“We Cannot Fight Fire with Fire”: Efforts to Ban Race-Based College Admissions

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | September 20, 2021 | Shannon Watkins

[karpov]

Currently, nine states prohibit colleges and universities from practicing race-conscious admissions. That number may soon become ten if a new bill in the North Carolina legislature is successfully adopted.

Public opinion polling shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose racial preferences in college admissions. Even in states dominated by the political left, citizens have made it clear that they prefer students be admitted into college based on merit, not based on the color of their skin. One person who can testify to this reality is Wenyuan Wu.

Wu is executive director of Californians for Equal Rights, which is a nonprofit in California dedicated to the principle of color-blind equal rights. Wu and her colleagues work to oppose legislative attempts to instate racial and gender preferences in government programs, including higher education.

In August, the Martin Center spoke with Wu to discuss why preferential treatment in admissions is a flawed policy, as well as states’ attempts to ban it. The transcription has been edited for clarity and length.

Advocates of race-conscious admissions say that such practices help close the enrollment and achievement gaps for minorities. Is that true, do minorities have better academic outcomes because of affirmative action?

Well, before I can definitively answer that question, I think we should, first and foremost, examine the meaning and historical evolution of affirmative action as a government policy. Affirmative action when it was first instituted as a federal policy, through president JFK’s executive order 10925 in March 1961, was supposed to be a policy to guide federal contractors and federal employees so that they take affirmative action to ensure that job applicants are employed and treated during the course of employment without regard to their race, color, creed, or national origin.

[Macoozie]

Then why ask the question on the Application?

Gender too, why ask?

And don’t say Goobermint Reporting.

If it shouldn’t matter, it shouldn’t matter.

But the new screech for “Equity” requires it.

Let it all burn.

[Joe Boucher]

Unless of course you are Asian as they do too well so Ivy schools have low quotas for them yet seek under preforming blacks?

[Soul of the South]

NC Governor Cooper (a Democrat) will veto the bill against racial preferences if the legislature passes it. The Republicans do not have the votes to overcome the veto.

[EQAndyBuzz]

Whether it is for a job application or college admissions or any other form which has race as a selection, I always choose African American. Freaks out Human Resources when you walk into an interview and they see you’re white.

[SunkenCiv]

California just got rid of the prohibition of race-based admissions.