The Supreme Court, Race, and College Admissions
Like many of you, I’ve been digging into the details of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College — and reading articles, commentary, and other public responses to it. I also went back and re-read a piece I wrote for Teaching While White at the start of this lawsuit in support of Harvard’s admissions practices aimed at racial diversity.
If given the opportunity I might rephrase a few of my comments in that earlier piece. But it essentially sums up how I feel on this matter. All things considered, the U.S. Supreme Court decision rejecting affirmative action based on race boils down to a victory for privilege and power and represents another blow to democratic principles and justice.
At the start of the lawsuit, Edward Blum, the president of Students for Fair Admissions, told the New York Times that the use of race as a contributing factor in college admissions “falls afoul of our most basic civil rights principles, and those principles are that your race and your ethnicity should not be something to be used to harm you in life nor help you in life.”
This was essentially the view the majority of the Supreme Court justices would come to embrace as well.
While in the theoretical realm I imagine most of us would agree with the notion that one’s race or ethnicity should never be used for harm or gain, Blum’s overall position is such a disingenuous one to take when it comes to real-world college admissions. It has been clear for decades now that to be white is to have a leg up in various avenues in life, especially in college admissions. The whole point of affirmative action has been to make college access fair and just — and the statistics make it clear that these efforts have been paying off, even as racial injustice persists more broadly in our society. College admissions, in other words, has been a positive example of what a conscious commitment to racial justice can do in an otherwise stubbornly racist nation. And I think efforts on this front have encouraged colleges and universities to further refine their admissions policies for greater equity and justice all around. There is still plenty of room for improvement, of course, but the pathway is clear.
If Blum truly cared about justice, as his statement implies, he would not have attacked the one system that is working well and causing no harm. Rather, he would turn his attention to fighting the serious forms of racial discrimination that persist in housing, jobs, precollegiate education, the criminal justice system, health care, banking, and elsewhere. There’s plenty of evidence that racial bias in favor of whites in such systems actually do cause lifelong harm to others.
The goal of this lawsuit, it strikes me, was never about racial justice or civil rights, but about restoring a form of injustice that serves to preserve the inequitable status quo. I know that Blum has denied that this has been his goal. But it’s hard to see how attacking an admissions system that creates fair access and a racially diverse student body among a pool of fully qualified candidates can be viewed as a moral good.
A key argument in favor of dismantling affirmative actions is that we’ve come a long way as a nation and that the consideration of one’s race should no long apply. T’would be nice if this were true. But racial injustice and imbalance still tilt the scales toward white Americans. A key statistic is that of family net worth. At the start of the civil-rights movement of the 1960s, the net worth of white families was ten times that of Black families. Today? The net worth of white families remains ten times that of Black families. When it comes to college admissions, I read recently that middle-class Black students are far more likely today to attend schools with fewer resources than their middle-class white peers. As a new study, highlighted in the New York Times, notes, even as top colleges and universities aim for greater diversity, they still favor the wealthy by a significant margin; the wealthy are admitted to Ivy League schools at a higher rate than the average student. So even when it comes to college experience, even in an era of affirmative action, Black students remain at a disadvantage.
There are plenty more statistics one could point to that demonstrate racial inequities in American life. If you are looking for a good source of information on race and economic justice, a great place to start is with Matthew Desmond’s recent book, Poverty By America.
As for Asian Americans, a majority disapprove of the Supreme Court decision and resent feeling as if they are being used as a wedge, in effect, to dismantle civil rights. Many leaders of the Asian-American community have also spoke out about the harm this decision will do to their communities. As Aarti Kohli, executive director of Advancing Justice’s Asian Law Caucus, noted, “This ruling will particularly harm Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian, and Southeast Asian communities who continue to face significant barriers to higher education.”
I don’t want to go on here about what I see as the faulty and reductive logic in the court’s decision and in Justice Roberts argument. I imagine you have read plenty on the subject and have a clear opinion. I mostly wanted to go on record again in favor of admissions practices that improve the make-up of the student bodies at top colleges and universities so they closely represent the nation’s citizenship regarding race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomics, and more. I also want to go on record in support of colleges and universities in their efforts to create a broadly diverse student body — including matters of nationality, background, interests, talents, and experience — in order to offer a dynamic learning community. The research is clear on both fronts: creating diverse student bodies is both a just practice and smart educational policy.
As Harvard said in response to the decision, the university remains committed to “the fundamental principle that deep and transformative teaching, learning, and research depend upon a community comprising people of many backgrounds, perspectives, and lived experiences.”
We’ve come too far in our collective efforts to improve access to higher education to let this decision stop us in our tracks. We know that the results of such efforts have been positive and beneficial to the society as a whole. In fact, one recent pole notes that 63 percent of Americans support affirmative action in college admissions. The Supreme Court decision has created another hurdle to this work, but I know there are plenty of smart, caring folks who are working hard at the moment to develop new admission systems to achieve the desired outcomes.
I hope the rest of us will support them in finding this path forward. And I hope that all of us will do what we can in our lives to embrace and support antiracism broadly. Racism has been a central disease in our nation since its founding. It continues to thrive when we make no effort to counter it.
Michael Brosnan is the senior editor for Teaching While White. He is also the author of two books of poetry, The Sovereignty of the Accidental (2018) and Adrift (2023).