Education / Schools

Trump Reverses Obama Guidance On Affirmative Action, As The White Supremacist Takeover Continues Apace

To be honest, I'm surprised it took them this long to do this.

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(ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

Affirmative Action has been the most successful civil rights program in the history of America, unless you include shooting 1860s-era slavers in the stomach — which was also “successful” but somewhat uncivilized. Affirmative Action has blunted the effectiveness of the racially biased tests that have been used to exclude African Americans from educational opportunities. Affirmative Action has forced white people to go to school with minority students, in a way mere “desegregation” has never quite achieved. Affirmative Action has helped a few extremely privileged people of color break into the “old-boys network,” become Republicans and enjoy the benefits of turning against their race.

So, of course, the Trump administration wants to take it away. I wouldn’t say that every person who opposes affirmative action is a white supremacist (some people are just stupid and resistant to knowledge), but certainly every white supremacist opposes affirmative action. As we’ve elected a white supremacist despot, this “news” is the most obvious thing of all. From the New York Times:

The Trump administration will encourage the nation’s school superintendents and college presidents to adopt race-blind admissions standards, abandoning an Obama administration policy that called on universities to consider race as a factor in diversifying their campuses, Trump administration officials said.

The reversal would restore the policy set during President George W. Bush’s administration, when officials told schools that it “strongly encourages the use of race-neutral methods” for admitting students to college or assigning them to elementary and secondary schools.

Frankly, I’m surprised it took them this long.

This change, this “reversal of guidance” isn’t even that big of a deal. We’re just going back to the way things were under George W. Bush, not Woodrow “you know I’m a stone racist, right” Wilson.

We’re just back to one of the most frustrating logical inconsistencies of the anti-Affirmative Action crowd: when considering the full experience of an applicant, you can look at everything EXCEPT FOR race. If the kid played Othello in the school play, admissions committees can consider that, but if the kid overcame 500 years of slavery and oppression to score one point less on an admissions test… well considering that is frowned upon.

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Really, the Trump administration is just throwing a bone to the many racist universities who don’t think diversity is important and would like to admit the whitest class it can get. This reversal helps freaking Baylor, it’s not going to stop Harvard. The Harvard admissions committee is more than capable of saying “Oh, his name is LeShaun and he played OTHELLO… okay, got it.”

The real threat to affirmative action isn’t coming from Betsy freaking DeVos, it’s coming from the next white person Trump appoints to the Supreme Court. That’s how they’re coming for Harvard:

Now, affirmative action is at a crossroads. The Trump administration is moving against any use of race as a measurement of diversity in education. And the retirement of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy at the end of this month will leave the court without its swing vote on affirmative action and allow President Trump to nominate a justice opposed to a policy that for decades has tried to integrate elite educational institutions.

A highly anticipated case is pitting Harvard against Asian-American students who say one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions has systematically excluded some Asian-American applicants to maintain slots for students of other races. That case is clearly aimed at the Supreme Court.

Most of the consternation around the next Supreme Court justice focuses on the coming clawback of women’s reproductive rights. That will almost certainly happen, but there is at least some hope that white women will band together and defend their rights to their own bodies with everything they have.

Most of those very same white women will actively oppose affirmative action. Which is ironic because affirmative action helps white women more than any other group. They don’t know who their friends are.

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The disconnect arises because white women produce white sons. And as those sons grow into mediocre white young men — the kind of guy without the chops to play Iago but are pretty enough to stand there like a dumbstruck Cassio — their mothers become very concerned about their futures.

“If it wasn’t for affirmative action, my kid would have gotten into Princeton.”
“Where does he go to school?”
“Rutgers.”
“[Somebody get this white woman out of my face before I make her go viral] Oh. So, are you a Giants house or a Jets house?”

Affirmative Action works. So of course they’re going to take it away.

[Wo]Men in rage strike those that wish them best. — Iago

Trump Administration Reverses Obama on Affirmative Action [New York Times]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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