Affirmative action ruling prevents steps toward racial equity | by Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education

Affirmative action ruling prevents steps toward racial equity | by Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education | Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education: 

by Juan F. Perrea (Loyola Chicago Law School)

 

Affirmative action was an important way of manifesting essential Jesuit values such as concern for the individual and the community, inclusiveness, fairness and justice. Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court has made it more difficult to implement these values by declaring that affirmative action is unconstitutional and illegal. The current court now imposes its view of colorblindness to prevent race-conscious decision making in university and graduate school admissions.

It is important to understand that, at its inception, affirmative action was intended as a race-conscious remedy for centuries of racial discrimination in higher education against Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans and Asian Americans. The overt segregation used to benefit white students at the expense of students of color was not just a feature of grade schools during Jim Crow. Black and brown students were largely excluded from most universities for most of American history. The Court, however, declared and enforced the idea that past societal discrimination was too amorphous and remote in time to be deemed a compelling government interest. The court’s affirmative action jurisprudence wrongly steered discussion away from remedying blatant injustice and toward more ambiguous and superficial concepts like “the educational benefits of diversity.”

The strongest moral argument for affirmative action has always been the history of race discrimination employed by almost all educational institutions in the United States. Excepting historically Black colleges and universities, most universities that engage in honest self-reflection about their histories will find that, prior to the relatively recent 1970s, they denied admission to disproportionate numbers of prospective students of color, while offering admission to disproportionate numbers of white students. The obvious remedy for this race discrimination is to provide access and opportunities for members of those communities formerly denied access. Affirmative action was never sufficient to truly repair the harms caused by majority-white institutions, but it was a small step in the right direction.

The Court’s imposition of race-neutrality and formal equality threatens to halt the meager progress that has been achieved since the 1960s. 

KEEP READING