The problem with Left-wing social engineering policies is that, despite their stated goal of ensuring “equality,” someone – some group – always has to endure discrimination.

And so it is with the insanely liberal University of California system where, in 2012, , a new admission policy was set to take affect that will reduce the number of Asian-American graduates because, apparently, there are too many of them.

According to a 2009 Associated Press report, Asian-American graduates made up some 40 percent of all undergraduate students enrolled in the California university system. The authoritarian leftists who run the place insisted that the policy – the biggest change in UC admissions policy since 1960 – is needed to ensure a “wider” pool of university applicants, to make the process “more fair.”

Asian-Americans, it seems, were being penalized for being too smart.

As you might imagine, Asian-American parents, advocates and lawmakers began angrily demanding that the goofy, discriminatory policy that will apply to all nine UC campuses be rescinded. But they, too, were focused on racist politics: They said that the policy would hurt Asian-American students, wouldn’t much change the admission numbers for blacks and Hispanics, and would give white students too much of an advantage.

When was the last time, in the world of progressive liberalism, that whites were treated with anything but derision, hatred and guilt? But there you have it.

“Affirmative action for whites“

“I like to call it affirmative action for whites,” Ling-chi Wang, a retired professor at UC Berkeley told the AP. “I think it’s extremely unfair to Asian-Americans on the one hand and underrepresented minorities on the other.”

Mind you, there were no white advocacy groups pushing for this change; indeed, there are no white advocacy groups even permitted in American society. But here we have an obviously racially biased former professor who claimed that, somehow, this whole plan was a white privilege thing.

That said, he is partially right; this policy change was unfair, but only in the sense that there should not be racial admissions policies in the first place. Students of any ethnic group, skin color, creed, religious beliefs and social status ought to be able to attend any institution of higher learning that they qualify for, based on their merits alone. If one ethnic group – in this case, Asian-Americans – dominates admission standards and graduation requirements, so be it. These students are obviously smart enough to get into the UC system and then pass the required coursework.

As the AP noted, Asian-Americans made up the largest ethnic group among UC’s 173,000 undergraduates:

In 2008, they accounted for 40 percent at UCLA and 43 percent at UC Berkeley — the two most selective campuses in the UC system — as well as 50 percent at UC San Diego and 54 percent at UC Irvine.

Asian-Americans are about 12 percent of California’s population and 4 percent of the U.S. population overall.

What happened to merit-based admission policies?

What’s more, this policy change – approved unanimously by the UC Board of Regents in February 2009 – essentially dumbed down the entrance requirements. It aimed to greatly expand the ethnic diversity of the applicant pool by, in part, eliminating the requirement that applicants sit for two SAT subject tests and reducing the number of students who are guaranteed admission based only on grades and test scores.

“If there are Asian-Americans who are qualified and don’t get into UC because they’re trying to increase diversity, then I think that’s unfair,” said 16-year-old junior Jessica Peng. “I think that UC is lowering its standards by doing that.”

She’s right, of course.

Doug Chan, who has a teenage son at Lowell, added: “Parents are very skeptical and suspicious that this is yet another attempt to move the goalposts or change the rules of the game for Asian college applicants.”

He’s right, of course.

But this is what happens when nanny state liberals start gerrymandering with the rules on the grounds of “fairness.” The only “fair” thing to do is set up the rules and make everyone abide by them; otherwise, “fairness” rules become nothing more than discriminatory.

For the record, California voters decided to ban race-based school admission policies in 1996, not that it mattered much in the long run.

Sources:

http://www.nbcnews.com

http://www.nytimes.com

http://articles.latimes.com