MSNBC host Joy Reid took a ribbing on social media after declaring that affirmative action was the only reason she was admitted to Harvard.
Her revelation came in response to the Supreme Court’s decisions effectively invalidating affirmative action in college admissions by finding that racial preferences violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
“I got into Harvard only because of affirmative action,” said Ms. Reid in a Sunday op-ed.
Conservative commentators taking advantage of the opening included former Georgia state Rep. Vernon Jones, who tweeted, “Joy Reid is living proof @Harvard isn’t for everyone!”
The Twitchy Team chimed in: “Joy Ann Reid confirms the least surprising revelation ever.”
“Imagine ADMITTING to something so embarrassing,” said PragerU personality CJ Pearson. “Unlike Joy, I applaud the SCOTUS for its decision to stop treating my blackness like a disability.”
Joy Reid admits she only got into Harvard because of affirmative action, just for anyone who didn’t already know pic.twitter.com/9EzlwJChS7
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) July 2, 2023
The Supreme Court’s six-member conservative majority ruled Thursday against affirmative-action policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina in cases filed by Students for Fair Admissions on behalf of Asian-American students.
While Ms. Reid said that she benefited from affirmative action, she also misrepresented such policies by arguing that she was qualified to attend Harvard based on her grades and test scores.
“I went to a school no one had ever heard of in Denver, Colorado, in a small suburb,” she said. “I didn’t go to a prestigious high school like Exeter or Andover. I didn’t have college test prep. I just happened to be really nerdy and smart and have really good grades and good SAT scores.”
She continued: “But someone came to Denver to look for me. A Harvard recruiter flew in, met me at a restaurant, and did a pre-interview to pull me into Harvard. I was pulled in — affirmatively.”
“This was not the recruiter saying, ‘We’re going to take an unqualified person and put them in Harvard,’” she said. “Rather, they were saying, ‘We’re going to take a very qualified person who we would never know existed and put them in Harvard.’”
Affirmative action in admissions refers to holding applicants to different standards based on their race, not recruiting qualified candidates who attend unheralded public schools.
A Students for Fair Admissions analysis found that “an Asian American in the fourth-lowest decile has virtually no chance of being admitted to Harvard (0.9%); but an African American in that decile has a higher chance at admission (12.8%) than an Asian American in the top decile (12.7%).”
Ms. Reid also said that Black students at Harvard were seen as gaining admission based on their race, which contributed to making her feel “completely out of place” her first year.
“I had never had my academic credentials questioned. I had never had anyone question whether I was intelligent — until I got to Harvard,” she said. “And it was a defining point of my experience there. It was one of the many reasons I was miserable during my freshman year. I felt completely out of place. People kept telling me, ‘You shouldn’t be here.’”
Critics of affirmative action, including Justice Clarence Thomas, argue that racial preferences have stigmatized Black graduates of top universities, leading others to conclude that they were admitted because of their race and not their merit.
Ms. Reid’s op-ed was published after she made similar comments in an appearance shortly after the court’s decision on MSNBC’s “All in with Chris Hayes.”
She graduated from Harvard in 1991 with a bachelor’s degree in film studies.
