☆ Analysis: Why local lefties are melting down over race-neutral college admissions
Gavin Newsom is sounding like John Calhoun. Ash Kalra channels the wild fringes of Critical Race Theory. All because SCOTUS enforced the 14th Amendment. Local GOP chair Shane Patrick Connolly unpacks why the Left is so insistent on discriminating against Asian Americans in college admissions. An Opp Now exclusive Q&A.
Opportunity Now: You're a Republican—a minority voice in this county and state. I'm assuming you've been on the losing side of many legal decisions. I don't remember you threatening to pack the court, delegitimize the court, and start floating nullification and secession proposals as a result. What's with our friends on the Left in their overheated response to Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard?
Shane Patrick Connolly: When those of us from the center-right were on the losing end of decisions for more than two generations, we simply went about the work of trying to ensure more textualists and originalists were nominated and approved for the bench—and we worked to elect people who would appoint these types of jurists. We didn't try to expand and pack the court or delegitimize it or send angry mobs to justices' homes—actions Democratic politicians have been promoting.
For the Left, it's about results—not process nor integrity in governance, nor democratic norms. When the institutions don't produce the results the far Left wants, their impulse is to delegitimize that institution. It suggests that they are more focused on sheer power and the exercise of power over ordered constitutional democracy.
ON: One of the inconsistencies of the Left's attack on the court is that they suggest that previous decisions can't be revisited. If that were the case, we'd still have Dred Scott, we wouldn't have the 14th Amendment, and Brown v. Brd of Ed wouldn't have upended Jim Crow and Plessy v Ferguson.
SPC: From my perspective, the court strayed with Bakke and earlier affirmative action decisions, as they run counter to a fair-minded reading of the Constitution and the Amendments thereto. So, I applaud the current court fixing a previous mistake. The court should be able to change its mind; otherwise, we would still be living in the brain of Chief Justice Roger Taney. And let's be clear: When the court—with liberal justice support—overturns 50 years of legal precedent with other decisions—like the recent 9–0 ruling on religious liberty in the workplace (Groff v. DeJoy), the Left has no issues. To them, this is not about intellectual consistency; it's about power and results.
ON: Back in 2020, Californians rejected Prop 16, which tried to reinstate affirmative action in admissions in public colleges and universities. Notably, county and City residents also rejected Prop 16 by a sizable majority. But, the San Jose City Council unanimously voted to support Prop 16. How can our representatives be so out of touch with the people they're supposed to represent?
SPC: When it comes to affirmative action—effectively, race-based quota systems—it's true that the people of our City, the county, the state, and across the nation oppose affirmative action in college admissions. Even though the political class and the leaders of our elite foundations, nonprofits, and corporations are broadly in favor of it. I fear that many of these local politicians and other leaders have been captured by the extremist, circular argumentation of the Woke, anti-racist movement, in which it's not enough to be opposed to racial discrimination—you have to be in favor of new forms of race-based discrimination to remedy the sins of the past. While a handful of leaders may truly be convinced of the rightness of this new racialism, many others are simply afraid of being called names and tarred as reactionary, fear social sanction or ostracization by fellow elites, or are fearful of workplace and social consequences for family members or anyone closely associated with them if they stand against the Woke mob.
ON: It's a funny old world when being opposed to racial discrimination becomes reactionary.
SPC: It does run contrary to Dr. King's message of a color-blind society, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the 14th Amendment. And look, times change. Perhaps temporary affirmative action measures made some sense 20, 30, 40 years ago. But something was clearly wrong when that led to what we see in 2023—in a far more diverse America: highly qualified Asian-Americans being rejected admission to elite colleges because of the color of their skin.
ON: In California, especially, the Left's narrative often ignores the extreme systemic discrimination Asians have experienced, from the Chinese Exclusion Act, through anti-Asian union practices, to Japanese internment camps in WW2. And, until last week, discrimination in college admissions.
SPC: It's odd to see local politicians ignoring historic anti-Asian discrimination for the sake of another narrative. They are saying it's okay to discriminate against a poor Vietnamese American student whose family emigrated here, who worked hard to earn a spot at an elite university, but they're being told they cannot enter even though they are qualified—often over-qualified. The SCOTUS made a fair-minded call that deserves respect. If the Left doesn't like the decision, they are welcome to build an argument to overturn it via the Constitutional Amendment process or through future court proceedings. Bullying, threatening, and undermining the Court's legitimacy is a very misguided and dangerous response.
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