Race-conscious admissions through affirmative action have serious cracks — first in 1978 when the Supreme Court changed affirmative action from a form of reparations to a diversity-seeking endeavor, and today with the Supreme Court cases involving UNC-Chapel Hill and Harvard. How we are instituting reparations is not healthy, popular or legally sustainable.
I will not advocate for the complete and immediate abolishment of race-conscious admissions, as race still plays an important role today. However, modern affirmative action policies still benefit the wealthy disproportionately and do not provide the long-term cure to systemic racism it was intended to.
Affirmative action needs a Marxist rethinking that holistically incorporates socioeconomic status as a driver of economic disparagement in tandem with race-conscious admissions.
First and foremost, the preferences for legacy and dean’s interest list students as well as student athletes and children of faculty are shockingly profound. Among white admits at Harvard, one study found 43% are from this group. Even more shockingly, the study estimated “roughly three quarters … would have been rejected if they had been treated as” normal students.
The removal of this preference would be the first step towards more socioeconomic consideration as this would shift the school’s racial composition drastically.
Affirmative action has been used as a means of fostering diversity on campus rather than reparations. However, affirmative action’s goals of redressing racial discrimination to provide more equitable opportunities have still disproportionately gone to the wealthy.
If we are to address the harms done to minorities, most of which is through economic means such as Jim Crow laws, redlining and residential racism, we must heal economic wounds. Affirmative action without socioeconomic consideration allows for a select group of minorities, especially first- and second-generation immigrants, to succeed over those of the same race.
In the top 28 selective colleges in the country, about 41% of Black students identified as non-native, while only comprising 27% of applicants and 13% of the general population. Many studies continue to show the preference given to immigrants over native-born African Americans.
Furthermore, 67% of Harvard students are in the top 20% of income percentiles, with only 4.5% coming from the bottom 20%. The numbers are not much better for UNC, which has 60% of students in the top 20% and only 3.8% in the bottom 20%.
Affirmative action is not intended, nor should it be seen, as a long-term admissions policy. Its creation was to resolve inequality in education. W.E.B. Du Bois’ theory of the talented tenth of all races leading their communities to greatness was predicated on the premise that all people will get equal opportunities to reach higher education as he himself did. Without consideration of socioeconomic status, this goal cannot be accomplished.
Race-conscious admissions can cause racial discrimination against other disparaged minorities. Especially in selective universities where academic achievement is so vital, the administration of diversity can be difficult.
In the case before the court this term, Harvard allegedly examined personality traits among applicants. An internal investigation found that Asian students performed disproportionately lower than all other races. In admissions programs that judged only academic success, Asians would have comprised 43% of the student body. With the personality assessments, they comprised 19%.
The result is an admissions barrier that actively rejects more Asians based on arbitrary traits to keep the school’s brand of “diversity.” This only seeks to suppress the academic excellence of a quite marginalized community — you’ll recall the Stop AAPI Hate movement shined a light on widespread anti-Asian sentiments in 2021. Diversity, however valuable it is, cannot be the basis for outright discrimination.
From a legal perspective, affirmative action is difficult to defend. The essential laws considered when evaluating affirmative action — the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Equal Rights Act of 1964 — outline how race should be treated in institutions funded by the federal government. These laws, which are the backbone of all civil rights movements in the United States are inherently “colorblind” laws, while affirmative action is explicitly looking at color.
As Justice Sandra Day O’Conner stated in Grutter v. Bollinger, “The Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” That was in 2003. Like it or not, there is a statute of limitations, and socioeconomic status is the only way to salvage and reform affirmative action to prepare for that statute to run out.
Diversity is a valuable element of a healthy university structure, contributing to innovations in all areas of knowledge. Four-year universities like NC State and UNC are the best places for disenfranchised students to acquire degrees that would help them rise in economic status.
But, little consideration for class status can lead to an elitist class that doesn’t truly help them. Socioeconomic status must be much more heavily considered to cure the effect of economic racial discrimination so that people from all walks of life have the opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty.
