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Earlier, by Peter Brimelow (Forbes, 1993): When Quotas Replace Merit, Everybody Suffers
[Adapted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively on VDARE.com]
Monday this week the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases concerning Affirmative Action in college admissions.
The plaintiff in the case is a nonprofit called Students For Fair Admissions, which wants race preferences declared unconstitutional.
There are two defendants: the University of North Carolina, which is a public college, and Harvard University, which bills itself as a private college, although they of course get big subsidies indirectly from the public purse via research grants and student loans.
At one further remove, in fact, Harvard benefits financially from our government’s extremely lax policies on issuance of visas to foreign students, which doesn’t get talked about half as much as it should.
In the absence of a wide public acceptance of race realism, of which I see no sign at all, the Affirmative Action issue cannot be resolved in any satisfactory way. When your enemy is reality you may have the spirit, the support, and the money to keep fighting indefinitely, but you can never attain victory.
Nineteen years ago I published a review of Peter Wood’s book Diversity: The Invention of a Concept. In that review I said the following thing:
The real dilemma facing America is that we can have a meritocracy, or we can have equal outcomes by ancestry group, but, unless the information now coming in by every post from the human sciences is all utterly wrong, we cannot have both.
But both, of course, is exactly what we insist on having, and diversity is our current attempt at squaring this unhappy circle.
[E Pluribus Plurimum, The New Criterion, March 2003]
Nothing I’ve seen, heard, or read in the nineteen years since I wrote that has given me any reason to change my opinion. Nor have I seen any mathematically sound proof that circles can be squared. The issue is just intractable.
We may dream of the issue being resolved, and I do.
I have a dream today, brothers and sisters—I have a dream! I have a dream that one day our freedom of association in the private sphere will be restored. That would involve the repeal of so-called Civil Rights laws so I’m not holding my breath; but I have a dream!
I have a dream that a hurricane of reform will sweep through the whole stinking, corrupt apparatus of higher education. Get government out of the game as far as possible. The only area where it seems to me it’s not possible is key disciplines of direct public consequence, disciplines like medicine, engineering, and law. Enrolment in those disciplines should be rigorously meritocratic, enforced by government authorities.
(In the case of law, if they were so we would have been spared the spectacle of Justice Sotomayor, in Monday’s hearing, revealing that she does not know the meaning of the phrase de jure.)
In a discussion over affirmative action, Sotomayor ironically shows she doesn't know the basic difference between "de facto" and "de jure."
It's not a slip of the tongue, they go back and forth, Alito tries to correct her and she proceeds to make the same mistake. pic.twitter.com/6RjJR1FfSz
— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) November 1, 2022
Elsewhere let universities enroll whoever they like: legacies, athletes, blacks, whites, Asians,… hey. Freedom Of Association!
Students who need loans should get them in the private sector, like anyone else wanting a loan. Researchers in need of government grants should resign from the academy and take public employment. Public spending on scientific research is a public good; the researchers should be public employees.
That’s just dreaming, though. What the Supremes actually decide will not be vouchsafed to us until next year—probably at the end of the current term in June.
What will the decision look like? For sure it won’t impose meritocratic rigor on college admissions. The issues of legacy and athletic admissions aside, meritocratic rigor would see elite colleges with massive overrepresentation of Asians and massive underrepresentation of blacks.
In today’s USA that is simply unthinkable.
It follows that the court decision must be some kind of fudge, as all previous SCOTUS rulings on Affirmative Action have been. Given the known dispositions of the current nine justices, their ruling will make it more difficult for college admissions officers to practice race preferences—more difficult but not impossible. There will be enough cracks and fissures in the ruling for colleges to keep race preferences alive in them by subterfuge, dishonesty, and the copious use of weasel words like “holistic.“
I’ll just close here with some reading recommendations. The foundational text on Affirmative Action skepticism is Ron Unz’s long essay “The Myth of American Meritocracy,“ published at the Unz Review just ten years ago this month. Not only is it foundational to this topic, it is also an outstanding masterpiece of quantitative journalism.
It is long, though—longer than the Second Book of Chronicles, longer than any of the Gospels.
Ron posted an updated and much shorter version the other day, only a wee bit longer than Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians; and our own James Fulford published a crisp summary of Ron’s work the same day here at VDARE.com. See Great Replacement At Harvard: Non-Jewish White Enrollment Down To Under 10%—Less Than Jews, Less Than Blacks or look at this chart:
John Derbyshire [email him] writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets. (This no longer includes National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him.) He is the author of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books. He has had two books published by VDARE.com com: FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT (also available in Kindle) and FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT II: ESSAYS 2013.
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Affirmative Action on the Supreme Court does NOT include Justice Thomas.He has been a giant.
If more Jews are enrolled in Harvard than people of white European (American ?) ancestry then it’s de facto evidence of Jewish supremacism. It’s similar to the critical sectors of the rest of US society in that Jews make sure that Jews get preferential advancement.
So when the issue of “White Supremacy” is raised the obvious reply is “Don’t you mean Jewish Supremacy?”
As I wrote, my opinion differs.
Affirmative action should continue, simply because of social stability. It should depend of size of ethnic/racial groups, factoring in cognitive ability of some visible in-groups:
White Gentiles- 50-60%
Jewish Jews – 5-10%
Asians- 10-15%
Blacks- 5-10%
Mestizo Hispanics- 10-15%
“Public spending on scientific research is a public good.”
Perhaps you mean in the economists’ sense of the term. Thus gain-of-function research can be a public good, even if it leads to a human holocaust, as long as the methods and results are freely published. Betcha the gof research that US taxpayers fund in China is not freely published.
Presumably much scientific research performed in US government labs is not freely published. So it’s not a public good either.
If what you mean is merely ‘public spending on scientific research is a jolly good thing’ the answer is ‘it all depends.’
Yep. With 26% of the Harvard student body Jewish, the number of Tribe is thirteen times their 2% share of the population.
Seems to me that any real affirmative action program based on population share would require Harvard to kick out the vast majority of Jews to make room for more Negroes…
What a disgrace. They could wrap this up next week, but even at the highest level, lawyers can’t stand to leave money on the table. Continuances, appeals, delays, hearings, depositions, all designed to milk the clents for more fees.
Try getting a speeding ticket reduced to a non moving violation without a lawyer ( at least in Missouri), prosecutor will not talk to you. Pay a scrub lawyer $300 and automatically the ticket is changed to “faulty brakes.” Every decision of judges and lawyers: does this add to the pool of legal fees?
Average time between arrest and trial is over 1 year. Judges, defense lawyers, prosecutors are not the least concerned about providing a speedy trial or the fading of witness memories. Its all about the fees. What a bunch of parasites.
The Jew thing is largely cultural. Jews are far more likely to raise kids in a tightly wound household than a hillbilly WASP or nigrah transported to the North. Those are cultural things – but, as in “cultural” not 100%. So I can imagine why Jews are somewhat more likely than white trash to get into name brand colleges. On the other hand, I’ve seen Jews get slapped down in the admissions offices of med and engineering schools, places in which this goy was intimately involved. I also quit that scene when affirmative action went steroidal 30 years ago once feminazis gained full control. It’s that XX gene that wants it both ways, irregardless, in case you’re vague on the origin of this shit.
Isn’t there an F-ball game on? Turn it on and sit that white sonny down in front of it to insure he develops an interest in “boyish” things….
And for petesakes, don’t come cryin’ to me.
Very much in agreement with Mr. Derbyshire. My motto is, “Discrimination is a human right.” Restore freedom of association in the private sphere and reduce the public sphere as much as possible.
The old time segregationists were right, all along. Coming of age in the era of (forced) “civil-rights (for some)”, I predicted what the results would be decades and generations down the road.
I KNEW that government-backed and forced integration would not last. I expected government-forced and backed integration to be over by now, but was off by a few decades. Finally, there are cracks forming in the forced integration movement–a good sign.
Of course, most whites have been brainwashed by the “civil-rights (for some)” movement for generations and still insist that voluntary segregation should be “illegal”.
When I see these well-meaning, but misguided whites complain about segregated college dorms, meetings and other spaces and events deemed “for people of color (only)”, I think to myself, “what the hell is wrong with you?”
Voluntary segregation should not only be tolerated, but encouraged FOR ALL.
If voluntary segregation was the norm, us whites could be properly warned about businesses, institutions, and even areas where we are not welcome. “People of color” would actually be doing us whites a favor by letting us know where we are not wanted. Of course, us whites could reciprocate and inform certain “people of color” where ((they)) are not welcome, as well.
Present-day examples exist today, although unwittingly…Most whites are aware that any street, avenue, or boulevard names after “Martin Luther (Michael) King” are areas for whites to stay away from.
That being said, whether governments or (jew civil-rights troublemakers) want it or not, voluntary racial segregation IS the wave of the future.
True “freedom of association” for all must be the goal…
Jews can pay bigger bribes because they are richer and more connected…Smart white kids can’t compete with the cheating Asians and the 500% overrepresented (computer analysis) Jewish population, even when they have the highest test scores…
Affirmative action and censorship go hand in hand…Together, they are cultural and national suicide…
Except they weren’t segregationist at all. Not when yoy let them in to make your beds and spit in your food.
“(In the case of law, if they were so we would have been spared the spectacle of Justice Sotomayor, in Monday’s hearing, revealing that she does not know the meaning of the phrase de jure”
Sotomayor has been going into her favorite dirty spoon in Washington, DC for 20 years and always asks the waiter which soup he recommends, the de jour soup or the de facto soup. He always recommends the de facto soup because it’s cheaper to make, taking everything that’s left on dirty plates and boiling them into an unidentifiable goop. Since she loves the de facto soup so much she’s always assumed the two terms were restaurant terms.
Re: MIT and CalTech…..Jews aren’t nearly as interested in Science as they were in the days when Feynman roamed the halls of the latter. It’s all Finance and Law……I bet even Medicine has declined.
The JQ Derb. The WORLD is breathlessly awaiting your opinion. You can get back the articles you have been re-writing for 25 years, after.
Yes bring back FOA. We still have it in our private homes. You can refuse anyone entrance to your home for any reason. But we don’t have it in private businesses even though that is YOUR money on the line there.
Libs know if we allowed FOA in private businesses every store in america would ban these thieving blacks. Even black run businesses would do itl
FOA in govt agencies however is a bad idea. They should be open to everyone.
I was puzzled with the square circle phenomenon until Monday September 10, 2001—it was the Towers of Doom versus Mankind and The Undertaker —towers lost –life went on- referee Marvin Bush,
John
The Han in America and the Hindu in America are voting Native White Working Class Americans into a violently persecuted white racial minority within the borders of America.
And this is a direct consequence of the passage of the THE 1965 IMMIGRATION REFORM ACT=THE PASSAGE OF THE NONWHITE LEGAL IMMIGRANT INCREASE ACT….
This is the framework underlying your comment…..nothing else:‘NONWHITE VOTING BLOC RACE POWER!!!!!
This is all that has to be talked about…nothing else.
Inlet Seafood out in Montauk is very nice…take your wife and grandkids there…..
With science it doesn’t matter whether you studied in the US, Germany, USSR, …
With professional subjects, trade union attitudes among professional associations can make it difficult to work in one country when you qualified in another.
In law specifically, having studied and qualified in a non-Common Law system is pretty much worthless if you want to practice in the USA. (Would Louisiana be an exception?)
“But we don’t have it [FOA] in private businesses even though that is YOUR money on the line there.”
You could do it de facto (are you listening, Wise Latina?) by, say, having large German Shepherds leashed outside the store as “Welcome Dogs” and inside, play only country music and classical on the sound system. Have a large terrarium in the center of the store filled with snakes. There are other methods like these that I’ve heard about but can’t remember. But there’s all sorts of atmospherical things you can do to black-proof your business.
Thomas was chosen over far more qualified White candidates because he was one of the few dark skinned judges at the time who were close to originalist. If he’d been Pale-skinned, he’d be a traffic court judge somewhere in Georgia. That being said, he’s been consistent as a judge who reads the Constitution honestly. Much better than Reagan’s other affirmative action pick, Sandra O’Connor.
A constitution should be written for the layman – technical legal notions should be avoided wherever possible. The US Constitution seems to me to fulfil that requirement.
Consequently a man of the standard required to be “a traffic court judge somewhere in Georgia” should be well suited to the job if he brings intellectual honesty and diligence to the task.
“””A constitution should be written for the layman – technical legal notions should be avoided wherever possible. The US Constitution seems to me to fulfil that requirement.”””
Then you end up with ambiguity and the supreme court rewrites the constitution and calls it a new interpretation.
The 2A is a good example. What does “arms” mean ? Or “keep and bear”?
What use is the GOP if they don’t pass legislation to make affirmative action explicitly illegal? Biden would veto but that would be a good campaign talking point for the 24 GOP nominee.
You are retarded.
Naw….that would be following the Constitution; and well…; well we can’t be doin’ that don’t ya know.
https://vdare.com/radio-derb/election-non-fever-collective-crime-nesia-and-squaring-the-affirmative-action-circle-etc
https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/RadioDerb/2022-11-04.html
“You are retarded.”
No he isn’t.