Diversity, equity, and inclusion may seem like morally upright goals. But in education, they combine to form a facade used to facilitate discrimination covertly.
School districts across the country have taken countless steps to become sufficiently “woke.” For example, in the Providence Public School District, teachers were allegedly encouraged to participate in “white educator affinity groups.” In the name of “equity,” California announced plans to dismantle its advanced mathematics curriculum. (The state just announced that it will drop “social justice” math.)
One initiative involved changing the admissions criteria for gifted and talented schools. In Boston, the school committee voted to drop the admissions test for the city’s three exam schools temporarily. The committee created a new admissions system that would allot 20% of seats in the exam schools based on grades, while the other 80% would be determined by a combination of grades and ZIP codes.
It wasn’t long until a lawsuit was filed by the Boston Parent Coalition for Academic Excellence alleging that the ZIP code allocation was discriminatory against white and Asian students, thereby disadvantaging them. However, in April, a federal judge ruled that the ZIP code plan was constitutional.
As a result of the plan, exam school admissions for white and Asian applicants decreased. According to the Boston Globe, data analysis confirmed that the ZIP code plan led to a “more diverse selection of applicants” and lowered the portion of Asian and white students.
A similar sequence of events played out at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County, Virginia. Like the Boston exam schools, Thomas Jefferson also underwent an admissions overhaul. Although the minimum GPA was raised, the standardized admissions test was eliminated.
The changes in the admissions process at Thomas Jefferson yielded a very different incoming class. This year, Asian American students made up only 54% of the incoming freshmen, down from 73% the year before. Meanwhile, the percentage of white students actually increased to approximately 22%, up from a little over 17% the previous year.
That’s supposedly “racial equity.”
It goes without saying that not everyone who supports admissions changes holds a racial animus. (However, note that the judge in the Boston case recently retracted his opinion after anti-white texts between school committee members surfaced.) Most reformers probably don’t have any intention to discriminate based on race. But the fact remains that in these two cases, Asian American admissions have dropped, while other groups’ (sometimes white) admissions increased. This is not “racial equity.” It is discrimination in disguise.
