Scholars from coast to coast expect the Senate Judiciary Committee to confirm U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh – and they expect him to help end affirmative action by ruling against it in cases that reach the high court.
Affirmative action programs and policies, enacted by U.S. public and private institutions dating back to the 1960’s, have always been controversial, dividing the public and politicians as they grant some preference to Blacks, women and other groups to remedy past discrimination and counter continuing discrimination.
The Supreme Court recently has upheld the use of race as one factor among others in college admissions decisions. However, many scholars believe the U.S. Senate will confirm Kavanaugh and that affirmative action is likely to be struck down with him joining four other apparently like-minded justices on the bench, including Chief Justice John Roberts.
The recent lawsuit against Harvard University’s affirmative action program on behalf of Asian American students who allege it discriminates against them doesn’t reflect the reality of the majority of Asian students, who are not people of means and stand to lose if the Supreme Court with Kavanaugh ends affirmative action, said Dr. David E. Lee, who teaches political science at San Francisco State University and is director of APASS summer bridge and AANAPISI grant programs at Laney College in the Peralta Community College District.
More than half of Asian-diaspora students in the United States attend community colleges and the vast majority attend public schools, while those at Laney make up 30 percent of the student population and tend to be low-income, first-generation, food-insecure and housing-insecure and speak English as a second language, Lee said.
“Our population is the farthest thing from the model minority. It’s anything but ‘Crazy Rich Asians,’” he said, invoking the name of a movie currently in theaters.
Racial diversity has declined measurably at many colleges in California since 1996, when the state legislature passed Proposition 209, which bars state governmental institutions from considering race and other factors in public education, employment and contracting. The decline in percentages of minorities is likely to continue with a more conservative high court, even though Whites are a minority and Hispanics are the plurality in the minority-majority state, Lee said.
