If the people of Michigan amend the state constitution to ban affirmative action in making university admissions decisions, no court can overturn the decision, the US Supreme Court ruled today in the case of Schuette v Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, which was heard on appeal from the Sixth Circuit.
The voters of Michigan amended the state’s constitution with a ballot initiative in 2006, Proposition 2. The amendment makes it unconstitutional, among other things, to use race as a factor in deciding whether to admit students to a public university. The coalition sued to have the courts declare the amendment unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit agreed with the coalition by an 8-7 margin.
In front of the Supreme Court, however, the story took a different turn. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the Court in the 6-2 decision:
This case is not about how the debate about racial preferences should be resolved. It is about who may resolve it. There is no authority in the Constitution of the United States or in this court’s precedents for the judiciary to set aside Michigan laws that commit this policy determination to the voters.
In a strong dissent, also read from the bench by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined in saying, “The Constitution does not protect racial minorities from political defeat. But neither does it give the majority free rein to erect selective barriers against racial minorities.”
In other words, she disagreed with Justice Kennedy’s entire premise. This case was about what the people can do by majority vote in our democracy.
The ruling may affect more than college admissions, too. Minority-owned businesses may no longer get special treatment in the awarding of state contracts, and other changes may follow as states enact new laws to do away with the use of race to confer any preference on certain minority candidates.
The ruling, largely seen as a colorblind decision, where states can enact laws that take any consideration of race out of the picture, is controversial nonetheless. Proposition 2 has already resulted in about a 25-percent decrease in the representation of minority students at the state’s public universities, despite the fact that the minority population in the state has increased since the amendment was approved.
Knowing what I do about college admission, I can say the prime directive is to find students who have the best chance of succeeding. The idea of colorblind admissions policies has merit, as the Supreme Court clearly believes. I’d prefer a system where students had just a number before an admissions officer looks at their files. Some names reflect ethnicity or race, and if the admissions process is to be truly colorblind, let’s go all the way.
But as an admissions officer, if I have a black kid who scored in the 68th percentile and had decent grades and a white kid who scored in the 75th percentile with very good grades, it might be a toss-up. If I saw lots of extracurriculars and letters of recommendation saying the black kid was a shining star among his peers and all the white kid had were letters that painted a more privileged but generally mediocre life, I would be inclined to bet on the black kid, despite the lower numbers.
This is especially true if I knew he had some hardship growing up, but with affirmative action, the advantage is granted based on a stereotype. True or not, affirmative action means I would just assume the black kid had a harder time than the white kid, without knowing anything about either one of them.
Race-conscious decisions have, in the past, made up for the lower level of opportunity the black kid had to achieve higher scores on standardized tests, the fewer chances he would have been given in his neighborhood to be a part of youth programs, and that sort of thing.
Now, it does give him points in the application process that he didn’t earn, but those points are being given because the stereotypical black kid—which is a far cry from Justice Clarence Thomas, who was in the majority on this decision—never had the opportunity to earn them. And usually, we’re not talking about a lot of points here, but it would admittedly lift his application above white students who had accomplished exactly the same test scores and grades.
In some ways, giving points in the application based on skin color is unfair to the white students, but there’s the other side: the white student has probably been given more opportunities to earn higher scores on the admissions application, and by using race-conscious decisions, we’re judging each student based on how well he measured up to his theoretical or stereotypical potential.
This line of reasoning falls apart, a little, because we know colleges don’t care about what a student’s potential is; they care what the student accomplishes compared to the standards established by the college for that student’s degree program. But if affluenza can give a judge reason to reduce a sentence, being black in America should give an admissions officer reason to elevate a college app.
Furthermore, although race is one type of diversity colleges may seek, there are other types—first-generation students, low-income students, and so on. And not all degree programs benefit equally from these different types of diversity. In chemistry, for example, a student’s cultural background plays less of a role than in history. Some colleges are already looking to expand their definitions of diversity beyond race and ethnicity, in order to build a diverse student body, since affirmative action seems to be on the way out, reports the New York Times.
The affirmative action system, though putting whites at a disadvantage, was the way we had come up with to address and even confront the racial inequality that exists in America. A colorblind approach sounds good, but it ultimately discards much of what we have learned about racial inequality.
The reality of our world, today, is that blacks have less opportunity to succeed than whites. The reasons for that are complex, but it also has something to do with class. To make ourselves colorblind about this problem could pave the way for sweeping other inequity in our society under the carpet. And that will come at a great cost to our progress.
