The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina’s use of race in admissions decisions violates the 14th Amendment came as no surprise. Not to us, and not to most anyone who works in or around colleges and universities, which long have known that this decision was going to fall this way and have been preparing accordingly.
Admissions offices, committed to enrolling a diverse classes of students, have been brainstorming on how to achieve those goals in light of a new pending reality. We believe universities will figure out how to do it, and do it right.
The argument in favor of continuing to use race as an explicit factor — as, for example, in assigning bonus points for a candidate’s race or accepting a lower class rank — is that years of racial discrimination demand no less. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote Thursday in her 67-page dissent: “Ignoring race will not equalize a society that is racially unequal. What was true in the 1860s, and again in 1954, is true today: Equality requires acknowledgment of inequality.”
In essence, this is a similar statement to one made by Ibram X. Kendi in his book “How to Be an Antiracist.” “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination,” he wrote.
And the argument against? In order to form a more perfect union, America must prohibit all forms of discrimination based on race, regardless of its past, and treat everyone the same.
“Only that promise can allow us to look past our differing skin colors and identities and see each other for what we truly are: individuals with unique thoughts, perspectives and goals, but with equal dignity and equal rights under the law,” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas, who long has argued that affirmative action stamps its beneficiaries with an undeserving mark of inferiority.
Most Americans have made their decision on where they stand on this issue and, as you might expect, race, background and socioeconomic status all play a part in how they are likely to think. These two polar-opposite positions crystallize competing views for how America should progress. Liberals, of course, dominate in academic settings, which explains the institutional furor over this decision, but it’s not as simple as some say.
Take, for example, the indisputable truth that current admissions policies have harmed and continue to harm high-achieving Asian Americans, who (the Harvard data clearly has shown) are much less likely to be admitted than an applicant of a different race with similar test scores. College admission, after all, is a zero-sum matter at highly selective institutions. One applicant’s elevation means a rejection for someone else.
America has become a much more diverse place than when these policies were put in place. The dissenting justices had no answer for the inconvenient truth that Asian Americans surely have suffered past discrimination, and yet are still being harmed in admissions decisions by colleges that want to limit the number of Asian Americans in their classes.
Similarly, some racially diverse students now have the kind of economic and social advantages that allow their parents to hire tutors, chat up influential friends and participate in costly sports.
The reality of schools competing for high-achieving minority students from private schools and wealthy families surely is less helpful to society than lifting up a student, regardless of race, who has escaped a tough, impoverished background. Schools should now focus on that, and since such students are less likely to be white, that will also help their diversity goals.
In advance of this decision, many student journalists asked their admissions offices what the impact would be. Once you got past the political posturing, the most frequent comment was: “We will find other ways to build a diverse class.”
At the University of South Carolina, the Daily Gamecock reported that Julian Williams, vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion “doesn’t think this change will create difficulties in recruiting a diverse student body.” Good.
At Tufts University, professor Natasha Warikoo told the Tufts Daily: “I think, like all selective college campuses, Tufts will need to do more recruiting in predominantly minority schools and areas.” Exactly.
At Brown University, the Brown Daily Herald reported that Brown’s office of college admission was “considering changing its supplemental essay questions in response to the Supreme Court’s coming rulings on race-conscious admissions.
“Any new questions would serve to offer applicants opportunities to share more information about their identity ‘to try to get a better sense of the lived experiences of discrimination or overcoming hardship that our students may face,’ the paper reported Associate Provost for Enrollment Logan Powell as saying. Good idea.
And at Dartmouth College, government professor John Carey told the Daily Dartmouth that he had “found through his research that a ‘hidden consensus’ exists in support of holistic admissions — meaning people generally support race-conscious admissions when the concept is framed as an evaluation of multidimensional applicants.”
We agree. College admissions have been moving to a more holistic form of evaluation, and this decision won’t stop schools from asking revealing essay questions and evaluating all their applicants in greater depth, all with the goal of achieving the best and most diverse class possible. That’s a good way forward and one that all Americans can and should get behind.
