On 29 June, in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and the companion case Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, the Supreme Court of the United States outlawed racial ‘affirmative action’ as it has been practised at institutions of higher education in America since the 1970s.
Affirmative action gives a boost to certain categories of applicant for scarce places at selective institutions. What constitutes a ‘boost’ will vary. It might mean advertising educational opportunities to isolated communities which, historically, have sent few students to elite institutions. It might mean using race as a tiebreaker, giving the nod to a candidate of colour over a white candidate who is similarly accomplished. It might mean selecting a candidate of colour over a white candidate who is considerably better qualified according to established criteria. The litigation involving Harvard revealed, for example, that applicants with the same academic index – a measure comprising test scores and grades – had strikingly different prospects of admission depending on race. Generally speaking, it took considerably better test scores and grades to win admission if you were white or Asian than if you were Black or Latino. This is the scenario that has caused the most controversy, in which an elite institution aids candidates of colour by putting not just a thumb on the scale but a whole fist, leading to situations in which it is clear that, typically, Black and Latino students are less strong academically when they arrive at college than their white and Asian peers.
Colleges and universities evaluate applicants according to multiple criteria, including gender, place of origin, socioeconomic disadvantage, athletic prowess, legacy status (whether the applicant is the child of an alumnus), and in some cases the amount of money the family has donated to the institution over the years. But it is the use of race as a dimension of preference which, because of tendencies deeply ingrained in American culture, has met with the most antagonism. One such tendency is white supremacism, in particular anti-Black racism. Many Americans habitually oppose any policy that they perceive as helping Blacks, especially if whites are believed to bear the costs. A second tendency is to abhor the idea of a society which, on a racial basis, promotes certain groups over others. People who feel this way may have the intuition that barring race as a factor in assessment is a simple, effective way of avoiding an illicit racial hierarchy. A third tendency – the one that issues in affirmative action – is to believe that race must be taken into account to assist subordinated racial minorities, at least for the time being, in order to redress past wrongs, counterbalance present racial inequities, better integrate marginalised groups into the American mainstream, and bring about beneficial diversities in teaching, learning and decision-making.
Affirmative action is practised by only a small proportion of colleges and universities in the US: generally, those which attract many more applicants than they have available places. Most schools are happy to accept anyone who can meet minimal entrance requirements and pay tuition. The most prestigious private and public institutions, though, are crucibles of competition. In last year’s round at Harvard, there were more than sixty thousand applicants for undergraduate spots; fewer than two thousand were admitted. At the University of North Carolina, 43,500 applicants competed for 4200 places. A similarly intense winnowing takes place at Yale, Princeton and leading public institutions such as Berkeley and the University of Michigan.
One reason so much attention is focused on the admissions policies at these schools is that they exercise an outsized influence in American society, whether the field is journalism, popular culture, medicine, law, finance or government. All of the Supreme Court justices who decided the affirmative action cases went to colleges and law schools that practised affirmative action. All but one received their law degrees from either Yale or Harvard; the outlier, Amy Coney Barrett, attended law school at Notre Dame.
For several....
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