The Supreme Court handed down their decision regarding affirmative action policies by colleges and universities in their admissions policies. You may recall that this case involved Harvard University artificially reducing the number of Asian American students admitted to the university because they felt there were too many Asian Americans being admitted. Because academic achievement was the primary factor in determining admission to Harvard, Asian Americans generally had higher testing scores, GPAs, and class ranks as compared to other demographic groups. Harvard was specifically concerned about African Americans.

The court essentially said that we cannot move beyond bigotry and racism by promoting preferential treatment as required by affirmative action policies. We have to get beyond identifying people by demographic characteristic. Our constitution guarantees that we are treated equally under the law and that law must be colorblind. People forget that the majority of our civil rights legislation requires people to be colorblind and base policies upon relevant skills or abilities.

Harvard and other universities have already come up with a plan to bypass this decision. All academic requirements will be eliminated from the admissions process. No longer will they consider the SAT or ACT tests, class rank, or GPA in determining whether an applicant is deserving of admission to the university. Even though universities like Harvard created the testing system in order to determine the level of knowledge a potential student possessed they now believe those tests to be racist. Colleges and universities wanted to build upon a strong foundation of educational knowledge that a student possessed. They did not want to spend their time on remedial education but now that will be exactly what they have to do.

Their admissions policies will be purely subjective in order to provide equitable treatment of what they see as oppressed minority groups. If their stated goal was to be truly reflective of our society in their admissions process wouldn't their student body reflect what America looks like? There would be more white students. I have not looked at the numbers recently but Hispanic population in America may have overtaken the African American population as the largest minority, yet Harvard does not give them preferential treatment like they do to the African American community. I guess they see the African American community as more deserving of preferential treatment. What about the Native American or Asian communities in this country? Shouldn't the student population accurately reflect a similar percentage?

We are going to see more and more students fail, especially in academic institutions that have long held a reputation for providing a high quality education. They will be admitted to universities without the skills to be able to succeed. They will fail and in today's world many of these kids will not endeavor to persevere. I'm sure some of them will be offended and claim some kind of discrimination for their failure rather than looking for other avenues in which to pursue their dreams. And I worry about the quality of education especially in areas such as medicine, engineering, and education. How many bridges and buildings will now be designed poorly or how many doctors will not be able to provide a level of care to their patients that we have come to expect? How many teachers will not be able to present the subject matter in a way that students can learn?

Rather than accepting the decision and trying to understand the reasoning, the opponents of the decision are claiming victim status. The Supreme Court is racist and bigoted. The decision does not reflect the reality of our world—a world that has been created by these very same people because of the soft bigotry of low expectations. Hopefully there will be colleges and universities that continue to require a base level of knowledge in order to be admitted but I doubt it. Outside of a few places like Hillsdale. In the future I will be asking my doctor where they studied and when they graduated. I would also like to see signs on bridges and buildings that told me the name of the engineer and from which university they received their degree. This is the world in which we live now.