MAYBE IT WASN’T WORTH IT FOR A FREE TRIP TO NYC:  I was the official naysayer for a pre-recorded television show that will be aired on CNN+ next month.  The subject was race-preferential admissions.  I barely got a word edgewise.

I’m not sure how many college students were in the audience, but, if memory serves, it was 50 to 100.  If it was 100, I was outnumbered 103 to 1, since all of them purported to favor race-preferential admissions policies.  Don Lemon was the host, and Ibram Kendi, a woman from Tufts, and I were the so-called experts.  Most of the talking seemed to come from the audience.

One student’s statement was  particularly silly.  He said that as an Asian American he didn’t mind being turned down by Harvard on account of his race and that most Asian Americans support this kind of affirmative action.  I countered with the story of the defeat of Proposition 16 in which Californians overwhelmingly rejected an effort to amend the state constitution to allow California state universities to go back to race-preferential admissions.  I noted that Asian Americans in California were overwhelmingly on my side in that campaign.  Most of our most dedicated volunteers were Asian American.

The student responded by saying that it was RICH Asian immigrants who opposed Proposition 16.  Alas, I never got a chance to respond.

For the record, that is [expletive deleted] absurd.  We were outspent 16 to 1, and we still killed ’em.  If there were any rich Asians backing our campaign, they sure didn’t make themselves known.

In this article, Alex Heideman and I catalog the electoral and polling data on race-preferential admissions.  Bottom line:  Americans oppose them.  And the more clearly the question is presented, the more clearly they register their opposition.

I did get some awesome Indian food while in NYC.