On Thursday, President Joe Biden defended college admissions policies that discriminate against applicants based on race – in order discriminate in favor of other applicants based on their race – as long as they’re equally qualified.
In a nationally-televised speech denouncing a Supreme Court ruling from earlier in the day that, essentially, banned affirmative action-based admissions, Biden refuted an argument that the Supreme Court did not use to justify its ruling.
Biden claimed that opponents of affirmative action do so because they mistakenly think that the colleges use affirmative action policies to admit unqualified applicants and exclude those who actually are qualified.
That was not the basis of the Supreme Court’s ruling.
In a combined case, the Supreme Court ruled against the use of racial discrimination by Harvard and the University of North Carolina to determine whether or not an applicant is accepted.
But, instead of addressing the actual predicate of the Supreme Court’s decision, Pres. Biden suggested that opposition to affirmative action is based on a misunderstanding of the practice:
“Because Affirmative Action is so misunderstood, I want to be clear, make sure everybody’s clear, about what the law has been and what it has not been, until today.
“Many people wrongly believe that Affirmative Action allows unqualified students to be admitted ahead of qualified students -- this is not how college admissions work.”
Instead, colleges only racially-discriminate, for and against, candidates who have met all the school’s minimum standards, when employing affirmative action, Biden explained:
“Rather, colleges set out standards for admission and every student, every student, has to meet those standards.
“Then, and only then, after first meeting the qualifications required by the school, do colleges look at other factors in addition to their grades – such as race.”
Biden went on to reiterate that affirmative action does use race to discriminate against candidates, but only in order to favor other candidates who have has also met the school’s minimum standards:
“The way it works in practice is this: colleges first establish a qualified pool of candidates, based on meeting a certain grade, test scores and other criteria. Then and only then, then and only then, it is from this pool of applicants, all of who have already met the school standards, that the class is chosen after weighing a wide range of factors - among them being race.”