The way to stop discrimination is to stop discriminating

In an article in The New Yorker entitled The Uncomfortable Truth About Affirmative Action and Asian-Americans, Jeannie Suk Gersen, a professor at Harvard Law School, writes:

The truth is that, in addition to a holistic review of each applicant that considers race as one factor, colleges undertake some amount of balancing so that they do not end up with a class that is swamped by members of any particular race ... The problem is not race-conscious holistic review; rather, it is the added, sub-rosa deployment of racial balancing in a manner that keeps the number of Asians so artificially low relative to whites who are less strong on academic measures. It is also time to look seriously at the impact on Asians (many of them immigrants or the children of immigrants) of the advantage enjoyed by legacy admissions and wealthy families who are likely to give significant donations. ... I would not relish seeing the nation’s most élite colleges become majority Asian, which is what has resulted at selective high schools, such as Stuyvesant, that do not consider race in admissions at all. ... ... What is needed ... is race-conscious affirmative action, to address the historic discrimination and underrepresentation of blacks and Latinos, in combination with far less severity in the favoring of whites relative to Asians.

Several comments.

I share Ms. Gerson's concern about "legacy" applicants. My preference would be that no weight be given to a "legacy" applicant simply because his family made a "significant donation" to the university.

Unlike Ms. Gerson, I have absolutely no objection to "seeing the nation's most elite colleges become majority Asian" if that is the result of a strictly meritocratic admission process. I live in a city (Fremont, CA) with an exceptionally high number of high-achieving Asian and Indian students. Their impressive performance is the result of their native intelligence and hard work and of the strong support and encouragement they receive from their families. I always told my (white) sons when they were growing up: "If you can't compete with the Asian and Indian kids, don't come whining to me. You need to work harder. And your mother and I will do everything we can to help you." In other words, I learned from my environment and became a white tiger dad. And the accomplishments of my sons (of whom I am very proud, one a grad student at Stanford, the other a grad student at UC Berkeley) show that I was right to be that way. I firmly believe that America would be a much better place if more white families (or black and Latino families, for that matter) placed as much emphasis on academic excellence as Asian and Indian families in Silicon Valley do. If the white kids in Silicon Valley find themselves "less strong on academic measures," they need to shape up! And their parents do, too!

In her last sentence Ms. Gerson resigns herself to the ongoing existence of discrimination (dressed up in the fancy phrase "race-conscious affirmative action"). All that is needed, she insists, is that universities merely adjust the mix of discrimination; they should discriminate less against Asians, discriminate more against whites, and continue to discriminate in favor of blacks and Latinos. What a wonderful world it will be! Does she not realize the balkanizing effect that discrimination per se has? How about not discriminating at all? How about not bending the ruler at all?

I take my lead from SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts, who famously wrote: "[T]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." This same principle applies to all different forms of discrimination. Let the open competition of meritocracy determine results. And let the chips fall where they may.