It’s an article of faith among the left that the West, especially the United States, is “institutionally racist”. This is almost a complete lie, of course: name one law or official policy that is actively racist. High rates of black incarceration don’t count: the laws are the same for every race — the only difference is the rate at which different races break the law.
But I say “almost”, because there is one institution in America which is undeniably institutionally racist: higher education.
Contrary to what the left would have us believe, though, the American college system is institutionally racist, not against blacks, but everyone else. The cause is the supposedly “anti-racist” cause celebre, affirmative action.
Affirmative action, according to the Legal Information Institute at Cornell, is defined as:
A set of procedures designed to; eliminate unlawful discrimination among applicants, remedy the results of such prior discrimination, and prevent such discrimination in the future.
Spoiler alert: affirmative action is perpetuating a great deal of racial discrimination.
In the Harvard lawsuit, the numbers show that Asian representation would be 50% higher if affirmative action were eliminated. In a 2009 Princeton study, Asian students were shown to be facing the odds three times more than similarly qualified white, six times more than similarly qualified Hispanics, and sixteen times as high as similarly qualified African-Americans.
Like the mythical blue-collar workers that the left imagine grumbling “der terk er jerbs!”, the academic left are in fact projecting their own prejudices. It’s the colleges grumbling that “them smart orientals er terkin’ er college places!”
Some universities, such as Harvard, apply something called a “personal quality” rating to applicants. Arguably subjective, the “personal quality” rating doesn’t have a set definition, to which we can only guess is what the admissions officers think the applicant’s personality traits are. I would imagine it’s something along the lines of looking at leadership capability, and sociableness, among other things. Not only are Harvard admissions officers ranking Asians lower on the personal quality scale, but their reasoning is due to the fact that their applications all look the same.
Yes: the “anti-racist” colleges are actually complaining that Asians “all look the same”. I’m not making this up.
According to Hunter College High School’s director of college counseling, admissions officers at elite universities often complain that Asian American applicants all look the same on paper. “When Harvard calls us back and gives us a brief synopsis of why certain [Asian] kids didn’t make it, they’ll say, ‘There were so many kids in the pool that looked just like this kid.’”
The Rabbit Hole
Drink that in, if you can: woke, elite universities complaining that Asians “all look the same”.
Now there’s some very, very real institutionalised racism for you.
Don’t expect BLM, the Democrats or the Hollywood elite to get all up in arms about it, though. It’s the sort of racism they approve of, after all.
