WASHINGTON, D.C. Aug. 30 (DPI) – The Justice Department this week finally got around to ruling on a four-year-old lawsuit from a group of Asian-Americans who believe they’ve been discriminated against because they didn’t get into Harvard. The ruling means that a full-blown trial can commence, as early as October.

Readers across news sites of course unleashed various degrees of invective and general criticism – and sometimes even support – of the decision: “One man’s affirmative action is another man’s discrimination” wrote one poster today. “Left-wing racism is no different from right-wing racism,” wrote another. More than 400 comments popped up in a matter of hours on WSJ.com, as well as on NYTimes.com and WashingtonPost.com.

The core questions seem to be: What influence does the federal government and its antidiscrimination laws have over private institutions, which most agree should be free to choose whatever pool of students they want? And what about the fact that these prestigious institutions accept hundreds of millions of dollars annually in federal support, in the form of grants, scholarships, direct health-care payments, and more?

Most readers acknowledge that discrimination cuts many ways, and preferences occur for many reasons. “Isn’t legacy, as opposed to efforts to diversify, the main reason why so many qualified students are turned away from Harvard and similar schools?” asked on poster on NYTimes.com. “When a large percentage of first year spots go to children of legacy and large donor families, the rest of us have a lesser chance of admission, regardless of merit. But no one seems to acknowledge the legacy factor in this argument. Instead they blame affirmative action. It’s not the poor diverse kids pushing others out, but the Jared Kushner’s and the George W. Bush’s of the world who get accepted with a sub-par GPA and Dad’s hefty donation.”

Top comments from NYTimes.com, WashingtonPost.com and WSJ.com:

My children (twins) are 1/2  “Caucasian” of Northern European descent, 1/8  “Ecuadoran” (ergo Hispanic), and 3/8 third-generation Chinese (three generations in Ecuador, so again, “Hispanic”).
When we were registering them for public kindergarten, we were advised (by a Mexican-American educator in the school district who was a friend of ours) to NOT indicate they were Hispanic when registering, because the district might try to force them into bi-lingual education.
Now, as they are entering high school, we are being advised to not indicate or acknowledge any Asian heritage, as this will harm them in admissions and scholarships for college. Some melting pot!

“Sixteen prestigious U.S. universities supported Harvard in a court filing last month and said any prohibition on considering race in admissions decisions would be an “extraordinary intrusion” by the federal government.”
When you are tax free institutions relying on billions of dollars in Federal handouts (student loans,  research grants, tax free status, Medicare/Medicaid funds for your hospitals, etc.) you are no longer private institutions with “extraordinary intrusion” by the Federal Government – You Are Part Of The Government and subject to much more oversight.

BRAVO!!!!!  Now I wait for the infinitesimally small chance that affirmative action will be replaced with merit based admission policies at American universities.  Too late for my kids, but perhaps a step at rescuing the future of the nation from left wing social engineering.
Still waiting on the folks at Harvard to put all their classes on the internet so they can share the benefit of their superior education with the masses perhaps living up to that “making the world a better place” excuse they use for screwing over so many people.

The notion that American has been a meritocracy is a fantasy of entitled white people. Racial and religious discrimination has been present since our country’s inception and is is alive and well today. Some of that is manifested some of the comments in this section. The notion that you or your off spring have been discriminated against because a few minority students attend an institution is a reflection of racial bias. Just because you are white or Asian does not mean your grades or standardized testing scores are better than any black or Hispanic student at your school. Affirmative Action does not automatically mean that less qualified students are taking the place of a more deserving white or Asian students. Race can be used as a factor in college admissions and the idea that it absolutely should not be used, is simply lying about the reality of racial and religious bias that permeates American society. The last 3 occupants of the WH offers a view of benefits of affirmative action. Let’s start with W, an admitted C student who went to Andover, Yale and Harvard Business School and can’t pronounce ” nuclear”. Do you think there were not hundreds of black students more qualified than W? Donald Trump went to U Penn undergrad and his vocabulary is that of a 3rd grader and there were no more qualified black students than he?? Obama is a beneficiary of affirmative action for sure, but of the three, only he seems to have been qualified for the Ivy League.

Note: Am Asian immigrant who had the privilege of attending a couple of the US’s finest universities. I really hope the Asian students who filed the lawsuit have the ethical decency to not push narratives such as “white privilege” or “black lives matter” because they just won legal support for their stance that “all races should be subject to the same meritocracy”. Meanwhile, hope Harvard can stop building Noah’s Ark — worsening the needless race tensions in the country. Make your affirmative action stances based purely on socioeconomic factors and toss all identity aspects from your admission process. Make America Sane Again.

Glad to see this. The only way to stop discrimination based on race is to stop discriminating based on race.

The DOJ obviously couldn’t care less about Asian Americans.  They are being used for cover by an anti affirmative action group that wants to keep more seats for whites, but doesn’t want to make it obvious that they want fewer blacks. Sessions should be very careful.  If the Court rules that Harvard has to take the top test scores and ignore race, Asian-Americans could take 100% of the class and crowd out all the whites