Abby Phillip guest-hosted The Lead on Thursday and discussed the Supreme Court’s decision to gut affirmative action in college admissions. She welcomed Kenny Xu, a board member of Students for Fair Admissions, the organization that was the plaintiff in the case that was decided on Thursday. But the interview looked like it ended, um, a little early.
The high court ruled in favor of Students for Fair Admissions, which contended that Asian students at Harvard were unfairly discriminated against in the admissions process in favor of students of other races. (Admittance of Asian American students actually rose at Harvard since last year.) The conversation between Phillip and Xu took a turn early when Phillip asked why Students for Fair Admissions didn’t pursue ending legacy admissions – which overwhelmingly favor White students –as much as they pursued admissions that took race into consideration. Xu answered sarcastically, “Well, I hope you followed the case.”
Then the conversation took another turn. Xu explained that he believed admissions should only be based on “merit,” a “name-blind, race-blind process”:
Phillip: Colleges obviously care about grades and SAT scores, but they also are filling universities of people, human beings who have other factors that they bring to the table. Why is it not okay to consider those things?Xu: I’m saying if you’re going to consider those things, you should consider them without respect to race.
When Phillip asked Xu
Phillip: If you take race out of it, let’s call it socioeconomic status, whether or not they grew up wealthy or poor. Is that not something colleges might have an interest in considering?Xu: The reason why you shouldn’t consider that is because you should consider the success of an applicant. Because of affirmative action, Black Americans graduate from law school at the bottom 25 percent of their classes, largely speaking. And we don’t want that. We want Black students to succeed. We want every student to succeed. Low-income students to succeed.But you have to put them in scenarios in places where they’re likely to succeed. And lowering your standard to admit somebody of a socioeconomic status or race would not help them do that. In fact it would harm their graduation rate and excellence.Phillip: Well, as the case also points out, the standard isn’t necessarily lowered because the students are all admitted. It’s the question whether race can be an added consideration, a tipping point–Xu: The standard is lowered.Phillip: Kenny–Xu: The standard is lowered. As the Students for Fair Admissions data shows, an Asian has to score 273 points higher on the SAT to have the same chance of admission as a Black person–Phillip: Kenny–Xu: So the standard is lowered for
Black applicants.Phillip: Kenny Xu, thank you for your perspective we really appreciate it.
Watch the clip above via CNN.