Capitol Report
By State Representative, Leon D. Young
Leon D. Young
Last week, Associate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia created an uproar during oral arguments in the Fisher v. University of Texas affirmative action case.
In a remark that drew muted gasps in the courtroom, Justice Scalia said that minority students with inferior academic credentials may be better off at “a less advanced school, a slow-track school where they do well.”
Scalia went on to assert, “I don’t think it stands to reason that it’s a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible.”
It’s no secret that Justice Scalia, along with his judicial puppet Justice Clarence Thomas, are both staunch opponents of affirmative action.
With that being said, Justice Scalia’s questions were particularly hostile to racial preferences, which he said can leave minority students worse off. According to Scalia, “most black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas (Austin) – the flagship campus of that system).
They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re being pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them.”
To put things into some perspective, Justice Scalia was clumsily alluding to a conservative legal argument that’s typically advanced in these cases.
Under the so-called “mismatch theory,” proponents argue that nonacademic preferences in college admissions ill-serve some intended beneficiaries, who end up admitted to schools for which they are relatively unprepared, and struggling, rather than thriving at different schools where they would be at least as well prepared as their classmates.
True enough, this explanation of the mismatch theory sounds a bit more politically correct on its face, but it’s extremely disturbing nevertheless.
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that the mismatch theory is always brought up in the context of affirmative action.
But universities admit less academically qualified students for all kinds of reasons — because they’re the children of alumni or donors, due to athletic or musical talent, and so on.
There isn’t nearly as much concern about how those students fare, and some research has found they’re more likely to drop out than other students, including those admitted through race-sensitive affirmative action.
Andy Borowitz, the writer and comedian, quipped that “Justice Antonin Scalia would fare better if he served as a judge at a court that was ‘less advanced’ than the United States Supreme Court.”
This is an opinion of Justice Scalia that I wholeheartedly concur with.