I think you have just found another hill the Democrats are going to die on. Much to like here but The Groups just aren't going to stand for it and if Republicans go fully down the road of class based preferences (perhaps when JD takes over) it will set off another round of "Resistance".
Two practical things that might help. Get rid of legacy admissions, as was suggested but not really developed. For another generation or two these will help white applicants but then it will flip. It has certainly helped whites in the past but whoever it helps, it is profoundly a non-meritocratic policy. Second, get rid of Griggs v Duke Power. This can be done via legislation since it was a Civil Rights Act decision, not a Constitutional one. It was a profound misreading of the CRA since Hubert Humphrey promised to eat the bill if anyone could find quotas in there. He died in 1978 so didn't have to watch the horror of what happened. You should be able to get bi-partisan support for both of these, if you want it.
A couple of asides. One reason for RFK1's popularity is that he told people what they needed to hear instead of pandering. Thus, he would go to white ethnic neighborhoods and talk about civil rights and then go into the ghetto and talk about law and order. He got in people's faces, made them think and they loved him for it. Second, your guest mentioned the pushback from the universities against authoritarianism in Hungary. Somehow, I haven't noticed that in the UK, France, Germany etc. Europe is various flavors of authoritarian from the Urals to Ireland. Say what you will about Hungary but they haven't arrested opposition figures (Rumania, France, Germany), cancelled elections (Rumania, Ukraine), firewalled election winners out of power (France, Austria, Netherlands, German states) or censored/arrested anyone going against the narrative (everywhere in the EU or UK). Third, No Pasaran was a communist slogan (La Pasionaria) during the Spanish Civil War so is Kahlenberg calling The Groups communists?
For those not familiar with the case, this is an AI summary of Griggs v Duke Power:
AI Overview
"Griggs v. Duke Power" is a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case from 1971 that established that even neutral employment practices which have a discriminatory effect on a protected group, like race, can violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, even if the employer did not intend to discriminate; essentially meaning that employers cannot use employment requirements that disproportionately exclude minority groups unless those requirements are directly related to job performance.
Key points about the case:
The situation:
African American employees at Duke Power Company challenged the company's requirement for a high school diploma and passing standardized tests to transfer to higher-paying positions, which disproportionately impacted Black workers.
The ruling:
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Duke Power, stating that the employment requirements were not job-related and had a discriminatory effect on Black employees, even though there was no explicit intent to discriminate.
Impact:
This case is considered a crucial precedent in employment discrimination law, establishing the concept of "disparate impact" where practices that appear neutral on the surface can still be discriminatory if they have a significantly negative impact on a protected group.
Hungary and Orban have most certainly censored their political opponents--not only by imposing fines, audits and other administrative burdens on them that Fidesz (Orban's party) has not had to deal with, but by banning them from using any of the country's public media apparatus (while Fidesz gets full control of it), launching an unending stream of government investigations into them--forcing all of his political opponents to divert funds to legal defenses and court duties, while Fidesz diverts none--and, without hiding it, using state institutions to openly harass and intimidate them. (see: the way Fidesz targeted former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány and Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony) Nevermind that the country's largest companies are all run by Fidesz-aligned oligarchs that receive government contracts without any competition in return for disadvantaging Fidesz's opponents whenever they can, or that Fidesz rewrote the constitution in 2011 to pack the courts entirely with Fidesz-aligned judges and create an insanely gerrymandered legislature.
Hungary has elections, but they are largely sham affairs, and these broad authoritarian aspects of Orban's style of governance are what characterize the 'soft fascist' right-wing states that have spread like cancer around the world, from Turkey with Erdogan to Brazil with Bolsonaro. And it is the type of cancer that history has repeatedly shown ends up killing the body politic of the nations and continents it swallows up.
I think you have just found another hill the Democrats are going to die on. Much to like here but The Groups just aren't going to stand for it and if Republicans go fully down the road of class based preferences (perhaps when JD takes over) it will set off another round of "Resistance".
Two practical things that might help. Get rid of legacy admissions, as was suggested but not really developed. For another generation or two these will help white applicants but then it will flip. It has certainly helped whites in the past but whoever it helps, it is profoundly a non-meritocratic policy. Second, get rid of Griggs v Duke Power. This can be done via legislation since it was a Civil Rights Act decision, not a Constitutional one. It was a profound misreading of the CRA since Hubert Humphrey promised to eat the bill if anyone could find quotas in there. He died in 1978 so didn't have to watch the horror of what happened. You should be able to get bi-partisan support for both of these, if you want it.
A couple of asides. One reason for RFK1's popularity is that he told people what they needed to hear instead of pandering. Thus, he would go to white ethnic neighborhoods and talk about civil rights and then go into the ghetto and talk about law and order. He got in people's faces, made them think and they loved him for it. Second, your guest mentioned the pushback from the universities against authoritarianism in Hungary. Somehow, I haven't noticed that in the UK, France, Germany etc. Europe is various flavors of authoritarian from the Urals to Ireland. Say what you will about Hungary but they haven't arrested opposition figures (Rumania, France, Germany), cancelled elections (Rumania, Ukraine), firewalled election winners out of power (France, Austria, Netherlands, German states) or censored/arrested anyone going against the narrative (everywhere in the EU or UK). Third, No Pasaran was a communist slogan (La Pasionaria) during the Spanish Civil War so is Kahlenberg calling The Groups communists?
For those not familiar with the case, this is an AI summary of Griggs v Duke Power:
AI Overview
"Griggs v. Duke Power" is a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case from 1971 that established that even neutral employment practices which have a discriminatory effect on a protected group, like race, can violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, even if the employer did not intend to discriminate; essentially meaning that employers cannot use employment requirements that disproportionately exclude minority groups unless those requirements are directly related to job performance.
Key points about the case:
The situation:
African American employees at Duke Power Company challenged the company's requirement for a high school diploma and passing standardized tests to transfer to higher-paying positions, which disproportionately impacted Black workers.
The ruling:
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Duke Power, stating that the employment requirements were not job-related and had a discriminatory effect on Black employees, even though there was no explicit intent to discriminate.
Impact:
This case is considered a crucial precedent in employment discrimination law, establishing the concept of "disparate impact" where practices that appear neutral on the surface can still be discriminatory if they have a significantly negative impact on a protected group.
Hungary and Orban have most certainly censored their political opponents--not only by imposing fines, audits and other administrative burdens on them that Fidesz (Orban's party) has not had to deal with, but by banning them from using any of the country's public media apparatus (while Fidesz gets full control of it), launching an unending stream of government investigations into them--forcing all of his political opponents to divert funds to legal defenses and court duties, while Fidesz diverts none--and, without hiding it, using state institutions to openly harass and intimidate them. (see: the way Fidesz targeted former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány and Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony) Nevermind that the country's largest companies are all run by Fidesz-aligned oligarchs that receive government contracts without any competition in return for disadvantaging Fidesz's opponents whenever they can, or that Fidesz rewrote the constitution in 2011 to pack the courts entirely with Fidesz-aligned judges and create an insanely gerrymandered legislature.
Hungary has elections, but they are largely sham affairs, and these broad authoritarian aspects of Orban's style of governance are what characterize the 'soft fascist' right-wing states that have spread like cancer around the world, from Turkey with Erdogan to Brazil with Bolsonaro. And it is the type of cancer that history has repeatedly shown ends up killing the body politic of the nations and continents it swallows up.