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Comment by zone411 | Hacker News Reader

The Supreme Court decision was toothless because it allowed universities to create race proxies, and they're exploiting it to make the decision irrelevant. It's even perfectly fine to discuss race in college essays, for example: "Rice University asked students how their perspectives were shaped by their “background, experiences, upbringing, and/or racial identity.”" (https://apnews.com/article/college-application-affirmative-a...). They'll fine-tune them to achieve the exact racial makeup they want eventually. The bigger surprise is that a few schools haven't done it (yet?).

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>> The Supreme Court decision was toothless because it allowed universities to create race proxies

It most certainly did not.

From the decision:

"despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today..."[W]hat cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly. The Constitution deals with substance, not shadows," and the prohibition against racial discrimination is "levelled at the thing, not the name." ... A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual - not on the basis of race".

-- https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf

The Supreme Court decision is not toothless because it explicitly disallows universities to create race proxies.

As your own quote states, it's merely the opinion of part of the Supreme Court that they won’t be able to use proxies. This is not established law that has been tested and the other part of the Court disagrees.

They simply have to smart about it. In addition to the explicit statement from Chief Justice John Roberts: "Nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life," there are simple ways to use factors others than merit. Some are listed here https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-affirmative-action-...: preferences for lower-income students, accepting fewer early admission applications (which are more likely to come from white students), giving preference to first-generation college students, placing less value on test scores and more on high school class ranks, basing admissions on zip codes, and devaluing high school quality, etc. Many more strategies will surface if colleges go through discovery. In the name of surface-level diversity, all of them result in students who will perform worse in college than if admissions were based solely on merit.

"all of them result in students who will perform worse in college than if admissions were based solely on merit."

How rude. It's also straight wrong. The merit of a student is in what they could do with education.

Maybe those few schools haven't done it because they don't want to have a racist admission policy.

But aren’t they aiming for particular racial makeups so not to offend other minority protecting rights groups?

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