The Young Fisher and the “Sea”
In my previous article, I surveyed the brewing storm of Asian discrimination in the tea cup of Harvard and the Ivy League Schools. In this follow-up article, I’ll use the impending Supreme Court Fisher II case on December 9 to discuss the broader issue of racial discrimination in college admission.
In Hemingway’s “the Old Man and the Sea”, the old man went far out to sea, fought first with a giant marlin, and then circling sharks, and he kept on fighting and fighting, and finally came home with nothing but a giant fish skeleton. Today we have young Abigail Fisher, who is a Caucasian female, fighting in a turbulent sea of “Affirmative Action” against a gigantic fish called “University of Texas” and also all the legal or special interest group sharks circling around. This legal battle has been stretching out for 8 years (!), and now we have Fisher II, round two, in front of our Supreme Court. Will Fisher prevail in this opaque sea of “Affirmative Action” now so cleverly renamed “Diversity”? Will Fisher prevail against her giant marlin? Perhaps we’ll know on Wednesday. But Ms. Abigail Fisher, in my mind, you are already a winner whether you bring down that gigantic fish or not.
Plenty of trees have been cut down for amicus briefs, and plenty of ink has been spilled on the case. But are we any closer to decipher the Rorschach inkblots? Are we finally closer to the shore of truth and reconciliation? Before I go on, here is my disclaimer that I am not a lawyer and not the best person to offer legal opinions on the case. (Anyway, schools of legal sharks have picked the bones pretty clean here on this Marlin.) And I am also no ideologue, neither left nor right. So all I am going to ask here are basic common sense questions.
1. What is THE most important function of a university or college? Isn’t a university or a college supposed to deliver the best education available to the most qualified students? If not, then why do we need all those universities and colleges? Or maybe we should re-classify them, perhaps more accurately, as social re-engineering experimental factories? And for anyone who is interested in such social re-engineering, please do keep in mind most of these institutions receive federal and state grants, i.e., money from tax payers like you and me.
2. What is diversity anyway and which diversity? Let me be very clear — I am all for diversity. But I don’t know if I really understand what this sacrosanct diversity encompasses in the name of our hollowed political orthodoxy. Should diversity include skin color? Yes, of course! So how about religious beliefs and atheism? And how about socioeconomic backgrounds? How about sexual orientation? …… If we should include skin color, then by logic and by derivation, we should also include all those other factors that are perhaps also underrepresented in one way or another. How about let’s assign a percentage to each one of them to make them equally represented? Can you do that, Justice Sotomayor as you seem to be most interested in the vexing issue of underrepresentation? And by the way, Justice Sotomayor, do you realize that certain racial groups are shockingly underrepresented in the NBA? And since the NBA has a much broader social impact than elite colleges, shouldn’t we also impose some quota-based racial diversity to the NBA? And maybe we could have more Jeremy Lins by doing so, or maybe doing so would be a real insanity for an elite institution like the NBA?
3. What does ethnicity mean in today’s America anyway? President Obama is half black and half white. My kids are half Chinese and half Scottish. Mark Zuckerberg’s new baby is half Jewish and half Chinese. Isn’t that the beauty of this country, multi-colored and multi-hued? America is supposed to be this unique melting pot that unites people from different places, with different backgrounds, not divides them into balkanized tribes. So is President Obama less qualified, compared to an African American who is 80% black? And Justice Sotomayor, if we really want to do “racial preference”, isn’t it really important that we do it accurately? For example, I had a good friend back when I was at Berkeley who is white but also has some Cherokee blood. So how about we require DNA testing for all college applicants and calculate each person’s ethnic mix and perhaps assign points depending on the mix? For example, President Obama should only get 0.5 points on being black, while an African American who is 80% black gets 0.8 points?
4. And what about fairness and equality for all? If we are to read the Declaration of Independence, by which this nation was founded, and according to which our Constitution should be interpreted, there is this most fundamental principle that all men are equal, “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” And yes, I agree that our nation has done terrible wrongs to the African American group in this country in the past. But in today’s day and age, should we institutionalize another kind of racism, albeit with good intentions, for college education? And should we create a new legalized discrimination and injustice on our kids who have nothing to do with past injustice and who worship LeBron James (King James) and Kobe Bryant etc.? When Justice Sotomayor took that Princeton University admission spot because of Affirmative Action, did she squeeze out another kid who was equally or perhaps more deserving? Was that fair to that kid who got pushed out? And perhaps that kid could be sitting on the Supreme Court bench today, interpreting our Constitution as is written, rather than adding his or her own coloring?
5. And after all the social re-engineering, do we really have (intellectual) diversity on campus? In previous cases, the Supreme Court has ruled unequivocally that a racially based quota system is illegal, and that while race may be considered for the purpose of intellectual existential or experiential diversity (whatever that means), the race factor should not be a predominant factor. But are we getting that intellectual diversity today? With the recent agitation of student protests on college campuses, where some students feel that their freedom of speech should deprive other people’s freedom of speech, where political correctness should suffocate intellectual diversity, is diversity really just skin-deep? So I don’t know which is better — a college campus playing “Animal House” in which we have a bunch of wild, free-spirited animals or “Animal Farm” on which “all animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than the others.”
I think we should help kids who work hard and who have true socioeconomic needs. But I am against all discrimination, not matter in whatever fancy form (“holistic” anyone?). Two generations ago, many immigrants had to “Americanize” or Anglicize their ethnic last names to avoid ethnic discrimination (for example Eastern European immigrants, Jews, and other ethnic groups). So should I ask the court to change my last name from Shen to Sheen so that my kids will have a better chance to get into the Ivy League schools (see the preceding article)? Chief Justice Roberts wrote in 2007 on the PICS case, “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” I’ll say Amen to that. And sometimes the truth is so painfully simple.
So let’s save our kids from institutionalized discrimination whether it is backward or forward discrimination, whether it is affirmative or reverse discrimination. Let’s not monkey around with those innocent kids and harm them. And let’s not give up our kids, through no fault of their own, as the innocent lambs to feed to the hungry werewolf that is the howling political orthodoxy today. It is high time we stop that Orwellian absurdity and nightmare. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once told us all so eloquently and so sonorously, our “children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” So let’s build this America with equality to all, and let’s make that dream come TRUE!
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