The Hardship Olympics
with John McWhorter
John and I have been longtime advocates of ending racial preferences in affirmative action. Now that the Supreme Court has taken momentous action on that front, we’re left asking what the next step is. In this clip from our most recent conversation, John and I talk about the accusation that African American critics of affirmative action are “pulling the ladder up behind us” and how universities may still find workarounds to maintain their preferred ideas about campus “diversity.”
This is a clip from the episode that went out to paying subscribers on Monday. To get access to the full episode, as well as an ad-free podcast feed, Q&As, and other exclusive content and benefits, click below.
I get the argument, but just like most other arguments from the race and gender cult, it’s simplistic, and lacks the nuance and consideration that SHOULD accompany an assault on one’s character. It is unsurprising to see, and boring to consider. This is a hallmark of the left now. Just blather on and on about injustice but don’t dare ask for salience, a cogent argument or an explanation of the opposition’s grievance. Good thing those Ivy League schools have endless supplies of weak minded apparatchiks in training so they can continue to charge a premium to make the richest of our youth dumber than ever. Should work out really well for the US in the long run.
Loury – hardship Olympics. Loury and McWhorter are correct to point out the degree to which admissions has come to focus on victimhood rather than excellence. The mission of the university is the pursuit of academic excellence. It may be argued that diversity contributes to the realization of broad societal goals relating to societal excellence. But these are not academic excellence, which is the mission of the school, but rather represent social engineering according to extralegal mandates with the amorphous goal of ‘social justice’, which everyone is for but which escapes definitive formulation, has a lot of moving parts, is an unsettled branch of study.
As to ‘legacy’: Private schools and public schools are different animals in respect to degree of autonomy of policy. If a private university chooses to be an old boys club, so be it. As a competitive institution, a sense of tradition and continuity within ivy covered walls may be attractive to many, whether teachers or students. If too clubby, however, the institution may achieve the status of irrelevancy, and things move on.