than "bite the bullet" now, ourselves. Well, when it comes to matters such as affirmative action, it's no different. Our forebears could have committed to end "white privilege" long before the late 20th century, but they fact is they didn't. So yes, some folks today are having to pay for that choice.