David French: Class Quotas Help Blacks As Much As Race Quotas

Why hasn't Harvard ever figured that out over the last 56 years?

American intellectuals are not supposed to know much, if anything, about race gaps in intelligence and crime. Hence, The New Yorker’s profile of Curtis Yarvin assumes the the fact — the most thoroughly documented finding in all of American social science — “that not all racial or population groups are equally intelligent” must be some kind of nutball extremist delusion:

Neo-reactionaries tend to subscribe to what they call “human biodiversity,” a set of fringe beliefs which holds, among other things, that not all racial or population groups are equally intelligent.

But how are the famous New Yorker fact checkers supposed to know that racial differences in average intelligence have been documented countless times by academics when they are told incessantly that must be “pseudoscience.” I mean, while The New Yorker covers Steve Sailer as a figure of fashion, it would never stoop so low as to review his book.

Hence, now that the Supreme Court has increasingly taken stands saying that the same laws and Constitutional amendments outlawing discrimination against blacks and Hispanics also outlaw discrimination against Asians and whites, liberal pundits are ill-equipped to think through the consequences, which will be profound.

Practically nobody respectable realizes that the white-black gap, much less the Asian-black gap, in intelligence is so large that in elite far-right-edge-of-the-bell-curve institutions, honestly getting rid of racial discrimination against whites and Asians will devastate the number of blacks who qualify on their own merits.

Nobody with a mainstream career dares to state explicitly, “African Americans have a lot of strong suits on average, but very high intelligence is not one of them.” Hence, only a few widely hated Diogenes are honest enough to warn liberals that the end of racial preferences for blacks will have massive consequences for the black middle and upper middle class. But, they assume they can safely ignore such an awful person who says such awful things.

For example, in the New York Times opinion section, David French blithely opines that last weeks’ Ames decision banning an example of discrimination against whites and Asians will usher in a new golden age of class-based quotas that will benefit blacks just as much as traditional race-based quotas:

Justice Jackson Just Helped Reset the D.E.I. Debate

June 8, 2025

By David French
Opinion Columnist

… But if the law is going to require individualized decisions, does that eliminate the possibility of systemic change? Does it leave minority groups permanently behind?

No, it does not. The Ames decision didn’t raise the bar for nondiscrimination cases. It just placed everyone in the same legal position. And as Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion in the Harvard case, schools may grant “an admissions preference to identified victims of discrimination.” It can also take into account their individual struggles with, say, income or health.

As we all know, African Americans, such as LeBron James, tend to be tragically frail, like tubercular early 19th Century Romantic poets and composers.

Collectively, these individualized decisions can have a systemic effect. When there has been systemic injustice, individualized assessments of resilience and achievement will have a disproportionate positive effect on marginalized communities.

Why didn’t Harvard ever think of this since the 1960s? It’s obvious to David French that if you find the most downtrodden denizens of the ghetto, that’s where the real diamonds in the rough must be.

But instead, Harvard prefers black 3rd generation Harvard students like Malia Obama to underclass blacks.

I guess Harvard’s just not as smart as David French is.

Systemic injustice will always have individual effects, and addressing those individual effects will ultimately result in systemic change.

And yet, Harvard prefers third generation black affirmative action beneficiaries (grandfather in 1969, mother in 1997, daughter in 2025) to blacks whose grandfather was in jail in 1969 and whose mother was in jail in 1997.

As Jackson wrote in her dissenting opinion in the Harvard case: “Gulf-sized race-based gaps exist with respect to the health, wealth and well-being of American citizens. They were created in the distant past, but have indisputably been passed down to the present day through the generations.” Yes, and that means that when admissions committees (or hiring committees) consider the socioeconomic status of applicants, then that will disproportionately benefit victims of past discrimination.

But Harvard instead prefers blacks who are preppies, legacies, have one white parent, or are the scions of foreign elites.

Not only are they smarter on average, they also behave better in the dorms and are less likely to steal from or beat up their Harvard classmates.

At the same time, however, you can’t use skin color, sex or sexual orientation as a proxy for adversity.

The problem with this popular chain of thought is that practically all blacks who can make it through Harvard with at least semi-respectable performances come from the upper percentiles of blacks.

If Harvard dumped its racial quotas and started giving big affirmative action boosts to kids from working class backgrounds, it would wind up with more students whose parents work in Chinese restaurants or whose parents are white flyover state screw-ups.

So, instead, Harvard encourages its privileged black applicants to write essays about all the white supremacist hair-touching adversity they’ve endured.

I know David French doesn’t believe me because, unlike him, I’m a bad person who tries to learn the truth about racial gaps. But, honestly, Harvard crunched the numbers on race quotas vs. class quotas and long ago discovered that class quotas don’t work as race quotas.