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While the President is making it harder for people to enter the US, his Confederate House alf Jeff Sessions is planning to make life easier for certain Americans who already here.
In The New York Times is reporting that the Justice Department is planning to take on affirmative action in college admissions.
The Justice Department is working on a plan to investigate and potentially sue universities for admission policies that.
Are found to discriminate against white applicants.
Finally, you know how many times I go to colleges in an America and say, hey, it, where's all the white people? If American colleges were any whites or John snow would build a wall to protect us from them. They're all coming, so many of them. They've got magic and hacky sacks.
Now.
If you're confused about why this is happening, welcome to the club. Jeff Sessions and his Justice Department have decided to get serious about racism against white people, which I didn't think was a priority, but apparently it is. Because according to one poll, fifty four percent, or more than half of Trump supporters think white people face more discrimination
than black people. No, no, no, no. Look, I know a lot of white people have real problems, but to hear them saying, you know, us whites have it worse than black people, it's like where in the sun, Like where It's almost like when rich people complain about their financial problems. Do you know how high the taxes on my summer home are?
Wait?
You have a house for one season? Yeah, I need a house to get away from my house. What you don't have a second house. I don't even have a house. You're so lucky. Goddamn it. This is just madness. And the news of the Justice Department going after affirmative action in America universities is bound to be a big ishu. So to get more perspective on it, we turned out to Roy with Jr. And Jordan Klepper. Everybody, let's get straight into it. Roy, let's start with you. Now, why do you think?
Whoa?
Whoa?
Why do we have to start with Roy? You see, it's happening right now. This is just another example of the subtle bias we white people face every single day.
Oh man, here we go. Oh no, don't here we go?
Me Trevor, Oh gound him?
Up.
Oh no, don't you wound him up me either.
For way too long, white people have lived as second class citizens. Let me ask you a question since Obama, how many white presidents have there been one? And look at our culture. Just this year, a black movie literally Pride the oscar out of the hands of a white movie, a movie that had the guts to tell the story about how Ryan got invented jazz.
Jordan, Jordan, Jordan, I'm sorry, man. The numbers show that there is still a huge opportunity gap between black people and white people. A black man's media income is fourteen thousand dollars less than a white man's. In schooling, thirty four percent of white people complete high education, while that's only true for twenty percent of black people.
Trevor, numbers aren't the point twelve percent fifty five degrees four inches?
Great?
We all have numbers, but I've lived discrimination. Did you know that I did not get into Western Michigan University? Do you want to know why? Was it because my grades were bad? Or I didn't do the essay portion of the SATs, or because I didn't technically apply, or was it because of this.
Your your lady risks don't you dare?
Don't you dare?
Gender my risks it was because of the color of my skin, Trevor. Just because I read at a seventh grade level doesn't mean I can read between the lines. I even see it in the workplace. Right, how many times have you covered black issues on this show?
All the time? I did a black Twitter, black people in porn, black people in Congress.
See, Trevor, you're gonna tell me I'm not an expert on black porn.
Why.
I don't want to know what you know about black porn. But Roy does these pieces because he's lived the black experience.
Ever, I've also lived the black experience. You think I don't know hip hop. I ain't saying he's a gold digger, but jas with the broa.
Whoa, that's that's not your word?
You see? You see? How is that not our word? We came up with that word? Talk about appropriation?
Ah, you're stolen from us?
All right?
All right, Jordan, before you make it impossible for me to be a black friend, I'm gonna stop you right there, Roy, Roy, Roy, what do you make of the Justice Department suing universities for discriminating against to white people?
I'm like Jordans, I agree with Jeff Sessions.
Yeah wait, wait what eh?
If white people are being discriminated against, we got to look into this.
Injustice, amen.
People being blocked from getting into colleges just because of the color of their skin cannot be tolerated in America. I hope it turns class action. I hope Sessions slaps them colleges like a strip of booty and VP. And if anyone has been discriminated against, Jeff Sessions and his Justice Department need to go in and seek compensation for those victims.
Yeah, cut the jack.
And it's not just enough. It's not just enough to right the wrongs of today. We gotta go back. Sure, we gotta go way back.
Well maybe not way back.
Are you talking hundreds of years?
Ten years back?
And I agree with Jordan Klepper, reparations for all victims of discrimination.
That's what you meant, everybody.
That's okay, that's not what exactly we were talking about. Okay, you guys, that's why I get my own show.
Where would you Jordan clap everybody, We'll be right back.
So you don't want.
My guest tonight is the former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Please welcome Cheryl and Eiffel.
So lovely to have you here. It's wonderful to be here.
You think you you're so happy to have you here. So right now, the Supreme Court, they're they're hearing a case about a firm inve action in college. This keeps coming up over and over again, Like why do you think you know we're still having this battle.
Yeah, it's quite interesting, you know. Uh So, I'm a litigator, and and most litigators lawyers know that if you're going to take a case up to the Supreme Court, you're bound by president if the Supreme Court has decided that issue before, and has decided it one way. It's very hard to get the court to reverse courts. It happens, but it's hard to do, and you have to really have a reason for why you think at this moment the court should reverse course. But this court has been
doing it quite a bit at a brisk clip. Yes, and you know, obviously we know the Dobbs decision overturned Roe versus Wight, a fifty year old decision, and affirmative action as well. I mean, it's not as though the Court is not deciding affirmative action over and over again. This is like, you know, you just keep going to you get the court you want. In nineteen seventy nine, in the Baki case, affirmative action in college admissions was challenged and upheld. It was upheld again, then in the
Grutter case out of University of Michigan. Then in twenty sixteen again in the Fisher case University of Texas, and after the University of Texas lost, the man who has been behind this whole effort basically said, you know, using a kind of a clue from the descent of Justices Thomas and Alito, I think I need Asian American plaintiffs. And he set about crafting a set of of claims that raised conscious admissions is actually discriminatory against Asian Americans.
And that's the claim that he had brought in Harvard at Harvard, and that's the case that's now before the Supreme Court. But should the Supreme Court be hearing this again when they just heard it in twenty sixteen, and before that, just heard it in two thousand and two and before that just you know, but it's a new court, right, And so basically you have somebody who keeps coming back and now they have the court they want.
Okay, but this scares me about the court. Though the court we have now, right, I mean, it's the Supreme Court has really been our only recourse for justice. I mean pretty much everything that we've gotten as far as rights right has been based a decision from the Supreme Court. Now, like you said, Roe has been overturned. What do we do now, how do we get past this court?
Well, I think actually it's a sober and sobering moment for us to recognize that although I think many of us grew up in a period of time where we believe that it's in fact not true, it is true that the Court decided Brown versus Board of Education, which ended legal apartheid in this country and really changed American democracy. And there have been many other civil rights decisions from
the Court that have been wonderful. Most of them have not been wonderful actually, in the history of the United States Supreme Court, and so we've always had to supplement it with legislative action, with the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four, with the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five, with the Fair Housing Act of nineteen sixty eight, We've had to supplement it with direct action, with protests,
with boycotts, We've had to supplement it with education. We've had to supplement it in all kinds of ways, and so it's always been a multi pronged strategy. The problem we have now, though, is that the Court seems bent on dismantling the successes we make in those other realms, and so we see that with, for example, the Voting Rights Act, which has been severely weakened by this Supreme Court. That's where we have to really start to get worried, and it is a real problem. It is not something
to be taken lightly. And it's not just a partisan battle as many people think. I've been a civil rights lawyer for thirty years. You win some and you lose some. The rule of law is that you have by what the court says and does. But you do that with the knowledge that the Court is behaving fairly and with integrity and legitimately. And when you start feeling like decisions are being made without the proper foundation, then it gets very hard to convince your clients that it's a fair system.
And so I think we are in a kind of perilous moment. As it relates to the court.
Before you go, you said something I want to get to that. You said, our democracy. It's like we're teenagers. We're young. It's like teenagers. So democracy is what staying up all night on snapchat and what's up you know.
I mean, yes, like teenagers who think they know everything, who have a grandiose sense of themselves, who throw tantrums. Yes we are. I mean, if you think about American democracy, at least for me, I wouldn't count America as a democracy. I certainly as a nation, but not as a democracy until at least nine fifty four, when Brown was decided, because you can't call a country a democracy if by law, If by law a whole segment of citizens can be
denied the right to participate in the political system. So that's just, and that's being pretty generous. That's nineteen fifty four.
I would take it to nineteen sixty five with the Voting Rights Act because before the passage, Before the passage of the Voting Rights Act, even though the right of black people should have been guaranteed by the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution enacted and ratified after the Civil War, most Black people then lived in the South and still live in the South, and most of the
South was denying the vote to black people. So until nineteen sixty five, I wouldn't call us even credibly a democracy. And if you think of it that way, then we are young, and so we're still figuring this thing out, and I'd say, wanted just to give people hope. Please give me some pal and give.
Me some vote, Please.
Give me some vote. We're also trying to do something that no other country has done. There is no template for the kind of multi racial democracy with the kind of history of white supremacy and slavery. There's no other country that's trying to do that in the dynamic way that we are doing it. We talk about, you know, being a nation of immigrants, which is not entirely true, but immigration is a huge part of the character of our country in twentieth century. Immigration for sure made the
country have the cast that it does. And so we're trying to create something. We're not trying to do something like another country. We're not pointing to them and saying, oh, yeah, like that. We're trying to do something very particular and it's hard, and that's what I'm currently writing a book about It's called Is This America? And it is about race, but it is also about what I think of at this moment as the last best chance for us to really create a healthy democracy in this country.
Okay, well, when you finish a book, I won't be here, but I'm sure no bring you back and it'll be a nice white guy Sydney interview.
Look at that.
Okay, thank you so much, and we'll be right back after next.
American universities all around the world.
They're known as.
Some of the most prestigious institutions of learning, and so to get into them, you have to work hard. You have to volunteer, you have to play sports, you have to get super high grades. Or you can just have shady rich parents.
Federal prosecutors today revealed what they say is the largest case of college admissions fraud in US history, charging coaches and affluent parents, including Hollywood elite, in a massive bribery scheme to fast track kids into some of the country's top universities, including Yale and Stanford.
All told, the thirty three people named in the indictment paid and alleged twenty five million dollars in bribes those kids.
Parents now facing jail time include real estate moguls, wine vineyard owners, entrepreneurs like trend expert Jane Buckingham, who posted this inspiring Instagram message last spring.
Don't cheat it really.
Yeah, yeah, don't cheat because I'm cheating and if we all start cheating, then it's fair game. So what even is the point from on this college admission scandal. We're joined now by a man who spends most of his time on college campuses, Michael Cost to everybody, as a college expert, I would love to know what are your thoughts?
Yeah, well, Trevor, this is the biggest college scandal since I was kicked off my a cappella team for quote unquote bringing a gun to rehearsal. They love their rules, but I'll tell you what. The whole thing just makes it clear to me that we need affirmative action.
Yeah, you know what, I agree, Michael. We need affirmative action because that would help my Nazi students compete against these we connected families.
No, no, no, no, you more. I mean we need affirmative action for dumb rich kids, because if we stop letting wealthy parents bribe colleges and their kids won't be able to get in, and dumb rich kids are just as important to campus diversity as any other minority. Sure, black and Asian students add new perspectives, but without Spencer the trust fund baby, who's gonna ride a wheelchair off Sigma
Chi's roof, screaming lines from Anchorman? Without dumb rich kids, who's gonna teach me how to soak a tampon in vodka and put it up my ass so I can get drunk without having vodka breath?
So, Michael, you approve of what these parents.
Did, Yeah, but not in the way they were doing it. Secretly bribing colleges is despicable. They should be openly bribing these schools, like build a library and put their name on it. Then we all know who the dumb rich kids are. If Thatcher Worthington is going to class at Worthington Hall, every one knows in that class not to
work with him in a group assignments. And when we all know who the dumb kids are, we can funnel them to jobs where they can't hurt anybody, like brand management or real estate or who are those people that instruct.
You through yoga?
A yoga instructor, Oh, professor brainiac over here.
Huh.
The point is if parents are bribing people in secret, then we don't know who the dumb kids are, and we might end up letting them be engineers or doctors. Like could you imagine if you got heart surgery from Donald Trump Junior, he'd probably get mixed up and put a can of axe body spray in there.
Yeah.
But cost Of, I hear what you're saying. But shouldn't we be trying to fix the overall system. Shouldn't people get into college based on merits.
Alone, Trevor, Our forefathers fought hard for a just and equal society, and I would love to talk about the American dream with you, but I gotta go. That vodka tampon is kicking in. So thanks for the tips, Fence.
You, my dog, buddy, cost Everyone. Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show wherever you.
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