{"id":18780,"date":"2023-07-01T23:59:28","date_gmt":"2023-07-02T09:59:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/?p=18780"},"modified":"2023-07-01T23:59:30","modified_gmt":"2023-07-02T09:59:30","slug":"conservative-scotus-teases-us-on-affirmative-action-racial-equality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/2023\/07\/01\/conservative-scotus-teases-us-on-affirmative-action-racial-equality\/","title":{"rendered":"Conservative SCOTUS Teases Us On Affirmative Action, Racial Equality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

by Emil Guillermo

<\/em>If you\u2019ve been following the Pro Publica reporting on Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and their failure to disclose being lavished with gifts from billionaire Republican donors, then you know at least one thing.

The judges, who make a base pay of around $285,000 believe in affirmative action for Supreme Court justices. At least on the basis of class, not race.

<\/em>Or are the gifts seen akin to a \u201cscholarship\u201d or a \u201cfellowship\u201d?

The only ship involved seems to be a yacht on which Thomas and his wife, Virginia \u201cGinni\u201d Thomas, spent nine days cruising Indonesia, a $500,000 vacation paid for by billionaire Harlan Crow.

So I guess the question is, do the justices, after they get theirs, believe in a little affirmative action for everyone else?

This is just one thing that\u2019s come out as the high court plays out its grand finale for the year, a final week of boom-boom-and-boom.

Yet to come this week, a decision on the Biden plan to forgive up to $10,000 in federal student loan debt for people with incomes below $125,000 a year. And then there\u2019s an\u00a0 LGBTQ rights case, where a Christian website designer refuses to do wedding websites for same-sex couples.

There already have been some surprising decisions considering the conservative bent of the court that has upheld the Voting Rights Act. The court ordered both Alabama and Louisiana to redraw maps to allow for greater black voter representation.

But, of course, the decision Asian Americans are waiting for is the one on Harvard and the University of North Carolina and the use of race in college admissions which could mean the end of what we know as \u201caffirmative action.\u201d

<\/em>This is a case where anti-civil rights advocates led by Ed Blum gathered up Asian Americans rejected by Harvard and then used them to claim the admissions process is discriminatory.

But it\u2019s the same admissions process that has also resulted in recent Harvard freshman classes nearly 30% Asian American.

<\/em>Someone send the aggrieved a reality check. It\u2019s OK to go to your backup school when your backup is Yale. Or Amherst. Or UCLA.

<\/em>But to Blum and anti-civil rights activists, the Asian American Aggrieved (the triple A\u2019s) was the \u201cperfect victim,\u201d providing a yellow face for whites like Blum trying to bring down affirmative action.

<\/em>I would like to see the high court send the case back to the lower court (which found for Harvard). Or maybe the high court could penalize Harvard for parts of its process, like the use of personality profiles.

But if the court bans the use of race, we already know what happens based on the experience of my home state, California.

In the most Asian state in the nation, we\u2019ve been rid of affirmative action since 1996, when the state passed a ballot initiative deceptively called \u201cThe Civil Rights Initiative.\u201d

<\/em>The underrepresented minority population in the state has gone up by 7.4%. But the college enrollment at the University of California Berkeley has only gone up 1.7%, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.CHE\u2019s analysis of the ten states that have banned affirmative action shows \u201cfive states saw a growing gap between their underrepresented-minority population and in-state underrepresented-minority enrollment at selective institutions. In three states, the gap shrank, and at two the gap stayed the same.\u201d

<\/em>You might say, the situation is still bad. But it\u2019s not the end of the world.

<\/em>We\u2019re still going to have to find a better way to assure equity.

<\/em>Especially when you consider the other result of banning affirmative action in California.

The Asian American numbers went way higher. It\u2019s up to 40% Asian American at some of the UC schools.

Now imagine that happens at Harvard, where the freshman class is already nearing 30%. If it goes up to 40% Asian? If whites, already in the 40% range drop to 30%, will Ed Blum be trolling for aggrieved whites to sue Harvard for letting in all the Asians that got in during this first prolonged lawsuit?

White supremacy has evolved into white preservation.

It\u2019s not like whites don\u2019t already benefit from affirmative action for legacies and high donors. Trump-in-law Jared Kushner got into Harvard after his father made a multi-million dollar donation to the school. That alone could be 30% of a freshman class.

What about all the poor whites that conservatives keep pining for?\u00a0 You know, the J.D. Vance\u2019s of the world who must have their Hillbilly epiphanies in Harvard Yard!

Let\u2019s face it.

White affirmative action has always been a thing. It just took Asian Americans to crack the process wide open and make us all see the reality.

And now we are left with our conservative judges poised this week to be the arbiters on affirmative action. But as I\u2019ve said. It won\u2019t be the last word.

BTW: The New York Times published an op-ed conversation recently, \u201cWhile We Wait for the Supreme Court.\u201d

I talk about it in Ep. 546 of Emil Amok\u2019s Takeout here. Also included my meditation on Vincent Chin 41 years after.

EMIL GUILLERMO<\/strong> is a journalist and commentator. Updates at\u00a0<\/em>www.amok.com<\/em><\/a>. Follow Emil on\u00a0<\/em>Twitter<\/em><\/a>, and like his\u00a0<\/em>Facebook<\/em><\/a>\u00a0page<\/em>.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Emil Guillermo If you\u2019ve been following the Pro Publica reporting on Supreme Court Justices…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[29,20],"tags":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/CP-SCOTUS-color_07012023.jpg?fit=677%2C866",677,866,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/CP-SCOTUS-color_07012023.jpg?resize=150%2C150",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/CP-SCOTUS-color_07012023.jpg?fit=235%2C300",235,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/CP-SCOTUS-color_07012023.jpg?fit=640%2C819",640,819,true],"large":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/CP-SCOTUS-color_07012023.jpg?fit=640%2C819",640,819,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/CP-SCOTUS-color_07012023.jpg?fit=677%2C866",677,866,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/CP-SCOTUS-color_07012023.jpg?fit=677%2C866",677,866,true],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/CP-SCOTUS-color_07012023.jpg?resize=677%2C800",677,800,true],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/CP-SCOTUS-color_07012023.jpg?resize=677%2C570",677,570,true],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/CP-SCOTUS-color_07012023.jpg?resize=600%2C866",600,866,true],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/CP-SCOTUS-color_07012023.jpg?resize=600%2C600",600,600,true],"covernews-slider-full":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/CP-SCOTUS-color_07012023.jpg?resize=677%2C715",677,715,true],"covernews-slider-center":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/CP-SCOTUS-color_07012023.jpg?resize=677%2C500",677,500,true],"covernews-featured":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/CP-SCOTUS-color_07012023.jpg?fit=677%2C866",677,866,true],"covernews-medium":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/CP-SCOTUS-color_07012023.jpg?resize=540%2C303",540,303,true],"covernews-medium-square":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/CP-SCOTUS-color_07012023.jpg?resize=375%2C250",375,250,true]},"author_info":{"info":["admin"]},"category_info":"Candid Perspectives<\/a> Featured<\/a>","tag_info":"Featured","comment_count":"0","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/CP-SCOTUS-color_07012023.jpg?fit=677%2C866","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18780"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18780"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18781,"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18780\/revisions\/18781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}