Posted on 06/04/2015 8:06:40 AM PDT by reaganaut1
On May 21, the Supreme Court held a conference to discuss whether or not to accept the Fisher case—again. At this time, I don’t know the decision, but I do know that a seemingly strange mixture of liberals and conservatives want the Court to take the appeal.
The case first came before the Court in 2013, where the justices reversed the Fifth Circuit’s ruling in favor of the racial preferences used by the University of Texas (UT) in its admissions. Justice Kennedy’s opinion stressed that the lower court had been far too deferential towards the university’s policy of reserving some places just for students in certain racial and ethnic groups.
Instead of applying “strict scrutiny” as courts must do when they consider public policies that categorize people by race, the Fifth Circuit had just breezily accepted the university’s claims, Justice Kennedy observed. So the case was remanded to that court for a rehearing.
The second hearing at the Fifth Circuit led to the same result—a decision in favor of UT. What’s more, the court’s approach was really no different. Again, a majority of the three-judge panel said that the university’s racial preferences were all right because school officials thought they were important.
But in dissent, Judge Emilio Garza wrote that the decision shouldn’t stand because it again failed to employ strict scrutiny. He wrote,” Although the University has articulated its diversity goal as a ‘critical mass,’ surprisingly it has failed to define this term in any objective manner. Accordingly, it is impossible to determine whether the University’s use of racial classifications in its admissions process is narrowly tailored to its stated goal – essentially, its ends remain unknown.”
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
The current state of affairs in the U.S., where failing to discriminate by race makes you a racist.
It should be illegal for any state funded college/university to ever ask what race an applicant is.
Any and all government forms should remove all questions pertaining to race.
Citizens stop answering the question of “Race” on your census forms.
>> Citizens stop answering the question of “Race” on your census forms.
Me & Mrs. Tick put “American” down for race.
Or just check the "Mixed race" box and say nothing further. Just about all of us are. It is only a matter of degree.
Race is an artificial construct anyway. What makes Hispanic a race and not Italian or Saxon? Divisive politics, that's all.
And politics is fluid. If we can perceive ourselves to be a different gender, what is to stop us from perceiving ourselves to be a different race?
I checked the “other” block and wrote in “Human.”
I always put “HUMAN” for race, but we could also use “MIXED RACE”, especially considering that we are typically 1% to 4% Neanderthal.
http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/neanderthal-human-interbreed-dna.htm “The first draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome has provided the strongest evidence yet that modern humans and Neanderthals interbred and that all non-Africans today have Neanderthal gene fragments in their genetic codes.”
Race? Human!
“Race is a social construct”
Shows what deep inroads that cultural Marxism has made that this ridiculous mantra is being advanced on.a supposedly conservative web site.
Of course race is real. DNA is helping us understand it better all the time.
>> I always put “HUMAN” for race, but we could also use “MIXED RACE”, especially considering that we are typically 1% to 4% Neanderthal.
heh... those are good choices too!
Mrs. Tick would probably put my Neanderthal component somewhere in double digits... and swear to it in a court of law. :-)
Just saying that a Hispanic from Spain has far more in common with a Frenchman on the opposite side of the Pyrenees than with a Honduran of mainly Mayan descent. An Argentine of Italian descent has far more in common with Italy than with a Peruvian of mainly Incan descent.
So, yes, it has meaning for DNA and ancestry tracing purposes. But for governmental division purposes, it is indeed a social construct . . . and that's the context being discussed on this thread.
I’m not sure of the series of events concerning this case, but please consider the following points which question Supreme Court involvement in this case.
To begin with, the states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate or decide policy for any aspect of intrastate schools.
Also, the only race-based issue that the states have amended the Constitution to expressly protect is voting rights as evidenced by the 15th Amendment. So intrastate schools are free to discriminate on the basis of race imo, a state’s voters ultimately deciding the limits of racial policy.
Finally, if the feds are using the issue of the school (or students) possible receiving of federal funding to justify sticking their big noses into the school’s affairs, consider that the states have never constitutionally delegated to the feds the specific power to tax and spend for intrastate schooling purposes. And if such is the case, then vote-winning federal funding for the school was arguably stolen from the state in the first place by means of unconstitutional federal taxes, taxes which Congress cannot justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers.
Insights welcome.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.