It’s a Beautiful Day in America
I’m thankful for the wisdom of our founders, for our nation’s colorblind Constitution, and for so many Americans who have fought for equal protection for all.
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Last January, when I was doing interviews about the San Francisco School Board recall campaign, I met a young woman named Allene Jue. She is the daughter of Chinese immigrants. From the time Jue was born until she was six, her family of four crammed into single-room occupancy (SRO) housing in Chinatown.
SROs are one-room housing units, typically less than 100 square feet. Online photos show an SRO unit is so small that it barely fits in a bed and a small table. Since there is no private kitchen or bathroom, occupants on the same floor have to wait for their turns to cook a meal or take a shower. SROs are usually where low-income seniors, blue-collar workers, and new immigrants call home. As of 2022, about 15,000 Chinatown residents live in SROs.
Jue’s family is one of those typical new immigrant families. Jue’s dad worked as a cook, and her mom had multiple jobs, including hotel housekeeper. None of them speak much English, but they emphasized the importance of education to Jue and her brother. Joe attended Lowell High School, the best high school in the city and known for its academic rigor. From there, Jue went to college, and today she is an executive at a fintech company. Her experience is not an outlier. For immigrant children from low-income families, education was the only way to escape poverty and reach for the American dream.
The woke left who calls Asian Americans privileged and “white adjacent” probably has never set foot in an SRO unit. Yet they insist elite colleges should deny admission to Asian students like Jue because of race.
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that race-based college admission is unconstitutional. As I read the court opinion, I couldn’t stop thinking about immigrant children still living in SRO housing. Their future became brighter because our nation has taken an important step towards becoming a truly colorblind society.
According to Chief Justice Roberts, who wrote the opinion on behalf of the majority, both Harvard and UNC’s race-based admission violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause’s twin commands that "race may never be used as a "negative" and that it may not operate as a stereotype." Yet, to limit the number of Asian students admitted, the Harvard admission office always "rated Asian-American applicants lower than others on traits like ‘positive personality,’" likability, courage, kindness, and being "widely respected... often without even meeting them." These low personal ratings reflect and reinforce historical stereotypes of Asian Americans. Harvard’s consideration of race has also led to an 11.1% decrease in the number of Asian-Americans admitted to Harvard.
Justice Roberts concludes, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it… The student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race…Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity isn't challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. This Nation’s constitutional history doesn't tolerate that choice.”
Justice Thomas didn’t mince words in his concurring opinion. It is so well-written that I encourage every school principal to print it out and read it to their students, and every parent to read it to their children.
Justice Thomas deems the Fourteenth Amendment affirming that "equality and racial discrimination cannot coexist. Under that Amendment, the color of a person’s skin is irrelevant to that individual’s equal status as a citizen of this Nation. To treat him differently on the basis of such a legally irrelevant trait is therefore a deviation from the equality principle and a constitutional injury... All racial stereotypes harm and demean individuals."
I especially appreciate Justice Thomas for recounting the racial discriminations Asian Americans have endured historically. He wrote, "Asian Americans can hardly be described as the beneficiaries of historical racial advantages… our Nation’s first immigration ban targeted the Chinese, in part, based on "worker resentment of the low wage rates accepted by Chinese workers…strong anti-Asian sentiments in the Western States led to the adoption of many discriminatory laws at the State and local levels, similar to those aimed at blacks in the South," and "segregation in public facilities, including schools, was quite common until after the Second World War."
Given this history, Justice Thomas found that "it seems particularly incongruous to suggest that a past history of segregationist policies toward blacks should be remedied at the expense of Asian American college applicants." Justice Thomas challenged Justice Jackson, who wrote a dissenting opinion, "would JUSTICE JACKSON explain the need for race-based preferences to the Chinese student who has worked hard his whole life, only to be denied college admission in part because of his skin color? If such a burden would seem difficult to impose on a bright-eyed young person, that’s because it should be. History has taught us to abhor theories that call for elites to pick racial winners and losers in the name of sociological experimentation."
My favorite passage of Justice Thomas’s opinion is,
“Individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments. What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them. And their race is not to blame for everything—good or bad—that happens in their lives. A contrary, myopic world view based on individuals’ skin color to the total exclusion of their personal choices is nothing short of racial determinism.”
I’m not so naïve that I believe that all colleges, including Harvard, will drop their race-based admissions tomorrow. In fact, in an email response to the Court’s ruling today, Harvard University already announced it would continue to consider race in its admission policy, despite Chief Justice Roberts specifically pointed out in his majority opinion that “universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.”
Still, today is a beautiful day in America. I’m thankful for the wisdom of our founders, for our nation’s colorblind Constitution, for so many Americans who have fought for equal protection for all, and for our Supreme Court justices having the courage to stand for individual liberty and dignity and the Constitution. We, as a nation, still have some distance to go before becoming a truly colorblind society. But today is a day that is worth celebrating.