Here’s an interesting case: A medical school has been sued for racial discrimination because an admissions officer there advised a (white) applicant that her chances of admission would be better if she took a DNA test and could point to some African American or Native American blood.
Now, surely, this has to be filed in the category of “appalling but not surprising.” That is, under the lamentable current state of the law, schools can weigh race and ethnicity in admissions, and this helps you if you belong to some groups and hurts you if you belong to other groups, so isn’t the advice given the applicant here perfectly sound? Indeed, the admissions officer here pointed to a past case where her suggested approach worked.
Racial preferences are ugly, divisive, and unfair; they must be fought; but in the meantime and as a hedge, we should all buy stock in those DNA companies!
The three areas where racial preferences are most commonly used are education, contracting, and employment. Well, above we have a DNA test being suggested in the first category. I wrote earlier on NRO about a DNA test being used in the contracting context. And as for employment, we all know of the the pioneering work being done here by Elizabeth Warren.