He said the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Grutter v. Bollinger decision upholding the consideration of race in university admissions is based on faulty assumptions about affirmative action’s benefits. He called for the creation of an independent panel of social scientists to examine affirmative action’s effects on Black law students.
But USCCR Commissioner Michael Yaki says the reasons affirmative action exists cannot be ignored.
“Is there a greater good served — as Justice [Sandra Day] O’Connor said in Grutter — to be served by diversity in education? We’ve lost in this discussion the basic root of why we’re here. It goes back to [Brown v. Board of Education]. It goes back to the very fact that diversity and seeing people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds in your peer group is per se a benefit to this nation. And we’ve forgotten all about that,” Yaki said.
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