Whites Need Not Apply

It wasn't long ago that the lament was frequently heard that minorities and women had to be twice as good as white men just to have the same opportunities as white men enjoyed. The complaint might still be heard today, but it certainly doesn't have the resonance it once did. Indeed, it could with justification be turned on its head.

According to a column by Pat Buchanan,  being a white applicant to Harvard is a real liability to a prospective student. Minority students have an enormous competitive advantage just because they're not white:

Being Hispanic conferred an admissions boost over being white ... equivalent to 130 SAT points (out of 1,600), while being black rather than white conferred a 310-point SAT advantage. Asians, however, suffered an admissions penalty compared to whites equivalent to 140 SAT points. To have the same chance of gaining admission as a black student with a SAT score of 1100, a Hispanic student otherwise equally matched in background characteristics would have to have a 1230, a white student a 1410, and an Asian student a 1550.

Buchanan goes on to ask:

Was this what the civil rights revolution was all about -- requiring kids whose parents came from Korea, Japan or Vietnam to get a perfect SAT score of 1600 to be given equal consideration with a Jamaican or Kenyan kid who got an 1150? Is this what it means to be an Ivy League progressive? What are the historic and moral arguments for discriminating in favor of kids from Angola and Argentina over kids whose parents came from Poland and Vietnam?

Of course there are no historic or moral justifications for this. When liberals decide they're going to promote diversity, morality and fairness become expendable. Buchanan concludes with this:

Lower-class whites prove to be all-around losers at the elite schools. They are rarely accepted. Lower-class Hispanics and blacks are eight to 10 times more likely to get in with the same scores. Many of these elite public and private colleges and universities benefit from U.S. tax dollars through student loans and direct grants. The future flow of those tax dollars should be made contingent on Harvard and Yale ending racial practices that went out at Little Rock Central High in 1957.

There's much more in the column to make you wonder what ever happened to the idea that a just society is one which does not discriminate on the basis of the color of one's skin.