On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Katy Tur Reports,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona stated that “We recognize the perspectives” that racial preferences in college admissions made it more difficult for Asian students to be admitted, but racial preferences are about helping students who don’t have legacy benefits or aren’t wealthy and “everyone wins when they’re learning in a diverse learning environment.”
Host Katy Tur asked, “Part of the Harvard case is that it made it harder for Asian Americans to get into elite universities. Did you see any validity to that argument?”
Cardona answered, “We recognize the perspectives on this. But, at the end of the day, if you look at our country, and you see — I’ll give you an example, in 1996, California struck down affirmative action. The percentage of black and Latino students in the top universities in California went down by 50%, and they’ve yet to recover from that.”
Later, in response to a question on the popularity of racial preferences, he stated, “I think we have to boil it down to the students, right? Making sure that what we’re discussing are students who, many of them first-generation college students, who don’t have the legacy benefit, right? Don’t have maybe the wealth to help them get into college. Those students deserve the opportunity. That’s how we’re framing it. There are students out there with the intellect and the ability to not only make it onto campus, but also to add benefit and value to the campus. We have to lift up those stories and make sure that we’re providing pathways for those students as well.”
Earlier in the interview, Cardona stated that “we know that everyone wins when they’re learning in a diverse learning environment.”
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