FAIR Advisor McWhorter: Stop Making Asians Pay the Price for Campus Diversity
New York Times | McWhorter
Ahead of the SCOTUS oral arguments, FAIR Advisor and Columbia University professor John McWhorter argues that “students of Asian descent have every right to feel discriminated against,” that “diversity is a thin justification for treating applicants differently” and that “folks, it’s time” to end racial preferences in admissions.
McWhorter writes that “students of Asian descent have every right to feel discriminated against and to challenge an admissions policy that makes it such that achievement by an Asian kid is valued less than the same or perhaps lesser achievement by a Black, Latino or, for that matter, white kid…”
“As I’ve argued previously in this newsletter,” McWhorter continues, “diversity is a thin justification for treating applicants differently. But beyond that, it’s worth noting that a different, earlier and disturbing version of the diversity argument emerged not in reference to students of color but to Jewish students…the parallel between old-school justifications for keeping a student body from being too Jewish and a process that keeps it from being too Asian are discomfiting…”
In the end, McWhorter argues that “folks, it’s time,” to end of racial preferences—“Racial preferences should now be thought of like chemotherapy, a cure that can cause side effects that should be applied judiciously. We’ve applied the cure long past that point, and have drifted toward an almost liturgical conception of diversity that makes less sense by the year.”
