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Nov 1, 2022·edited Nov 6, 2022Pinned

I'm really looking forward to seeing if the Supreme Court will overturn past precedent with their upcoming decisions in the Students for Fair Admissions cases against Harvard and UNC. At the risk of sounding like I'm tooting my own horn I can't help but notice that Asian Americans are at the vanguard of the defense of meritocracy in this country. Asian Americans played an outsized role in getting three former school board members recalled in San Francisco earlier this year after the board decided to focus on renaming schools and scrapping the merit-based entrance exam to Lowell High School instead of focusing on getting kids back to school during the pandemic. The new school board recently voted to reinstate the merit-based admissions system.

In Virginia, Asian Americans also played an outsized role in fighting back against the erosion of meritocracy both in Loudoun County and at Thomas Jefferson High School. In February of this year a federal judge ruled against the admissions changes at Thomas Jefferson finding that they were discriminatory in nature. The case is currently being appealed to the Fourth Circuit.

One of the more interesting but underdiscussed points was that the case against Harvard University by SFFA alleged that Harvard engaged in crude stereotyping of Asian Americans through the use of holistic admissions criteria. The very institutions that widely condemned Amy Wax for supposedly perpetuating negative stereotypes about Asian Americans engaged in the same behavior through their admissions processes. Hypocrisy indeed.

Despite the pushback against the anti-meritocratic ethos, I'm less confident than Glenn and John that long term victory is assured. I find that there's an increasing schism in the cultural mindset between immigrant groups and native-born Americans. The fact that Asian American immigrants are at the forefront of defending meritocracy in this country doesn't surprise me. Although polls do seem to suggest that the majority of Americans in both political parties are against outright race based affirmative action, when push comes to shove it's not clear to me the extent to which native born Americans are willing to fight in defense of an abstract principle at the expense of narrower group interests.

I should also add as an aside that the erosion of meritocracy and the increasing prevalence of cancel culture is manifesting itself in another manner not widely discussed on this blog. I've spoken out against the excesses of the recently ended China Initiative that targeted academics of Chinese descent purportedly out of a desire to root out espionage but ultimately prosecuting individuals mostly for administrative lapses such as failing to disclose ties to Chinese institutions. The LA Times recently published an op-ed pointing out that a growing number of Chinese academics were giving up their spots at American universities and returning to China in part based on no longer feeling safe working in this country. Academics of Chinese descent are at risk of being cancelled simply based on perceived ties to China regardless of whether or not anything legitimately untoward resulted from such connections. Given Glenn's strong opinions in defense of Asian Americans and school admissions, I'm curious what his thoughts are regarding the larger geopolitical forces at play.

One of the most monumental events in recent weeks was the Biden administration imposing sweeping controls on technological exports to the Chinese semiconductor industry. Not only did America sanction the selling of technology and tools to China, it even imposed restrictions on American citizens and green card holders being able to work for Chinese companies in the semiconductor sector. This suggests to me that the decoupling will not merely be technological in nature but will also apply to the realm of human capital. There were already calls by some politicians to ban Chinese nationals from studying STEM in the US and I imagine that if the Republicans take back the House and the Senate in the midterms as predicted that scrutiny of China and ethnic Chinese will only intensify. Personally, I’d put the odds at 50-50 as far as Chinese nationals being banned from studying STEM in the US in the next 5-10 years. This may very well have residual effects as far as DEI goes and I'm thinking back to Glenn's earlier conversation with Amy Wax about whether or not native born Americans might benefit from affirmative action at the graduate school level given the disproportionate presence of foreigners in many graduate programs in this country.

We live in truly interesting times.

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Next time your at the dmv and the only line moving is the one white guys who worked there and the 3 affirmative action black woman talking about getting they nails did while the lines they work only grow longer . Let me know then how great affirmative action is . I already know because I was in the line I just described

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I wouldn't fret too much about what you're "known for" vs. your actual expertise and life experience. Ordinary people don't read academic scholarship simply because it's above their heads, so if you weren't famous for race commentary, you probably wouldn't be famous for anything. You'd be well-known in your fields, but not known to the public.

Finding *any* sort of tipping point that gets you famous is very rare. Most authors never find a wide audience, and having a book in Barnes and Noble would be an impossible dream. John's memoir might be shelved in the wrong section, but it would sell to all sorts of people. And if any of them thought "Here is a Black book by an interesting Black person about being Black," the text of the book would contain all of the different dimensions you'd like to emphasize.

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Legally, there is no doubt that the plaintiffs deserve to win on the merits. Racial preferences in university admissions are a clear violation of the plain language of the Civil Rights Act. There is no other statutory or constitutional provision that would allow discrimination for "diversity" by any fair reading.

Indications are that there are enough justices ready to rule against preferences, so we can safely expect a ruling banning preferences as practiced by Harvard and UNC. It will be interesting to read the specifics - how broadly they rule, and what loopholes they leave.

Politically, preferences are opposed by large majorities of the population, across racial and party lines, so the population will generally approve the ruling.

University officials, and admissions officers in particular, will try to find ways to avoid applying the judgment. I expect they will simply change their evaluation procedures to make criteria more opaque, allowing them to reduce or eliminate quantifiable criteria like test scores, GPA, or class rank, while adding arbitrary "plus" factors for things like "overcoming adversity". They think they're doing God's work, and have a clearer moral vision than anyone who opposes them. They won't change their minds based on a Supreme Court decision.

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I consider it a net positive that Affirmative Action as a policy might be finally declared Unconstitutional after a half century in university admissions especially given how absurdly lopsided the entrance results have become between Asian and White applicants vs Black and Hispanic ones. That being said I think the university apparatus, in fact the entire Prussian Model Schooling apparatus, is entirely a goose that has been cooked to the point of being burnt.

The Marxist infiltration, out of control costs, massive administrative overbloat, the creation of what effectively amount to a class of secular temples that act as gatekeepers to Washington and New York elites that’ve parasitically hollowed out this entire country, and are now finally collapsing it in total, this whole thing has to go.

Jesse Kelly the Marine veteran and podcaster on YouTube, Twitter, on Tucker Carlson, and elsewhere have a very solid strong prescription. Take the top 10-20 universities that’ve been spewing every form of Communist garbage for generations, revoke the charters, seize the endowments, fire all the staff, demolish the buildings, and piss on the ashes. It sounds severe but that’s frankly far more preferable to continuing this dangerously unstable Communist Color Revolution.

The Tucker interview is on the same show Tucker Carlson Today that you were on which thank you for recommending btw phenomenal interview series well worth the subscription to Fox Nation just for that.

Directly related to this topic is John Taylor Gatto who also wrote a masterpiece work entitled The Underground History of American Education. I have the physical copy with the foreword by Dr. Ron Paul and it completely blew my lid.

It details how educated average Americans were as recently as 100 years ago with 5th graders reading the Bible, Shakespeare, Washington, Twain, Dickens, and more and how systematically after a century they can barely spell words like dog and cat.

Prussian Model Schooling is designed by default to completely brainwash young children and make them STUPIDER in order to make them COMPLAINT DRONES. This is the system of education/indoctrination that’s permeated the entirety of the West and by extension much of the rest of the world.

The homeschooling Revolution, independent learning pods, and more are all in part a direct reaction to this. PDF is well worth downloading, sharing, skimming, it’s definitely worth a read. Gatto himself was an award winning teacher who quit because in his words “he didn’t want to hurt kids for a living anymore.” Enjoy and prepare to have your mind blown 🤯 like I was.

https://archive.org/details/TheUndergroundHistoryOfAmericanEducation_758

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After 50 years of receiving preferential treatment, blacks need to be judged on their own merits and their actual performance. Those that can excel will do so without government interference.

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I would like proponents of a race-based preference system explain how such discrimination is okay is govt sanctions it, but a gross violation of the law otherwise. On what principle does that thought process rest?

At the Supreme Court this week, the Solicitor General made an astounding statement that was pretty much ignored. Using the military officer corps as an example, she called diversity a national security issue then added this part: this diversity cannot be attained in a purely merit-based admissions system. In other words, a senior official says that the position of the feds and one of the major parties is that certain minority groups cannot compete without govt putting its thumb on the scale. I wonder if there is a word for that type of attitude.

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Now if they will also declare all "affirmative action" unconstitutional, we can final begin to remove institutionalized racism from our laws.

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Affirmative Action is racist and sexist because it discriminates on the basis of race and sex. Pure and simple. Let’s eliminate racist and sexist laws and policies; or else admit that you endorse racism and sexist laws.

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Affirmative action is preferential treatment for certain protected identity groups. Our country was founded promising equal opportunity, not equal outcome. Is it truly reparations if the manufactured outcome comes at the expense of another, who had no personal involvement in the historical oppression of one’s identity group?

Making generalizations is the Democratic Party’s favorite political tactic. Ironically, this is the party that claims to reject stereotypes in favor of a humanitarian approach.

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Love you guys. You guys have the energy of a couple buddies grabbing beers hashing out life and the world's problems. That you happen to be highly accomplished and recognized leaders in your respective fields, as well as polymath breadth of knowledge, has so many of us tune in.

Remember the days when the library mailed us video lectures on DVD? Yup, that's when I stumbled across this McWhorter guy when I trying to add a bit of background for some natural language processing work. John made linguistics so very accessible. Also spun off a couple of investigatory threads for me into histories of European regional languages and formation of modern nation states. I now count phrases when in conversation with people to better understand where they are and what they are trying to say. Thanks McWhorter for starting a very enriching journey into linguistics.

Back to the DIE (Peterson's rearrangement which is more accurate and has a nice punch to it) and Affirmative action topic at hand. Your discussion is almost exactly the discussions we have had many times at the neighborhood craft cocktail lounge. We've watched systematic theft of contribution, promotion of weak people into management and decision making rolls solely based on race, and yes friends pushed out of their long time contributions to the company based solely due to racists policy. Just as with X Boi, these people usually "couldn't carry my jock strap".

When hiring interns, we are given a pool of social activists students lauded as "future business leaders" with no identifiable passion for the business at hand. Then if you bring in the interns, they spend their time ranking and rating the business groups to HR based on, drum roll please, propensity for promoting social activists into leadership positions. They know they're "special" and literally dare their managers to push them for output or even attendance.

Meanwhile our own children with stellar academics, clear passion for the chosen areas of study are offered minimal or no scholarships when they do gain admittance to the schools they would like to attend, and then are actively discriminated against by corporate America for low intersectionality scores.

To interject some McWhorter linguistics back into the discussion here, I now try to discern in conversations if we are using descriptive language "talking about", understanding language, execution language, or synthesizing language.

We have been systematically moving people into roles where they simply cannot operate successfully.

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Thank you Glenn and John, as always, for allowing myself and others to listen in on your conversations. As much as we often decry the impact of social media on our maturing(?) civilization, the fact we have this opportunity goes a long way toward justifying its existence.

Perhaps America can be saved after all. If it can, it will only be thanks to those individuals, like yourselves, who stood up when doing so was difficult and challenging, but also dangerous.

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Feels good! I have hope. Thanks for your contribution to the noble cause. Maybe one day we can actual work on the real causes for our social issues. Many of them you guys have discussed in the past.

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Glenn went hard in the paint there on Henry Rogers, and I could not agree more! :)

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Affirmative Action, or better what A.A. wants to achieve, should start at home, at kindergarten, in the primary schools. Looking at US history, who contributed what and what was received in return, neighborhoods of color should for the next 10-20 years get more money, to have the best schools ( also for blue collar jobs), the best after-school programs, the best teachers, etc. And soft loans to start a business. A lot of (much needed) talent gets lost, is probably lost already.

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Go GLENN! Letting loose about Kendi hopefully felt liberating. Could NOT agree more with all of this and more. Thank you, thank you, thank you to both you and John, + Kmele, Coleman, Bari and SO many others who've given me sanity and direction these last couple bats-ass crazy years.

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