Just to emphasize how absolutely racist and white supremacist Donald Trump and his administration will be to try to win this election, the Department of Justice has determined that Yale University discriminates against white applicants, continuing the administration's war on affirmative action and a 21st-century, diverse society. To make it not look quite so blatantly racist and to try to pit communities of color against each other to slice away some votes, the DOJ says that Asian Americans have been discriminated against, too. In the letter, Eric Dreiband, assistant attorney general for civil rights, threatened that if the university failed to change its admissions policy, "the Department will be prepared to file a lawsuit." Yale says the allegation is "meritless" and "hasty."
The DOJ wrote to the college's attorneys this week reporting on its two-year investigation, which concluded that Yale "rejects scores of Asian American and white applicants each year based on their race, whom it otherwise would admit." Yale issued a statement in which it "categorically denies this allegation." The university said that it cooperated fully with the investigation and has continually provided "a substantial amount of information and data," and that the Justice Department reached its conclusion before allowing it to provide all the data the government had requested.
"Given our commitment to complying with federal law, we are dismayed that the DOJ has made its determination before allowing Yale to provide all the information the Department has requested thus far," the university said in a statement. "Had the Department fully received and fairly weighed this information, it would have concluded that Yale’s practices absolutely comply with decades of Supreme Court precedent."
The Class of 2022 at Yale is 11% legacy members, aka students with alumni family members, a population that is likely to be predominately white because of the nature of legacy admissions. In contrast, "only 5.8% of the entire student population identifies as Black. Less than 10% are Hispanic, and under 15% are Asian." That leaves 42.7% of the Yale student body, which is white.
Scholars of and in the Asian American and Pacific Islander community blasted the DOJ's allegations, saying that this is a politicized effort to try to split communities of color and the the legacy issue is a larger barrier to admissions. "It's leveraging the model minority myth to undermine the opportunity to build a multiracial coalition in this country to dismantle racism," says Dona Kim Murphey, a former board member of the Korean American Association.
Michael Li, senior counsel at The Brennan Center for Justice, calls it "messaging for white people." He said, "It's like 'Hey if you're stuck at a job or not moving up the economic ladder, your income hasn't increased for decades—you can blame people of color and elites for keeping you out of schools like Yale. […] That's just political messaging for November." Janelle Wong, a professor of American studies and Asian American studies at the University of Maryland and a Yale alum, added, "The message that this sends to the AAPI community is that the DOJ is very interested in dismantling policies that create diversity and increase access to those who have been excluded to places like Yale."
"There's so much evidence that these policies create the learning environment these students thrive in," Wong said, pointing out that affirmative action does not harm but benefits the AAPI community. There's evidence that the AAPI community overwhelmingly feels that way. A 2016 survey of AAPI Americans found two-thirds support affirmative action.
Like everything else the Trump administration has done, this action against Yale stems from racism and white supremacy. It's a cynical preelection ploy to try to win over AAPI voters for Trump.