The Next Battle Over Racial Preferences
Wai Wah Chin argues that universities still intend to practice preferential admissions by removing merit-based criteria and using proxies for race, including “socio” factors such as coming from a single parent home or having incarcerated family members. “Legal questions aside,” Chin argues, “the use of sham proxies for race should offend us. It should also alarm us: all these proxies entail the dumbing down of standards and the end of merit.”
Chin points out that removing standardized test considerations and introducing socioecominics will be a couple of ways universities will skirt the ruling, both of which will be unfair to Asians.
“The racial mischief in socioeconomics springs from the ‘socio’ part. For example, in New York City, no other demographic group has higher poverty rates than Asians. Under a system of simple economic preference, Asians would receive a boost. But adding reasonable-sounding ‘socio’ factors—such as single-parent households, incarcerated family members, and employment status—removes most Asians from consideration because even poor Asian families frequently fail to meet these criteria.”
