The Great America Show - MERIT TRUMPS RACE

00:00:00.000 Hello, everybody. I'm Lou Dobbs. This is the Great America Show. Good to have you with us.

00:00:08.520 The Supreme Court this week ruling colleges and universities may no longer use affirmative action

00:00:14.080 in their admissions process. In a 6-3 opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts,

00:00:20.700 the justices outlawed affirmative action and in so doing overturned cases going back almost a

00:00:26.760 half-century. For almost a half-century, those cases made racial preferences legal. The six 0.66

00:00:33.620 justices rule that skills, lessons learned, and challenges overcome are paramount in deciding

00:00:40.720 whether a person is admitted to a college or university, not race. As you would probably

00:00:46.740 expect, President Biden isn't happy. And he went before cameras to say he's not happy,

00:00:52.600 that colleges will now have to accept students based on their merit. And he attacked the Supreme

00:00:58.600 Court as he did so, saying this isn't a normal court. A curious thing to say. President Biden

00:01:05.680 gave his remarks shortly after the ruling came down, and he seemed to have gotten a little bit confused

00:01:11.500 about affirmative action, what it is, and where he actually stands on it.

00:01:16.760 And I strongly, strongly disagree with the court's decision. Because affirmative action is so

00:01:23.280 misunderstood, I want to be clear, make sure everybody's clear about what the law has been

00:01:28.600 and what it has not been until today. Many people wrongly believe that affirmative action

00:01:34.480 allows unqualified students, unqualified students to be admitted ahead of qualified students. This is not,

00:01:41.840 this is not how college admissions work. Rather, colleges set out standards for admission. And

00:01:48.380 every student, every student has to meet those standards. Then and only then, after first meeting

00:01:54.780 the qualifications required by the school, do colleges look at other factors in addition to their

00:02:00.620 grades, such as race. We cannot let this decision be the last word. One emphasis, we cannot let this

00:02:07.120 decision be the last word. While the court can render a decision, it cannot change what America

00:02:12.760 stands for. Biden, confused as he often is, says we cannot let the decision stand from the highest

00:02:19.900 court in America. That sounds an awful lot like he's a denier, doesn't it? A constitution denier

00:02:27.420 and an anti-merit critic as well. After his remarks at the White House, Biden made his way to New York

00:02:34.880 for a campaign event and he stopped by MSNBC to do a quick television interview. He was asked about

00:02:42.800 a comment he made earlier in the day in which he said, that's right, he said the Supreme Court

00:02:49.080 was not normal. Here's his explanation. You said this court is not normal. What did you mean?

00:02:55.880 What I meant with that is it's done more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in

00:03:02.260 recent history. And that's what I meant by not normal. It's gone out of its way to, I mean,

00:03:09.740 for example, take a look at overruling Roe v. Wade. Take a look at what the decision today. Take a look

00:03:15.420 at how it's ruled on a number of issues that have been precedent for 50, 60 years sometimes.

00:03:24.600 And that's what I meant by not normal. It seems President Biden isn't a fan of the rule of law,

00:03:29.800 which could explain his crime family. To take all of this up, we invited the brilliant author

00:03:35.100 Heather McDonald to join us. She's been researching and writing about this subject for more than two

00:03:40.720 decades. Joining us now is Heather McDonald, attorney, bestselling author of many books. Her latest is

00:03:47.740 When Race Trumps Merit, How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty,

00:03:54.440 and Threatens Lives. That book is also available at LewDobbs.com under the books section.

00:04:01.200 Heather, great to have you back with us here on The Great America Show. First,

00:04:04.520 your reaction to this extraordinary ruling by the Supreme Court rolling back affirmative action.

00:04:10.980 Well, it's a great step in the right direction. We have finally somebody who said that the whole

00:04:17.060 Supreme Court jurisprudence allowing racial preferences is incoherent. Roberts didn't overturn

00:04:23.900 those precedents, but he actually applied them honestly. And if, and this is a huge if,

00:04:31.360 Lou, if colleges were to actually obey the court's ruling, it would do a great deal towards erasing

00:04:40.600 the racial divisions in this country. Now, I'm not convinced that colleges are not going to do

00:04:47.220 everything they can to maintain their racial preference regime. And Roberts gave them a huge

00:04:54.060 way of doing so. There's a huge loophole in the decision. But one thing that I can say for sure,

00:05:02.020 Lou, the hysterical rhetoric that's coming out of Joe Biden, out of the dissents in the Supreme Court,

00:05:09.900 Sotomayor and Justice Jackson, the Democratic establishment, moaning that this is the end of 0.86

00:05:16.360 educational opportunity for blacks, those are completely phony. The same number of blacks are going to go to 1.00

00:05:24.900 college under this ruling as before. The difference is, is that one hopes they will actually go to colleges for which

00:05:33.540 they're academically qualified, rather than being catapulted into schools for which they are not

00:05:39.640 academically qualified. But the idea that absent racial preferences, that there's some kind of barriers

00:05:46.800 set up by colleges to black admissions is ridiculous. The colleges, they still have their arms wide open 1.00

00:05:55.880 to every black student they can possibly find. It may be a little harder for Harvard to poach black 1.00

00:06:02.620 students from Bates College or from Bowdoin College. But every black student who is qualified to go to 1.00

00:06:10.440 college will get admitted to a college at this point. And the issue here is, as you have discussed and

00:06:20.360 written about brilliantly and talked about brilliantly over the years, this is a situation

00:06:26.660 when race trumps merit. I think you should use that as a title of your book, by the way.

00:06:33.120 Oh, that is the title of your book, isn't it? Race trumps merit by Heather McDonald. We recommend it to 1.00

00:06:38.700 you highly. This has been one of the frustrations of American society. You can tell a child that he or she

00:06:48.220 can go to college and get into the college they deserve to be. That is, the elite schools by elite

00:06:54.940 performance and elite talent, you get to go to an elite school. Unless you fall back 100 places in

00:07:03.680 the class of 2050 or whatever it is, and because of racial preferences. This is madness, and it is 0.94

00:07:12.380 debilitating. There is no question about it. Absolutely. And what's so incredible, Lou, is that

00:07:18.960 the entire left-wing discourse around racial preferences is completely silent about the

00:07:25.380 academic skills gaps, which means that Harvard, if it wants to fill its 10% quota of blacks, has to use 0.98

00:07:32.660 massive racial preferences. If Harvard admitted on academic qualifications alone, its black share of the

00:07:40.140 student undergraduate body would drop from 10% or now 14% to under 1%. That's according to Harvard's

00:07:47.380 own calculations that it made in 2013. And the reason for that is because there's a massive academic

00:07:53.340 skills gap. But if you read the New York Times or the Washington Post, it's just this mystery.

00:07:59.700 You know, well, why do we need racial preferences to admit black students? I don't know, but we do,

00:08:04.520 you know, because otherwise there'll be such exclusion. No, there won't. Nobody is excluding blacks.

00:08:09.720 The only thing that will be different, we hope, is that schools will admit blacks on the same 1.00

00:08:16.680 basis as they admit white and Asian students based on their academic qualifications. But right now,

00:08:23.580 we're pretending, in the case of blacks, that academic skills don't matter. They do. Merit matters, 0.96

00:08:30.460 Lou. Merit matters and not race.

00:08:32.800 And learning matters, too. And we're hearing all of this nonsense from the left. And I mean nonsense,

00:08:38.200 ladies and gentlemen, and everybody listening to the sound of our voices, please call nonsense what it

00:08:44.200 is. Nonsense. When you hear these folks talking about a difference of white supremacy as the reason

00:08:55.040 that minorities are not moving forward in this society, you are listening to a pure on huckster. 1.00

00:09:00.580 It's nonsense. It's ridiculous. This isn't a matter of white supremacy. This is a matter of left wing teachers 1.00

00:09:08.420 unions who chose, along with the entire public health apparatus of the United States, to keep kids out of

00:09:15.280 school for two years. And the people who paid the worst price for that, of course, were the most disadvantaged

00:09:20.640 and the least educated and those who most needed that education. They have created a further educational

00:09:28.480 gap for the for those who are challenged and disadvantaged. Am I right or wrong?

00:09:35.360 I predicted this early on, Lou. You're absolutely right. And it is terrifying. The the school shutdowns

00:09:41.920 have widened the academic skills gap. The academic skills gap is what is driving any racial disparities

00:09:49.300 and any racial tension in our society today. That is along with the racial criminal offending 0.56

00:09:55.640 gap. Get rid of those two gaps and all racial disparities will disappear. But those are real

00:10:01.880 facts. That is not a function of discrimination. And and now after the lockdowns, black scores have

00:10:10.480 dropped even further, making the the felt need for preferences even greater, which are themselves

00:10:17.620 completely dysfunctional, iatrogenic. They harm their beneficiaries. So, yes, the teachers unions

00:10:25.220 bear a large part to blame. But as you know, Lou, I'm willing to go one step further and break the

00:10:30.580 biggest of all taboos, which is to say that the black culture has to step up to the plate and put a much 1.00

00:10:37.900 greater emphasis on academic achievement. Students, you know, if if teachers were honest, and it's only

00:10:43.880 those who are long out of the profession who will talk about what they experienced in their classrooms.

00:10:51.520 They're on average inner city classrooms are chaotic because the students are chaotic. They do not have

00:10:57.500 not learning self control at home. Their parents are not emphasizing that you have to show up in school.

00:11:04.160 You have to pay attention to your teacher. You have to bring your textbook home to do your homework.

00:11:08.660 You have to study for exams. Those things are not happening at the same rate in black families as in 1.00

00:11:15.420 Asian families, for example. I'm not saying there's not exceptions. Of course, there are. Of course, 0.99

00:11:20.140 there's many black parents that are riding their kids academic achievement that are pushing them forward.

00:11:26.240 That absolutely happens, but not enough to close the academic achievement gap. And until we have a change

00:11:33.620 in black inner city culture that says academic achievement and effort is not acting white,

00:11:41.180 the preference, the skills gap is not going to close. Listen to this, Heather, if you will. This is

00:11:47.320 Harvard's response to the Supreme Court ruling. They admit they will still use an applicant's essay

00:11:54.400 discussing how race affected his or her life during the admissions process. So that will be a signal

00:12:01.920 for the admissions committee. And in some cases, I think that might even be legitimate. But as a broad

00:12:10.540 policy, I think it's absolutely thumbing their nose at the Supreme Court decision to use it as simply

00:12:20.660 a placeholder for racial preference. Your thoughts?

00:12:26.080 Well, I disagree with you on that, Lou. That's what I referred to before with this huge loophole

00:12:31.980 that Robert's put into his decision. I think Harvard is completely justified in seizing on

00:12:38.020 this. I disagree with Harvard's rhetoric. I disagree with its self-righteousness. And it claimed also in

00:12:43.760 its back out the president's memo today that diversity and difference are essential to academic

00:12:52.180 excellence. That's a complete lie, as we just talked about. When diversity means lowering

00:12:57.240 standards, it's inimical to academic excellence. But Roberts did say himself that if a student

00:13:05.960 brings up his race in his admissions essay and talks about how that affected his life experience and

00:13:11.760 character, they will look at it. Well, that's just holistic admissions. Colleges have already been doing

00:13:17.660 that, and they will continue doing that. So we're going to have an even greater emphasis on

00:13:23.300 admissions essays. They've already been using those. And you better believe that every black student is

00:13:29.860 going to be coached to make the entire essay around his race. And it will be harder, especially if schools 0.95

00:13:38.000 get rid of test scores. And this is all complicated to game theory out, what they're going to do with

00:13:43.620 objective test scores. But the emphasis on holistic admissions will make it harder to detect whether

00:13:51.280 schools continue to use race in an impermissible manner. But given the Roberts loophole, it's not

00:14:00.240 really clear what's permissible and what's impermissible at this point. So that's why I'm not like 100%

00:14:06.260 cheering this. I would have liked Roberts to... I'm not either, by the way. You said you disagreed with me.

00:14:11.660 I'm not either. I'm not cheering it. As a matter of fact, I'm principally, I'm annoyed by their

00:14:16.040 approach, because it should be, in my opinion, an individual assessment, not a broad loophole

00:14:24.260 available to an entire demographic group. We're coming back with Heather McDonald right after

00:14:29.040 these quick messages. Stay with us.

00:14:30.560 We're back with Heather McDonald. Heather, I had just clarified my position. Do we still disagree

00:14:43.500 or not?

00:14:44.660 Well, see, I don't know if... I'm saying that Roberts is to blame here. And I don't know if

00:14:49.300 you're saying Roberts is to blame or Harvard is to blame.

00:14:51.940 I'm saying...

00:14:52.300 I'm saying Roberts is to blame.

00:14:54.200 I'm saying Roberts is to blame. I'm saying Roberts has invited Harvard to do what it just said

00:14:58.920 it's going to do.

00:15:00.200 Yeah. And I think I can say we're both right. There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that

00:15:08.160 the ruling could have been tougher and cleaner and should have been. I think also, though,

00:15:14.560 that for Harvard to suddenly grandstand at this moment following that ruling is really beneath

00:15:22.420 Harvard's... what we would expect of that elite college.

00:15:27.540 Oh, God! Are you kidding? Like, you must be just doing this as a gesture towards the authority

00:15:36.580 of higher education. I have no expectations that Harvard would ever act in any way other

00:15:41.700 than morally righteous, hypocritical, condescending to everybody else. So Harvard's acting exactly

00:15:48.960 as I would have expected, because it does believe that it is the elite authority over all of

00:15:54.800 America. But as I say, Roberts has given them this opportunity, and not just Harvard, but

00:16:02.760 every other school is going to run with it.

00:16:04.740 Well, I tell you what, I'm backing down. I am retreating from the broadside, from Heather

00:16:11.740 McDonald. And I am going to apologize for even thinking for a moment about assigning authority

00:16:20.220 to Harvard that it does not possess. But I do, and I do want everybody to understand why I love

00:16:27.220 having Heather McDonald on The Great America Show. She's part of what makes this country great

00:16:31.900 and keeps the issues absolutely straight. Heather, that was a wonderful takedown, 0.73

00:16:38.540 and I loved it, even though I was collateral damage in it all. Let's turn to, right now,

00:16:45.080 the fight. I think, really, we're seeing some real signs that the American people are finally

00:16:53.220 finding, at least a number of them, backbone. The ability to take on target, to go after Bud Light,

00:17:00.300 to actually say to Larry Fink at BlackRock, you're full of bull when you talk about equity,

00:17:07.540 and, you know, governance and nonsense, ESG. What is your reaction to the changing, it seems,

00:17:16.700 temper of the broad society? I completely agree with you here, Luf. Absolutely. 0.96

00:17:23.700 Thank goodness. I'm a pessimist. Yes. Well, no, I mean, this is the only time. And really,

00:17:29.760 you were simply treating Harvard as it ought to be. You were still faithful to what our ideal of higher

00:17:36.620 education could be. So I honor you for that, for living sort of aspiring towards the ideal rather

00:17:42.900 than being depressed by the real. But as far as the pushback, I completely agree. My nature is to

00:17:48.260 be pessimistic, and I didn't see this coming. I am particularly impressed by Governor Ron DeSantis

00:17:55.700 of Florida who has been taking the lead in saying, I refuse to go along with the race hustle, with the

00:18:04.060 trans hustle. I am going to outlaw what I can outlaw consistently with First Amendment. And he is staying 1.00

00:18:12.220 within, by and large, those rules. And we are seeing pushback and people that are not cowed by being

00:18:20.160 called a racist. And that's what it's going to take to turn this country around is for people no longer

00:18:25.620 to be scared to say it is not racist to expect that our doctors actually have medical qualifications

00:18:33.160 and not just racial qualifications. It is not transphobic, whatever the hell that means, to say

00:18:40.240 that children should not have their innocence stripped for them by premature, unnecessary knowledge

00:18:46.160 of sexuality, much less perverse sexuality. So this is a good thing. I hope it lasts. We saw pushback

00:18:53.400 during the COVID lockdowns on the school lockdowns. Then they kind of dissipated. Obviously, the schools

00:18:59.000 opened up again. We'll hope that people keep their eye on the ball in this case and use the power of the

00:19:05.480 marketplace. I don't, you know, I'm not a parent, but if I had a child, perhaps I would feel highly

00:19:11.580 conflicted if the child was demanding to go to a Disney theme park. Nevertheless, there should be

00:19:17.600 an across-the-board boycott of Disney, given its embrace of the premature sexualization of children. 0.95

00:19:24.700 Well, you will not be dismayed then to hear that today Wall Street issuing a downgrade of Disney stock

00:19:32.200 talking about uncertainty and clarity on its next horizon, which is the next quarterly report.

00:19:40.880 It may go well beyond that. Heather McDonald, thanks so much for being with us. We want to

00:19:45.900 recommend your wonderful book, One More Time, When Race Trumps Merit by Heather McDonald. We urge you

00:19:53.380 to read it. Fascinating thinking and writing by Heather McDonald, as always. Heather, we always

00:20:01.040 we always give the guests the last word. And if you would, your concluding thoughts here today.

00:20:07.000 Loved our conversation.

00:20:09.060 Me too. It's always brilliant questions. And just keep fighting, Lou. And if your listeners keep

00:20:15.060 listening to you, they will get not just the courage, but also the backbone and the

00:20:20.180 the intellectual grounding that they need to take the country back.

00:20:25.180 God bless you. Thanks so much. Heather McDonald.

00:20:27.900 My pleasure.

00:20:28.740 Heather McDonald. We recommend highly her book, When Race Trumps Merit.

00:20:33.580 Thanks, everybody. Our guest here Monday will be attorney Kurt Olson.

00:20:37.360 We'll get Kurt's take on the SCOTUS decision

00:20:39.840 and what is happening right now in the persecution

00:20:43.860 of President Trump and much more. Please join us. Until then, thanks. God bless you.

00:20:50.180 And may God bless America.

The Great America Show - June 30, 2023

MERIT TRUMPS RACE

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