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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023

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affirmative action is officially unconstitutional.

The majority opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, which all five of his fellow conservative justices joined in, said that both Harvard’s and UNC’s affirmative action programs “unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points.”

“We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today,” Roberts wrote.

The majority said that the universities’ policies violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

the decision leaves open the ability for universities to consider how an applicant's race affected their life "concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university".

Affirmative action in universities wasn't going to last.

The upper middle class/lower upper class stops being woke when it impacts them. Defunding the police is fun, but they still want rigorous security around their lower Manhattan office. Affirmative action gave too many seats to non whites making it harder for the children of the lower elite to get into college. The Asian problem will be fixed with an increased focus on sports, extra circulars and personality.

Regime stability is nearly always prioritized over ideology. Promoting a sizeable group of lower Iq people into the elite threatens the long term viability of the American empire. Harvard graduates are put in positions of power, and an increasing portion of the graduates were simply not meeting the standards. The issue is exacerbated by lower entrance standards necessitating lower educational standards during the degree. The result is mediocre people who have studied subjective topics and lack skill and knowledge. Now that we are reentering an era of great power competition, having the Pentagon staffed by people who didn't make it there based on merit is shooting oneself in the foot. The political radicalism of the affirmative action students was probably viewed as a positive a few years ago, as they were seen as committed to left-liberalism. Today, there is probably increasing concern that the radicalism has gotten to a point at which the loyalty of junior members of the elite is questionable. The state department can't be staffed by people who believe the US is a white supremacist state that needs to be destroyed.

Defunding the police is fun, but they still want rigorous security around their lower Manhattan office

The wealthier and whiter you were, especially if you lived in Manhattan, the more likely you were to vote for the far-left ‘defund the police’ candidate in the last New York City mayoral election.

In fact, the only reason that the moderate former cop Eric Adams won the election was because poor black and latino New Yorkers in the outer boroughs voted for him.