Ward Connerly contributes an excellent essay to Minding the Campus, in which he discusses the policies of the University of California meant to increase “diversity.” UC officials don’t want their top schools to have too many of those dull Asian students who just “study, study, study.” So they have to contrive to find ways of excluding some of them but without coming right out and saying, “we’d rather have diversity than educational excellence.”

One wonders, why do they do this? The good Asian (and white) students excluded from the likes of Cal and UCLA will go to college somewhere else. They will graduate with honors and will find successful careers despite having gone to “lesser” institutions. Conversely, the weaker students admitted to top schools won’t be miraculously changed by that. They won’t be better educated and better prepared for the working world simply because their degrees are from a UC school rather than a Cal State school or some other. The “diversity” game of shuffling students around doesn’t change the underlying reality that some are more adept and determined than others.

I suppose that the answer is that it’s all political theatrics. UC officials need to pretend that they’re doing something to advance “social justice” because they don’t want to be harassed by the “civil rights” industry. Just admit politically correct percentages and they’re safe. Let someone else worry about the effects of letting ancestry trump personal capability.