Striking Down Affirmative Action Will Only Worsen Racial Disparities
The United States Supreme Court’s decision to strike down race-conscious admissions policies is not the step towards racial equality that opponents of affirmative action believe it is. On Thursday, June 29th, the Supreme Court voted in a 6-3 decision ruling in favor of the Students For Fair Admissions (SFFA) group, which advocates for anti-affirmative action policies. This ruling by the conservative majority and the rhetoric propagated by these lobbyists is problematic for a multitude of reasons, the most concerning being the potential shifting demographics at elite universities which already were primarily white and wealthy even with affirmative action policies in place. Colorblind policies in a country which was built upon racial hierarchies and has yet to properly dismantle them will only delay progress towards true racial equality.
Our nation has never been colorblind - in fact, from its inception, both private markets and public industries have worked together to create a system of institutionalized racism. American capitalism has thrived on the backs of minority groups, namely African Americans, by accumulating wealth off of Black labor. Even after the end of slavery, America’s markets and private industries continued to operate on systems of inequality by exploiting Black Americans and profiting off of their suffering. One prime example of this can be found in the housing market. Experts estimate that Black families lost between $3 billion and $4 billion in wealth in the 1950s and 1960s through predatory housing contracts issued by the real estate market. By denying Black Americans and other minority groups access to proper financial services and limiting their ability to accumulate wealth, the private market succeeded in intertwining race and class. White Americans found themselves in better neighborhoods with well funded schools, able to accumulate capital while Black families continued to find themselves unable to leave crumbling slums with underfunded schools and an inability to create generational wealth. These racial gaps in our society still exist to this day - they have not been left in the past as many on the right would like you to believe. White Americans hold 10 times more total wealth than Black Americans, and in 2019, the average Black household had $142,330 compared to the average white household which had $980,549. State sponsored and private economic exploitation has continuously placed minority groups at a disadvantage, especially in the field of higher education. By continuing to ignore the past, we will never be able to move past it. The truth is that race has played a major role in our country's legacy - it shines light on the present conditions and struggles that minority students have survived through and excelled despite. True equality in a country which was built on racial disparities can only be achieved by acknowledging the various historical disadvantages and advantages which have affected our students and shaped their stories. Judge Jackson wrote it best in her powerful dissent, “deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.”
Even with the affirmative action policies which had considered race as one factor out of many in an entirely holistic review, wealthy white students continued to have an advantage in admission to elite universities in America. At competitive top universities like Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, legacy status and feeder high schools maintain an incredibly large presence and impact on admissions. At Harvard in particular, legacy status boosts an applicant’s chances of admission from 1 in 20 to 1 in 3. In fact, legacy admissions was created to ensure white Anglo-Saxons’ majority in elite universities in the mid-1900s. Besides legacy status which provides white students with a clear advantage in admissions, many private preparatory high schools serve as feeder schools into top colleges. Independent schools like Exeter and Andover made up 24% of Yale’s class of 2024, 25% at Princeton, and 29% at Brown and Dartmouth. Although these private feeder schools tout their “scholarships” for lower-income students, racial and socioeconomic homogeneity has been a pillar of these institutions for centuries. Due to their high costs, these schools have struggled to diversify and mainly serve incredibly wealthy white families, who then have a far easier entry into the nation’s top universities. To act as if white students have ever been at a disadvantage compared to their black and brown peers in college admissions and were threatened by race-conscious policies is ignorant at best and incredibly harmful at worst. If the Supreme Court truly wants to combat inequities, white privilege and power are the forms of affirmative action that should be dismantled. While it is important to note that the socio-economic standings of students should also be considered in the admissions process to help low-income white students, it should not be used to dismantle any race conscious admissions criteria due to the specific ways race and class have functioned - and continue to function - in America. According to sociologist Sigal Alon, “the best route for promoting both racial and socioeconomic diversity is to embed the consideration of race within class-based affirmative action.”
One other important factor that should be mentioned in this case is the SFFA group’s weaponization of Asian American students in their fight to dispose of affirmative action. By propagating anti-Black rhetoric throughout Asian American communities, right wing organizations have portrayed so-called “unqualified” African American and Latinx students as the culprits who are taking the “deserving” Asian communities’ spots at elite universities. Not only does this distract Asian Americans from the fact that it is still white Americans who continue to have the greatest unfair advantage in elite admissions, but it drives a wedge between Asian Americans and Black and Latinx Americans. The major strides towards racial equality which have protected Asian Americans in the United States have been championed by Black communities and is just one example of the importance of cross-racial solidarity.
Additionally, the “model minority” myth which portrays Asian Americans as high achieving and successful erases the nuances within the Asian American community by painting them as a monolithic group. In reality, fewer than 15% of Laotian and Cambodian Americans reach the same level of academic achievement and have some of the lowest rates of educational attainment in the country. Affirmative action would actually help underrepresented Southeast Asian students who do not have the same levels of wealth accumulation as Korean and Japanese Americans. The end of affirmative action is not a win for Asian Americans - in fact it actively harms the most vulnerable members of the AAPI community. The Supreme Court’s decision will result in an immeasurable loss of students of color that will be felt throughout communities and will ultimately devalue every student’s educational experience.
As we move forward in a country which continues to glaze over its racist history, we must recognize the structural barriers that remain in place for Black students and other underrepresented groups in universities and various professional settings. At the University of Virginia (UVA), President Jim Ryan came forward with a statement promising that the school’s admission board would “continue to do everything within our legal authority to recruit and admit a class of students who are diverse across every possible dimension and to make every student feel welcome and included here at UVA.” Moving forward, the admissions committee at UVA should be more transparent and specific with the university community as to how they plan to make their admissions process equitable. Policies that mitigate educational inequities, such as expanding recruiting efforts to high schools located in areas with majority low-income students of color and reducing admissions advantages for the children of alumni, donors, and staff should be implemented immediately. In order to progress as a nation, it is imperative that we come face to face with the harsh truths of our past.