Horace Cooper: "Diversity Doesn't Trump The Constitution"

Horace Cooper

Today the U.S. Supreme Court starts its fall session. One of the cases on its docket involves the University of Texas's affirmative action policy on admissions. From OneNewsNow: "A lawsuit was filed against the University of Texas at Austin when a white applicant was rejected in favor of less qualified blacks and Hispanics. Horace Cooper is co-founder of Project 21, the [black conservative] group that filed a brief in the case. 'This program was set up not in response to examples and experiences of discrimination, but as a way to try to build diversity,' Cooper explains. 'While diversity, we think, is an interesting and noble goal, we don't believe that diversity trumps the Constitution, which says that every American citizen ought to be treated color blind.'"

More: "He says Project 21 would consider several different approaches to be fair. 'In particular, we would urge them to return back to the top ten percent policy, where at high schools all across the state of Texas, anyone in that top ten percent would be eligible to apply to the University of Texas,' Cooper notes. 'That was a policy that had been in effect....more than a decade before they repealed it to come up with the new, holistic admissions program.'"

Booker Rising response: Even the "Top 10%" policy is bogus, because of huge differences in the quality of high schools. It is hardly unusual for someone who ranks in the Top 60% at one high school to be academically superior to everyone in the Top 10% at another high school. University admissions should be based solely on SAT/ACT scores and some grades-related formula that accounts for a high school's academic rigor. All the other considerations are mere fluff, which have little bearing on a student's ability to handle the curriculum. The focus instead should be on better preparing black and Hispanic students to meet the demands of top universities (ahem, organic development), so this controversy wouldn't be an issue in the first place.