The U.S. Supreme Court this morning announced that it would hear a case this term that has the potential to end affirmative action in admissions decisions by colleges and grad schools.
The last time the court announced the permissible limits of affirmative action (in a pair of 2003 cases involving the University of Michigan undergraduate admissions policies and the policies of the university’s law school) it said that schools cannot explicitly, statistically give an advantage to applicants of minority groups by adding race-based bonus points to their applications. But the system used by the Law School, in which the goal of having a diverse student body was more vaguely and less explicitly taken into account, was permissible. But the architect of that compromise, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, said at the time that she expected affirmative action to go away within about 25 years, presumably because it would no longer be needed.
The new case, that the court has decided to hear this year, comes out of Texas and was brought by a white Texan who was rejected for admission to the University of Texas even though her grade point average and standardized test scores were higher than many non-whites who were admitted.
O’Connor, a moderate conservative who stood at the ideological center of the court in 2003 and often cast the deciding vote, retired and was replaced by a more unwavering conservative, Justice Samuel Alito. Justice Anthony Kennedy, the current key swing voter on many liberal versus conservative issues, voted with the conservatives in 2003.
The New York Times story about the court’s decision to take the new Texas case quotes from Supreme Court scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine, that “There thus seem five votes — [Justices] Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito — to … hold that affirmative action programs are unconstitutional.”
One step closer
To MLK’s dream. May leftists soon follow.
Some of us to Mr. Swift’s left don’t need to follow, since we’ve been there all along. While I don’t think we’ve reached that “MLK” point yet, Mr. Swift’s implication is not without merit. Eventually, applicants will all have to meet the same standards. The argument, should that remain virtually impossible for large groups of applicants, will then shift to *why* those applicants can’t meet the same standards.
It’s at that point that I think some of us will begin to realize that it’s not really the teacher who’s failing most of the time. New rationalizations will have to be devised as a result.
But… I’m not at all sure we’ve reached that point yet.
Couple points, Ray.First
Couple points, Ray.
First off, you’re right; not every leftist is a racist, but racism is pervasive enough in leftist circles that it’s not, IMO, too far off base to take a lack of condemnation for implied approval. It’s very possible that I’ve missed examples of the latter in your case, however.
Secondly, I do agree that end to a race based society will necessitate much introspective deliberation from all parties involved. Teachers are crucial, but a lack of parental involvement, much less partnership has at least as much to do with minority students’ struggles.
Racist policy
Affirmative Action is a fundamentally racist policy that assumes that all people of a certain race lack the bone fides to succeed. As Justice Thomas says, once it’s known you’ve been provided an advantage based solely on your race, nothing else you do will be given the credit it deserves.
When I was a freshman at the University, I was told that when I graduated, if I applied to medical school I would be guaranteed admittance. Even as an 18 year-old kid I thought that was outrageously unfair and told them so.
Affirmative Action
as currently implemented is usually more of an economic decision than a race based one — poor whites also benefit (sometimes disproportionately, since there are more of them).
The righties do have a (small) point:
The problem is being addressed at the wrong end.
Ultimately we have to raise the level of college preparation among the ‘protected classes’ (those socioeconomic groups with low levels of college graduation); not lower their college admission standards.
This is more of a question for public colleges and universities (which is where the vast majority of college students are). The elite schools can skim the cream, since they only admit about 10% of qualified applicants. They don’t have to lower admission standards; just choose selectively from qualified applicants to achieve a desired student population mix. Those of us lower down the food chain don’t have that luxury.
Of course, dealing with this effectively (not just by preaching) is expensive.
And Justice Thomas should know. He would never have been admitted to Yale, much less appointed to the Supremes based strictly on his (mediocre) record. Bush wanted a conservative black, and the choices were limited. A classic case of someone wanting to shut the affirmative action door after getting through it himself.
There are those
who claim that the reason we haven’t been privy to Obama’s school records is because they would show that his grades weren’t good enough to get him into Columbia and that his record at Columbia wasn’t good enough to get him into Harvard Law.
It’s easy to make a claim
Harder to support it.
And there’s such a thing as the data privacy act.
Are you sure that you aren’t confusing Obama with GW Bush?
A complicated issue
This is a very thorny issue. Where is the line between affirmative action and every college’s desire to admit classes that are balanced on a number of dimensions?
The Court will be taking up the issue of affirmative action based on race. If the Court rules that race cannot be taken into account, what about the many other factors that colleges use to admit students with lower objective qualifications than some of the students they reject? Most obviously, so-called legacies—students with a family connection to the school—usually have a lower bar to clear to gain admission. Talented high school athletes are also admitted with lower test scores and grades than many non-athletes who are rejected. Then there is the “we need a bassoon for the orchestra” situation, where the school wants to fill a specific niche and overlooks not-so-stellar qualifications.
Family status, athletic talent or musical prowess aren’t suspect classifications under anti-discrimination laws. But what about other forms of ethnic discrimination? In the bad old days, many elite colleges had more or less official Jewish quotas. Now colleges are struggling to admit balanced classes without being unfair to the large number of high achieving Asian applicants. If the Court disallows all affirmative action, will UC Berkeley be compelled to ignore race in admissions even if it results in classes that are 90% Asian? And what of gender discrimination? Male under-representation in higher education has been well documented. In the interest of gender balance, most colleges routinely admit boys with lower grades and test scores than many girls who are rejected. Will these preferences also ultimately be found unconstitutional? If affirmative action is OK to achieve gender balance, why isn’t it OK to achieve racial diversity in the student body? To be “fair”, must college admission be strictly a numbers game, with the winners and losers determined solely by objective factors like grades and test scores?
I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, but the justices are wading into deep waters here.