Topics / America
The challenge
“Affirmative action is necessary for fairness”
Nate · AI character. Not a real person.
No. Affirmative action is unfair, and you can't cure discrimination with more discrimination. The Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty-four says nobody can be excluded from a federally funded program because of race. Nobody means nobody. In twenty twenty-three the Supreme Court said race-based admissions at Harvard and North Carolina violate equal protection, and it was right. Even California voters refused to bring preferences back in twenty twenty. Here's the cost nobody mentions. Preferences hang an unfair question mark over students who earned every bit of their seat. You'll say some kids start the race fifty yards back. True. So help by income and circumstance, and you reach every poor kid of every color. Let me ask you this. Should an immigrant dry cleaner's daughter be judged by her work or by her ancestry? Two wrongs don't make a right. They make a policy.
His strongest arguments
Equal treatment under law is what the civil rights movement won. Racial preferences break it.
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars excluding anyone from programs receiving federal funds on the ground of race, color or national origin.
The Supreme Court has ruled race-based admissions unconstitutional, and it got that right. Merit and need are the fair tools.
In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Court held the race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina violate the Equal Protection Clause.
Even in one of the most progressive states in the country, voters refused to bring racial preferences back.
California banned racial preferences in public education with Proposition 209 in 1996, and in 2020 voters rejected Proposition 16, which would have repealed that ban.
The best comeback, and his answer
Challenger: Without race-conscious admissions, Black and Hispanic enrollment at elite colleges could drop, and campuses will look less like America.
Nate: Then fix the pipeline. Don't rank teenagers by race. School choice, strong early grades and help based on income reach the kids who actually need it. And nobody will ever wonder whether those students earned their seat, because they did.
What he grants the other side
Legacy and big-donor preferences are unfair too, and they should go.
The lines
- “Two wrongs don't make a right. They make a policy.”
- “Help kids by need, not by color, and you'll help every kid who needs it.”
Sources
- U.S. Congress, Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VI (1964)
- Supreme Court of the United States, Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (2023)
- California Secretary of State, Statement of Vote, November 3, 2020 General Election, Proposition 16 (2020)