Congress -- including Republicans, of course -- is gearing up to overturn the Supreme Court ruling that struck down affirmative action in college admissions (and by implication, in hiring in all jobs), in the mode it's most comfortable with: in a sneaky backdoor way with plausible deniability, so that the liberals posing as Republicans can say "we're really fighting affirmative action quotas by re-authorizing them."

More than two-thirds of Americans think the Supreme Court was right to hold Harvard's race-based admissions policy unlawful. But the minority who disagree have no doubt about their own moral authority, and there's every reason to believe that they intend to undo the Court's decision at the earliest opportunity.

Which could be as soon as this year. In fact, undoing the Harvard admissions decision is the least of it. Republicans and Democrats in Congress have embraced a precooked "privacy" bill that will impose race and gender quotas not just on academic admissions but on practically every private and public decision that matters to ordinary Americans. The provision could be adopted without scrutiny in a matter of weeks; that's because it is packaged as part of a bipartisan bill setting federal privacy standards--something that has been out of reach in Washington for decades.

Why would Republicans screw over their voters like this?

For the usual reason -- they're selling us out to please their liberal corporate donors.

And it looks as though the bill breaks the deadlock by giving Republicans some of the federal preemption their business allies want while it gives Democrats and left-wing advocacy groups a provision that will quietly overrule the Supreme Court's Harvard decision and impose identity-based quotas on a wide swath of American life.

This tradeoff first showed up in a 2023 bill that Democratic and Republican members of the House commerce committee approved by an overwhelming 53-2 vote. That bill, however, never won the support of Sen. Cantwell (D-WA), who chairs the Senate commerce committee. This time around, a lightly revised version of the bill has been endorsed by both Sen. Cantwell and her House counterpart, Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA). The bill has a new name, the American Privacy Rights Act of 2024 (APRA), but it retains the earlier bill's core provision, which uses a "disparate impact" test to impose race, gender, and other quotas on practically every institutional decision of importance to Americans.

Disparate impact -- the doctrine that says you're racist even if you've done nothing racist nor ever had a racist thought.

If you hire based on merit, and that results in a "disparate impact" with minorities getting fewer jobs, then hiring based on merit is racist and illegal.

And Republicans are behind this!

I am at my absolute end.

"Disparate impact" has a long and controversial history in employment law; it's controversial because it condemns as discriminatory practices that disproportionately affect racial, ethnic, gender, and other protected groups. Savvy employers soon learn that the easiest way to avoid disparate impact liability is to eliminate the disparity -- that is, to hire a work force that is balanced by race and ethnicity. As the Supreme Court pointed out long ago, this is a recipe for discrimination; disparate impact liability can "leave the employer little choice . . . but to engage in a subjective quota system of employment selection." Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio, 490 U.S. 642, 652-53 (1989), quoting Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U.S. 405, 448 (1975) (Blackmun, J., concurring).

...

Not surprisingly, quota advocates don't want to fight such a war in the light of day. That's presumably why APRA obscures the mechanism by which it imposes quotas.

Here's how it works. APRA's quota provision, section 13 of APRA, says that any entity that "knowingly develops" an algorithm for its business must evaluate that algorithm "to reduce the risk of" harm. And it defines algorithmic "harm" to include causing a "disparate impact" on the basis of "race, color, religion, national origin, sex, or disability" (plus, weirdly, "political party registration status"). APRA Sec. 13(c)(1)(B)(vi)(IV)&(V).

At bottom, it's as simple as that. If you use an algorithm for any important decision about people--to hire, promote, advertise, or otherwise allocate goods and services--you must ensure that you've reduced the risk of disparate impact.

The closer one looks, however, the worse it gets.

Read the whole thing.

I cannot believe this. And yet, of course it's true.

You know what's going on, right? Liberal corporate donors have gotten used to the racial quota system and their DEI officers are screaming about the possible end to racial quotas. So the big corporations are telling Republicans that they want some legal authority to continue discriminatory practices, now that the Supreme Court has outlawed the practice. They don't want to be sued by all the white and Asian people they're turning away on racial grounds.

So they contact the people who slavishly serve them, and tell them, "Fuck over your own voters again, vote in favor of discriminating against us, so that we don't have to face internal strife from our DEI brigades and we can keep doing business as usual."

And the GOP, of course, doesn't need to have its arm twisted much to fuck over Republican voters. It's what they do. It's all they do.

Meanwhile: College students can't read, partly due to "education reforms" based on the idea that any standards in education cause "disparate impact" on blacks and therefore must be eradicated.

Whom the gods destroy, they first make stupid.

Another seal of the Education Apocalypse is opened.

Many college students don't read very well, their professors say. And they don't think they should have to work very hard. "Some struggle with reading endurance and weak vocabulary," writes Beth McMurtrie in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Others aren't willing to struggle.

Furthermore, "a significant number of those who do the work seem unable to analyze complex or lengthy texts," say professors at colleges ranging from Wellesley to Cal State LA. Students don't seem to "have the context to understand certain arguments or points of view."

In 15 years of teaching, Theresa MacPhail has adapted to the declining number of students willing and able to complete reading assignments. "She began assigning fewer readings, then fewer still," reasoning that less is more, she told McMurtrie. "She would focus on the readings that mattered most and were interesting to them."

MacPhail is an associate professor in science and technology studies at Stevens Institute of Technology, a selective university. But more and more of her students "still weren't doing the reading, and when they were, more and more struggled to understand it." They complained about having to write a research paper. It was too hard.

...

Few students or parents worry about college readiness or academic well-being, surveys show. Grade inflation has persuaded them they're prepared for college work. Look at those A's!

"I have a lot of students who think they've already mastered the art [of writing], and other students who've never been required to really try," says Gutierrez. He blames minimal writing requirements in high school and "good grades for mediocre work" for the decline in literacy. His students think writing 750 words is too much.

The pandemic spread grading reforms, such as "equitable grading practices," that let students turn in work late, retake tests and receive points for assignments they didn't do. "Critics argue that such an approach can backfire, because, if done poorly, it conveys to students that deadlines, homework, and effort don't matter," writes McMurtrie. A Fordham critique argued that the practices "lower academic standards and are likely to do long-term damage to the educational equity their advocates purport to advance."

"Critics say."

Critics say that lowering standards lowers standards. Those crazies!