"The case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court, involving racial double standards in admissions to the University of Texas at Austin, has an Alice-in-Wonderland quality that has been all too common in other Supreme Court cases involving affirmative action in academia, going all the way back to 1978.Plain hard facts dissolve into rhetorical mysticism in these cases, where evasions of reality have been the norm.
One inconvenient reality is that racial double standards by government institutions are contrary to the "equal protection of the laws" prescribed by the 14th Amendment to the constitution.
Therefore racial double standards must be called something else -- whether "holistic" admissions criteria or a quest for the many magical benefits of "diversity" that are endlessly asserted but never demonstrated.
Such mental gymnastics are not peculiar to the Supreme Court of the United States.
I encountered the same evasive language in other countries with group preference programs, during the years when I was doing research for my book "Affirmative Action Around the World."
This was one of the sadder examples of the brotherhood of man.
When the courts in India tried to rein in some of the more extreme group quota policies in academia, that only inspired more ingenuity by university officials, who came up with more subjective admissions criteria.
At one medical school in India's state of Tamil Nadu, those criteria included extracurricular activities, "aptitude" and "general abilities" -- as determined by interviews that lasted approximately three minutes per applicant.
The ratings on these vague, wholly subjective criteria could then be used to offset some students' academic deficiencies, and thus preserve group quotas de facto.Another common feature of group preference policies in various countries in different parts of the world is the illusion that these preferences can be confined to some transitional time period, after which the preferences will fade away..."
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