CNN’s Abby Phillip, temporary host of The Lead, vs. author Kenny Xu (“An Inconvenient Minority: The Harvard Admissions Case and the Attack on Asian American Excellence“) and a board member of Students for Fair Admissions, the plaintiff in an historic argument over race-based admissions which the Supreme Court found in favor of yesterday.

Phillip: “If you take race out of it, let’s call it socioeconomic status, whether or not they grew up wealthy or poor. Is that not something colleges might have an interest in considering?”

Xu: “The reason why you shouldn’t consider that is because you should consider the success of an applicant. Because of affirmative action, Black Americans graduate from law school at the bottom 25 percent of their classes, largely speaking. And we don’t want that. We want Black students to succeed. We want every student to succeed. Low-income students to succeed.

“You have to put them in scenarios in places where they’re likely to succeed. And lowering your standard to admit somebody of a socioeconomic status or race would not help them do that. In fact it would harm their graduation rate and excellence.”

Phillip: “Well, as the case also points out, the standard isn’t necessarily lowered because the students are all admitted. It’s the question whether race can be an added consideration, a tipping point…”

Xu: “The standard is lowered.”

When Xu said “the standard is lowered.” Phillip obviously decided to shut down the discussion:

Phillip:: “Kenny…”

Xu: “The standard is lowered. As the Students for Fair Admissions data shows, an Asian has to score 273 points higher on the SAT to have the same chance of admission as a Black person…”

Phillip: “Kenny…”

Xu: “So the standard is lowered for Black applicants.”

Phillip: “Kenny Xu, thank you for your perspective. We really appreciate it.