Mercy Muroki: Let's not structure our judgements around race, but by our actions

An American survey has found that a third of white American students admit lying about their race on university applications to increase their prospects.

Half of the students surveyed said that they lied so they could get access to financial support that universities dedicated to racial minorities only, and 8 in 10 said they did it to increase their chances of getting in.

Three-quarters of those who lied actually did get in.Essentially this means that there is a small, silent army of white American students duping universities out of resources because they've figured out that in this game of life, race trumps all.

And, can you blame them? The troubling thing is, I find these survey results completely unsurprising. Indeed, last year, the US Department of Justice found that Yale University (one of the very best on the planet) actually discriminated against white and Asian applicants – with students from those ethnicities finding it several times harder than black applicants with the same grades to get in.

This latest survey is just yet another indication of the insidious consequences of slowly putting identity characteristics over merit. When we're structuring how we determine worth and how we allocate reward around immutable charactristics like race, or nebulous characteristics such as gender identity, of course people are going to lie to get ahead. It's completely unethical but it's completely rational, is it now?

This is the bed we have allowed the identity politics lobby to make, and sadly, the rest of us may have to lie in it. The US Supreme Court Chief Justice, John Roberts puts it very succinctly, he says:

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race... is to stop discriminating on the basis of race".

Two wrongs don't make a right. Let's not structure our judgements around race - but if that's what we do choose to do, then we can't complain about the consequences.