The Supreme Court has ruled in two cases involving affirmative action for college admissions. The cases were Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina. In both cases the premise was the same; could colleges take race into account when admitting students? The Supreme Court ruled, in a 6-3 decision, that race based decisions for college admissions was a violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and therefore unconstitutional.
President John Kennedy began affirmative action in 1961 and reaffirmed his position again in June of 1963 with executive orders that mandated the federal government use affirmative action in its hiring and contracting policies. The idea of affirmative action was that centuries of slavery followed by a century of state sanctioned discrimination and segregation had unfairly handicapped minority citizens, especially African-Americans, so that a policy of a hand up was warranted.
The philosophy was simply this; if a contest were to be fair, then the conditions had to be set so that the disadvantaged could compete. For example, if one were to run a race between able bodied kids and a kid on crutches – giving the kid on crutches a head start would not be considered “unfair” but rather as compensation for a handicap that would impact their ability to compete. Affirmative Action was supposed to be a bridge between rampant segregation, “legal” discrimination (think Black voter suppression especially in the South), disparities in educational opportunities and so on, until the United States could become “a more perfect Union” and free from racist barriers to minority advancement.
The first crack in affirmative action happened in 1978, in the University of California v. Bakke case. Allan Bakke was a white medical student who claimed he was denied entry to medical school because he was white and racial quotas kept him out. Dr. Bakke is an anesthesiologist for the Mayo Clinic now with over forty years’ experience. The Supreme Court ruled for Mr. Bakke and said that colleges could consider race as one of many factors when admitting students (another may allow a white kid from South Dakota to get into Harvard over someone from the East Coast – if Harvard had a goal of geographic diversity for example) but racial quotas could not be used. Since quotas, instead of preferences, were used in Mr. Bakke’s case – he won.
In 2003 the Supreme Court barely upheld affirmative action in the Grutter v. Bollinger decision as it pertained to the University of Michigan Law School. That decision was 5-4 with the majority opinion written by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in which she upheld the use of affirmative action but envisioned the day when it would be no longer necessary and perhaps even considered reverse discrimination. That day has come.
It is clear to me, for example, that President Obama’s daughters are not in need of affirmative action nor are Denzel Washington’s children. Asian-Americans have complained for years that they are constantly at the top of the pile when it comes to SAT scores and scholastic achievement but are denied their full number of admissions on merit in favor of “diversity”. Now, according to the most recent decision by the Supreme Court, if a college has forty slots to fill, they should be filled by the top forty applicants based on objective criteria. If that means all are of one race or another, so be it.
To be clear, the Supreme Court has not said that affirmative action itself is unconstitutional, only that affirmative action based solely on race is unconstitutional. Chief Justice John Roberts made it clear in his opinion that diversity is a good thing. Colleges can still utilize affirmative action if it is based on class, as an example. If Harvard wants to reserve spaces for those recruited as athletes or from faraway places, rural states or for economically disadvantaged students they may still do so. Affirmative action based on class will still draw in a number of minorities as well as poor white kids who are motivated and capable but may not have had a chance of consideration under the old system.
I feel sorry for young people starting out. Just about every job listing wants “experience” and how does a young person get experience if no one will give them any? When I was in college that wasn’t so much of an issue, but affirmative action was. Our joke then was every employer was looking for a disabled, African-American woman so they could check all of the diversity boxes with one hire and move on.
America has made great strides in rectifying the horrific racism of the past. Of course, there is still racism and discrimination. However, a system that allows students into college based on merit makes sense to me. There is no “right” to go to a college like Harvard. If there was, I was denied back in the day. No, there should be opportunity and that opportunity should be open to everybody. If that means high school graduates have to apply to a few more schools before they get admitted somewhere, okay.
Affirmative action based on race was always a double-edged sword. Sure, it gave minorities a leg up (and that included women as a general class), but it also potentially tainted their success. Did they get where they were because of their category or in spite of it, was the question that dogged them for the rest of their lives and careers. Now, there will be no question. Part of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “dream” was a “color-blind” society. We’ve just taken another step in the fulfillment of that dream.