Morning Wire XX
[0] For several years now, Harvard University has been embroiled in a legal battle over racial discrimination, facing accusations of bias against Asian students in an effort to achieve a more racially balanced student body.
[1] In this episode of Morning Wire, we talk to Kenny Shoe, president of Color Us United, board member of Students for Fair Admissions, and author of an inconvenient minority.
[2] Kenny has been covering the case, which recently was argued in front of the Supreme Court.
[3] It's March 11th, and this is a Saturday Extra Admission, edition of Morning Wire.
[4] Joining us to discuss the case is author and journalist Kenny Shoe.
[5] Kenny, thanks so much for coming on.
[6] Thank you.
[7] I appreciate being on.
[8] So you are a prolific writer, and you've been focusing your research on race -based preferences in public and private institutions.
[9] First off, can you tell me a little bit about how you started covering that?
[10] I got my start covering the Harvard admissions case against Asian Americans.
[11] So basically, for those listeners who aren't familiar, Harvard and the, you know, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, by the way, has been accused by Asian Americans of having race preferences against them in the name of diversity.
[12] In fact, Asian Americans have to score 273 points higher on the SAT to have the same chance of admission as a black person to Harvard.
[13] These are huge, widely skewed racial preferences.
[14] That's discrimination.
[15] So I reported on that, and my reporting kind of made the mainstream, and I wrote a book called an inconvenient.
[16] minority on the Harvard case in Asians' inconvenient place in the racial narrative.
[17] Now, your book, that's the 2021 book, An Inconvenient Minority, you talked about how some aspects of the mainstream narrative around race have been damaging, specifically to Asians, but also to some other groups as well.
[18] Tell us a little bit about that.
[19] What about the conversation do you think is damaging?
[20] Racial preferences is damaging to everybody, but to Asian Americans, it has a particularly bitter tone.
[21] So Asians are graded.
[22] Actually, every applicant is graded on three criteria.
[23] Academics, extracurriculars, and personality.
[24] So Asian Americans score highest out of all of the races in Harvard applications on academics.
[25] They score highest out of all of the races on extracurriculars.
[26] But to make up for it, Harvard rates Asians lowest on this thing called a personality score.
[27] What is the personality score?
[28] It measures things like, like, like, likability, humor, leadership, a Harvard person, it's entirely subjective.
[29] And if you point to the objective data behind this, Asians actually score highest on alumni recommendations.
[30] They score highest in teacher recommendations.
[31] They score second highest on counselor recommendations.
[32] But there's no evidence to suggest that Asians have, in fact, a lower, quote -unquote, personality than the other races.
[33] And yet Harvard ranks them lowest, and they do it playing into that stereotype that Asian -American.
[34] are test -taking robots with no personality.
[35] And this is why this Harvard admissions case has become such a gut punch for Asian Americans because it is unfair what they're doing to them and not just what they're doing to them, but how they're doing it.
[36] Well, in the Harvard instance, the court documents actually showed systematic low ratings for Asian students' personalities, like you mentioned, but there are also some less obvious ways that schools have attempted to screen for race indirectly.
[37] Tell us about that.
[38] Well, Harvard has, and many colleges across the United States have been eliminating the SAT from admissions, claiming it doesn't serve a purpose, even though it does, because the SAT is how a poor person for a bad school can stand up to a rich person from a good school and say, I got a better score than you.
[39] That's the only way you can compare toe -to -to -to applicants in our country.
[40] That's why we need the SAT.
[41] So Harvard might try to evade this ruling in some way.
[42] But what I'm hoping for, when I'm pushing forward, my advocacy and my book, an inconvenient minority, is a stronger ruling.
[43] A stronger ruling that says colleges and universities who take public funding in our country have to adhere to merit -based principles in admissions.
[44] They have to define it transparently.
[45] And it has to be commonly agreed what these principles are.
[46] Everybody knows that people should be admitted to college based on grades.
[47] Yep, absolutely.
[48] Test scores, 100%.
[49] A strong personal essay taken in an environment in which you can't cheat.
[50] Yes, I agree with that as well.
[51] But nobody in our country or very few people think that race is actually determinant of merit.
[52] So what I'm hoping is a ruling that says colleges and universities must adhere to commonly agreed merit -based principles for admissions and be transparent about the criteria.
[53] Now, you've also recently been focusing on ending DEI practices at medical schools, specifically at UNC Medical School.
[54] Are you affiliated with UNC?
[55] And what specifically are they doing there that concerns you?
[56] I am the president of Colorist United.
[57] We advocate for race -blind America.
[58] And we do campaigns to tackle the rising spread of DEI and wokeness in our culture.
[59] Recently, it's come to our attention that really this spread is infecting the medical profession.
[60] This is dangerous.
[61] Woke medicine is dangerous.
[62] Everybody wants the most qualified service.
[63] But DEI and Wokeness is lowering standards for diversity because we all love diversity.
[64] We all think that we are in a greatly diverse country.
[65] What I don't appreciate and what I don't want is lowering standards for diversity.
[66] That's what's happening at Harvard.
[67] That's what's happening in medical schools across the nation.
[68] In fact, they're starting to get rid of medical board exams.
[69] And this is dangerous, you know.
[70] Not everybody should be a doctor.
[71] Not everybody should go to med school.
[72] We're using UNC as an example for the rest of the nation and how far our health systems are going.
[73] You know, UNC Medical School and their health system is a $15 billion organization in one of the most prominent in North Carolina.
[74] So if we can get a win here, we can get a win anywhere.
[75] In terms of the policies that UNC is doing specifically, we have a lot of evidence at UNC as well.
[76] they released a thing called a task force to integrate social justice in the curriculum.
[77] In this task force, which was released in October 2020, they pledged to teach their medical students about, quote -unquote, unconscious bias and also, quote -unquote, how America's medical system is systemically racist.
[78] This is not a way to inspire a doctor to succeed.
[79] Now, we recently reported that the Texas A &M system is removing their mandatory DEI statements for admissions and hiring.
[80] Are you seeing other?
[81] schools back off of DEI?
[82] Are schools experiencing significant pushback on this?
[83] We're starting to see the pushback.
[84] In fact, just two weeks ago, and I'm saying this in early March, but just two weeks ago, UNC voted to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion statements from being used in the promotion and hiring process.
[85] That's one thing that they had been doing, their medical school had been doing.
[86] If you wanted to be a doctor, you had to affirm certain DEI principles, which were basically nothing more than progressive leftist principles saying we affirm your conception of diversity and inclusion, or else you wouldn't get promoted.
[87] I mean, it was a hostile climate to medical and intellectual innovation, and they finally stood against it, the board of governors did, and we influenced them as well on that decision.
[88] But that's just the start.
[89] All right.
[90] Well, Kenny, thanks so much for coming on today.
[91] Yeah, thank you.
[92] Sign our petition, coloristunited .org, by my book, An Inconvenient Minority, the Attack on Asian American excellence in the fight for meritocracy.
[93] That was author and journalist Kenny Shoe.
[94] And this has been a Saturday extra edition of Morning Wire.