AMY GOODMAN: The New York Times is reporting
the Justice Department is preparing to investigate
and sue universities’ affirmative action
policies for anti-white bias, in the latest
assault against civil rights by Attorney General
Jeff Sessions.
The Times says the Justice Department sent
out an internal announcement looking for lawyers
to lead, quote, "investigations and possible
litigation related to intentional race-based
discrimination in college and university admissions,"
unquote.
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund promised to sue
the administration if it targets affirmative
action policies, saying, "We will bring the
full force of the law if this Justice Department
attempts to resegregate our institutions of
higher learning," unquote.
Former Justice Department attorneys have expressed
alarm that the project will be run out of
an office staffed by Trump administration
political appointees instead of the Educational
Opportunities Section, which would normally
handle such inquiries.
The Trump administration is claiming The New
York Times report is inaccurate.
A Department of Justice spokesperson said
the internal memo dealt not with anti-white
bias but an administrative complaint filed
by a coalition of 64 Asian-American associations
in 2015.
The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality
of affirmative action policies, which take
race and ethnicity into account in college
admissions in efforts to address centuries
of institutionalized discrimination against
people of color and women.
We’re joined now by Nikole Hannah-Jones,
an award-winning reporter covering racial
injustice at The New York Times Magazine.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Nikole.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: Thanks for having me.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what the Times
found, even though the Trump administration
has said that the reports are inaccurate?
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: Well, the Times received
a memo that said that they were looking—the
Justice Department was looking to hire people
to look into intentional discrimination in
college admissions.
And so, people on—who are opponents and
proponents of affirmative action take that
to mean that they are going to go after anti-white,
or what they consider anti-white, bias in
the admissions process.
AMY GOODMAN: And explain exactly what you
believe they’re taking on.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: Well, I think they’re
going to start investigating college admissions
processes that are designed to help alleviate
this nation’s long history of racial discrimination.
We understand that we have a segregated K-12
system that produces very unequal results
for black and Latino students, who receive
an inferior education.
And so, oftentimes colleges will take that
into account in the admissions process.
And so, the expectation is that the administration,
instead of working to vindicate the rights
of traditionally, historically marginalized
and oppressed minorities, is now going to
be going after what they consider a white
majority being oppressed, apparently, by these
minority groups.
AMY GOODMAN: During the news briefing on Wednesday,
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee
Sanders was questioned about The New York
Times article.
JUSTIN SINK: Does the president believe that
white applicants to college are the victim
of discrimination?
PRESS SECRETARY SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: I’m
not aware of that opinion at all.
I certainly haven’t had that conversation
or have any reason to—
JUSTIN SINK: Well, then can you explain why
the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division
is devoting its limited time and resources
to—
PRESS SECRETARY SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: Quite
an accusatory question, but I’d be happy
to respond.
The New York Times article is based entirely
on uncorroborated inferences from a leaked
internal personnel posting in violation of
Department of Justice policy.
And while the White House does not confirm
or deny the existence of potential investigations,
the Department of Justice will always review
credible allegation of discrimination on the
basis of any race.
And I don’t have anything further on that.
AMY GOODMAN: Your response?
Your response to the White House press secretary,
Sarah Sanders?
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: Well, I think, one, it’s
important to have understanding of what affirmative
action is supposed to do.
Affirmative action is not disadvantaging white
students.
And it is not a program to advantage black
students.
It is a program designed to address the nation’s
legacy of discrimination, where, for centuries,
black Americans were barred from institutions
of higher learning.
I think it might be helpful to read a quote
from Lyndon B. Johnson, who actually created
affirmative action.
And what he said is, "You do not take a person
who, for years, has been hobbled by chains
and liberate him, bring him up to the starting
line ... and then say, 'You are free to compete
with all the others,' and still ... believe
that you have been completely fair."
So, what we know is that at elite colleges
and universities in this country, black Americans
make up only 5 percent of students enrolled,
with affirmative action.
So, it’s kind of hard to prove that large
numbers of white Americans are being discriminated
against, when black and Latino students are
still underrepresented in four-year institutions.
AMY GOODMAN: Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court
affirmed the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals
in Fisher v. University of Texas and held
that that the University of Texas at Austin’s
race-conscious admission program is lawful
under the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S.
Constitution.
I want to turn to a video of the petitioner
in the case, Abigail Fisher, who said she
was rejected by the University of Texas because
she’s white.
ABIGAIL FISHER: There were people in my class
with lower grades, who weren’t in all the
activities I was in, who were being accepted
into UT, and the only other difference between
us was the color of our skin.
... A good start to stopping discrimination
would be getting rid of the boxes on applications—male,
female, race, whatever.
Those don’t tell the admissions people what
type of student you are or how involved you
are.
All they do is put you into a box.
Get rid of the box.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that is Abigail Fisher.
You’ve written extensively about this case.
Can you talk about it?
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: Sure.
So, I think the most interesting aspect of
this case, and a case that doesn’t appear
to be widely known among Americans, is that
Abigail Fisher actually cannot prove that
she was discriminated against.
What the record shows is that there were black
and Latino students with better test scores
than her who also didn’t get in, and that
there were white students who had worse test
scores than Abigail Fisher who did get in.
So, in fact, that case is not about her being
discriminated against.
It’s about this belief, by certain conservatives,
that you should never take race into account,
even if you’re trying to address an historical
legacy of discrimination and ongoing discrimination.
They will tell you—the lawyer who brought
this case, I interviewed him, and he admitted
that he could not prove that Abigail Fisher
was discriminated against, and, really, that
was irrelevant to him.
But that’s not what the common reporting
has been understanding of this case.
The understanding of the case is that she
was treated unfairly.
What also wasn’t talked about is, in Texas,
the way Texas’s affirmative action works
is, if you’re a white student, you also
can get points for your race.
If you’re a white student who happened to
go to a heavily black or Latino high school,
you would also get points in the admissions
process at Texas.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about here, in New
York City—you’ve done a lot of reporting
here, where we are—saying, in secondary
education, it’s actually the most segregated
system in the country, and that—how that
is reflected in higher education?
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: So, we pretend that college
admissions is based on a meritocracy, that
every student is coming from an even playing
field, and the best students, the students
who work the hardest, are the ones who get
the highest test scores and have the best
grades and should get in.
But we know that that is fundamentally untrue.
In New York City, which is the most segregated
large school system in the country, and all
across the country, black and Latino students
are in schools that are the least likely to
have college prep curriculum, they’re the
least likely to have higher-level sciences,
higher-level math classes.
And so, what that means is that they cannot
compete on ACTs and SATs with the test scores
that white students, who are in far better-resourced
schools, can achieve.
So, to then, when we start looking at college
admissions, to say every student should be
treated the same, I think, is just a denial
of the facts on the ground, that we know that
black and Latino students, no matter how hard
they work, are not getting the same education,
as a whole, as white students are getting.
AMY GOODMAN: Nikole Hannah-Jones, this whole
issue of who is preferred when it comes to
getting into college, what about this piece
that ProPublica—where ProPublica points
out, and others, how, for example, Jared Kushner’s
family basically bought Jared a spot at Harvard?
Explain that history.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: Right.
So, there was a book that was written about
legacy admissions.
And legacy admissions are how many elite universities
and other universities give extra points to
children of alumni.
And it was looking at how the elite are able
to kind of buy their way or buy their children’s
way into Ivy League and other elite schools.
Jared Kushner’s father gave, I believe,
$2.5 million to Harvard.
And this journalist went back and looked at
the high school that Jared Kushner went to,
and said that the counselors there said he
was not a good student, he should not have
gotten into Harvard, and actually said that
there were other students at that school who
had far greater merit, who they assumed would
get in, and who didn’t.
So I think what’s important to understand
is what the Justice Department is doing is
not about fairness.
It is specifically about race, because if
they were going to address fairness, there
are a whole host of issues in college admissions
that disadvantage certain students over others
and advantage the same students who traditionally
have always been advantaged.
And they’re not going after these other
issues.
They’re only going after programs that are
having really a minute effect on the number
of black and Latino students at institutions
of higher learning.
AMY GOODMAN: We’ll link to that ProPublica
piece that’s headlined "The Story Behind
Jared Kushner’s Curious Acceptance into
Harvard," by Daniel Golden.
Golden wrote a book a decade ago called The
Price of Admission.
In ProPublica, he writes, quote, "My book
exposed a grubby secret of American higher
education: that the rich buy their under-achieving
children’s way into elite universities with
massive, tax-deductible donations.
It reported that New Jersey real estate developer
Charles Kushner had pledged $2.5 million to
Harvard University in 1998, not long before
his son Jared was admitted to the prestigious
Ivy League school."
He also wrote, "I also quoted administrators
at Jared’s high school, who described him
as a less than stellar student and expressed
dismay at Harvard’s decision."
Now, Nikole, I wanted to ask you about the
front-page piece in your paper today, The
New York Times, "Asians Become Focus of Battle
on Admissions."
Talk about this.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: Well, I think that there—the
people who are trying to challenge affirmative
action are very savvy about how to do this.
There’s a reason why the big affirmative
action cases that have gone before the Supreme
Court were brought by white women and not
white men, because there’s a sense that
people will not feel that sympathetic towards
white men, but they will feel sympathy towards
white women, believing that women have been
historically discriminated against.
And now they are moving to the next level,
which is to try to use another racial minority
group to prove that their efforts are not
racist, that their efforts are not racially
motivated.
The problem is, Asian Americans, of course,
have a very, very different experience than
black Americans.
They were not brought here enslaved.
They were not codified under Jim Crow.
And most Asian Americans who came to this
country came after the civil rights movement,
because prior to the civil rights movement
there were quotas on how many people of color
could be allowed in the country.
Asian Americans tend to come in on work visas
and on education visas, meaning that they
are coming in more educated and more resourced.
They’re the most integrated group of racial
minorities in the country.
They’re the most likely to live in white
neighborhoods and to attend middle-class white
schools.
So they’re just not facing the same disadvantages
that black and Latinos are facing.
But it’s a very convenient way to argue
that what they’re doing is fundamentally
about fairness and not about race.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, it’s interesting you
say that.
In our next piece, we’re going to be talking
with Congressmember Jayapal about the new
anti-immigration legislation that the Trump
administration would like to put forward and
support, and one of the arguments the extreme
anti-immigrant adviser to President Trump,
Stephen Miller, put forward yesterday in the
White House press briefing was his concern
for African Americans being—losing jobs
because of Latinos and others coming into
this country and stealing them, so championing
the African-American community.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: I mean, it would be great
if they were championing the African-American
communities in other ways—for instance,
not attacking affirmative action, not attacking
voting rights, not deciding to no longer investigate
police departments that have been accused
of violating the rights of black citizens.
So, I think, clearly, they are using black
Americans in this instance in the same way
that the right is trying to use Asian Americans
in affirmative action.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to leave
it there.
We will link to your work, Nikole.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, award-winning reporter
covering racial justice and injustice at The
New York Times Magazine.
This is Democracy Now!
When we come back, we go to Seattle.
It is extremely hot there, record heat.
We’re going to be speaking with the congressmember
from that area, Pramila Jayapal, about the
latest—the latest policies of the Trump
administration, particularly put forward yesterday,
supporting anti-immigrant legislation, the
RAISE Act—which raises many questions.
Stay with us.
