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Asian Americans who believed Harvard discriminated against Asians in admissions should hang their heads in shame.They belonged to the group with the ironic and hypocritical name, Students for Fair Admissions. The group was corralled by anti-affirmative action advocate Ed Blum and effectively duped and used to sue Harvard over race-based admissions.

After the case that went all the way to the Supreme Court, we are today further from equity and fairness than we’ve ever been.

That’s my assessment when Harvard finally released the data this week after six years of litigation that resulted in the death of affirmative action.

What does the data reveal?

Maybe we should have stuck with the status quo.

Admissions processes that included race as a factor may not have been perfect. But what we are left with now is that old familiar “colorblind” option that gets us no closer to the promised land.

Colorblind is the term anti-affirmative action advocates hijacked from Dr. King to describe their solution to fair admissions.

In truth, it’s just blind racism. A way to dodge real responsibility when the outcome is unrealized. Blindness is used as the excuse for failing to achieve fair admissions.

After all the litigation, a purposeful process intended to help make student populations more diverse has essentially been replaced with a process that leaves it up to chance.

It’s a different game now for whites, who after years of being dominant in student populations were faced with diminished numbers. You can’t have diversity and have the same pie share you’ve always had.How do you feel good about going from 70-80 percent of a student population to less than 50 percent?

So the anti-affirmative action types had to litigate and force the race-blind alternative. Of course, they never touched the form of affirmative action that survived the Harvard suit, the affirmative action that benefits wealthy legacies and the athletically gifted.

But they dumped what was working and replaced it with something better for whites, and not so great for everyone else.

THE HARVARD NUMBERS

The numbers for Harvard help us realize that what we had before wasn’t so bad if the goal was racial justice and equity.

What we have now is. . .Who knows?

It’s inconclusive, with the racial stats are all over the place, leaving the best way to describe the aftermath for now as “nuanced.”

That’s a big word for “it’s complicated.”

After the first affirmative action numbers were released from other institutions, Harvard finally released its numbers on Wednesday.

What they show is Black student enrollment declined from 18 percent to 14 percent.

That’s a lot more significant than it sounds. The new method sets back Black enrollment about eight years, before the lawsuit began.

Asian Americans who sued saw the Asian American number stay at 37 percent, same as last year. They didn’t rise to unprecedented levels as some hoped, or feared. But colorblind wasn't all that meritocratic as the litigants wanted. Some Asian Americans with straight A’s and perfect scores still didn’t get in. What was accomplished?

Hispanic enrollment increased from 14 to 16 percent.

That’s 65 percent for the big three ethnic groups.

That leaves Whites, but Harvard doesn’t give their total.And you can’t infer it must mean a white population at 35 percent, because the rules have changed as to disclosure of race or ethnicity.

The number who declined to state rose from 4 to 8 percent this year.

What we have now is just as imperfect as what we had. We just have more ways to game the system and allow whites to hide their shame.

That won’t stop anti-affirmative action folks from applauding this “nuanced” reality. They will say this new system proves you can still have some diversity without race as a factor.

But that just isn’t true uniformly at all schools, and certainly not at Harvard, where the Black student population took a hit. So much for fairness and equity. Maybe for whites, but not for the students from underrepresented groups.

That the reported results from other schools vary so much is worth noting. More selective schools seemed to do better because Black students accepted those schools as their first choice. Other schools did worse.

Was it worth the change?

Instead of fixing the affirmative action we had, anti-affirmative action activists swung the pendulum the other way with this system that blindfolds us all.

We are no better off.

Hopi Hoekstra, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, sent a message to the Harvard community and admitted: “We anticipate its full impact on the class composition at Harvard College may not be felt for several more admissions cycles.”

Or maybe never under this new colorblind system. Under the cry for meritocracy, we dumped fairness and equity.

At this point, we are further from those ideals than we’ve ever been in the last 50 years. And that’s just the way opponents of affirmative action wanted it.

That Blum and his cronies were forced to use and dupe some Asian Americans in the deal is the real shame. They were proxies for whites to hide what drives the real motives in this whole thing: White preservation and racism.

Calling Blum and his methods colorblind simply makes them acceptable and untouchable. But the first set of numbers show just how wrong they are.

THE CASE THROUGHOUT THE YEARS

Here are some columns I’ve written in this space to give you a sense of what we’ve been through to get to this “nuanced” post-affirmative action moment.

In 2015, I wrote about how Asian Americans and commented on newly immigrated Chinese students followed their self-interest to sue Harvard. It came at the expense of threatening a system that was already fair not just to Asian Americans but all minorities. https://www.aaldef.org/blog/emil-guillermo-end-civil-war-on-affirmative-action-among-asian-americans/

In this column in 2018, I wrote about the personality profile in the Harvard admissions process that some claimed was discriminatory against Asian Americans. But was it? https://www.aaldef.org/blog/emil-guillermo-end-civil-war-on-affirmative-action-among-asian-americans/

In this column in 2016, I visited Harvard and noticed how it was much more Asian than when I attended as an undergraduate. https://www.aaldef.org/blog/emil-guillermo-harvard-admits-record-number-of-asian-americans-and-a-majority-minority-class-of-2020-2/

In this column from 2012, I wrote about the Fisher case against the University of Texas, which challenged race-based admissions. Fisher is white, but her lawyers learned their lesson. They challenged race-based admissions with the best victims–Asian Americans–and won the case against Harvard. https://www.aaldef.org/blog/is-fisher-really-the-case-to-end-affirmative-action/

After seeing where we are now, I’m reminded of the attack on affirmative action during the Clinton years. The rallying cry was “Mend it, don’t end it.” If only that cry had prevailed last year. Now, we’re left with trying to game a colorblind system to fight for the fairness and equity we deserve.

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NOTE: I will talk about this column and other matters on “Emil Amok’s Takeout,” my AAPI micro-talk show. Live @2p Pacific. Livestream on Facebook; my YouTube channel; and Twitter. Catch the recordings on www.amok.com.