An Impartial Take On The Supreme Court’s Ruling To Overturn Affirmative Action
The Good: No more “positive discrimination”
First off, the complete irony of this phrase never ceases to amaze me. How can there be something positive about racial discrimination, nonetheless in a pivotal milestone that will most likely shape students’ lives going forward?
Though it gives opportunities to people who are historically underrepresented, it takes away from one student who most likely did the same if not more work to get to the point they were at.
Admissions officers were too busy looking back at the discrimination that people faced in the past to acknowledge the fact that they were the perpetrators of a new wave of politically correct discrimination that fits in the new era of cancel culture.
Rather than looking at two students who, in the present, have come so far and put in so much effort to try and get into your university, you are assessing which student’s skin will cater to your campus’s level of diversity.
The Good: Diversity Could Be Left Unaffected
Though supporters of Affirmative Action worry about how the ban will affect diversity in universities across America, the results of California’s nearly 30-year-long ban on Affirmative Action in public universities would have to disagree.
From Associated Press News, “Admission of California freshmen reached an all-time high with 84,223 students and 36,462 of them, or 43%, are students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. Latinos were the largest group admitted for the second year in a row, making up 37%. Asian Americans made up 34%, white students 20% and Black students 5%. The rest were American Indians, Pacific Islanders or those who declined to state their race or ethnicity, officials said.”
Rather than lower rates of historically underrepresented groups due to the relinquishing of governmental control in regards to Affirmative Action, this will just take out the bias towards certain groups of people in the admissions office, and instead, universities will take people whom they feel deserve it, whether their skin is white, black, brown, yellow, purple, or green.
The Bad: Then Again…
What works once is not bound to work again. California’s schools could be an outlier, with them experiencing the gains in diversity they did solely from the influx of people and students coming to the state due to its booming tech industry.
From March 2021 data, a grand total of 18% of undergraduate and 27% of graduate and professional school students are classified as foreign born, including both those who are permanent residents and those who are learning on student visas (“Immigrants and Education in California”).
This is not even counting for the domestic migration that is present when looking at California’s student body, as one out of every three students who are migrants in the U.S., whether they be international or domestic lives in the state of California. (“Overview of Migrant Education in California — Migrant (CA Dept. of Education)”).
In short, the sheer influx of people, especially students, into California could be a previously overlooked factor in the diversity of the U.C. system, and therefore the reasoning for California’s Affirmative Action ban leading to unfazed, or even increased numbers in university diversity could be completely disregarded.
The Bad: Initial Results were Alarming
California has come a long way since the inceptive period of the ban on Affirmative Action, as the initial numbers for diversity in U.C.’s in the class of ’98 were exactly what those who were pro Affirmative Action had predicted.
From NPR, “That year, enrollment among Black and Latino students at UCLA and UC Berkeley fell by 40%, according to a 2020 study by Bleemer. As a result of the ban, Bleemer found that Black and Latino students who might have gotten into those two top schools enrolled at less competitive campuses.”
Not only did the ban exclude thousands of Black and Latino students from top universities, it led them to being placed in less competitive colleges.
As I said earlier in the article, racial discrimination playing a part in college admissions, a pivotal milestone in most students’ lives, is and always will be abhorrent, no matter what political party you stand with. No amount of people preaching that there was a learning curve will excuse the misdeeds done to thousands, and the affects on their lives going forward from that year.
Outcome
One thing can be said for sure: this will be an impactful decision, whether you support it or not.
At the end of the day, it comes down to what actually happens to diversity in universities in the next few incoming freshman classes. Strong cases can be made for either side, whether you believe that it will be the first step in the end of racial discrimination or the first step into making racism mainstream, it all comes down to what actually happens.
The ruling on Affirmative Action was too much of a coin flip to really have a clear vision on how college admissions will be affected in either the short or long term, and you can feel free to decide whichever side you feel like.
Once again, however, you have to remember, a coin flip is never 50/50.
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Works Cited
Hartocollis, Anemona. “With Supreme Court Decision, College Admissions Could Become More Subjective.” The New York Times, 29 June 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/us/affirmative-action-college-admissions-future.html. Accessed 30 June 2023.
“Immigrants and Education in California.” Public Policy Institute of California, https://www.ppic.org/publication/immigrants-and-education-in-california/. Accessed 1 July 2023.
“June 29, 2023 Supreme Court affirmative action decision.” CNN, 29 June 2023, https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/supreme-court-decisions/index.html. Accessed 30 June 2023.
“Overview of Migrant Education in California — Migrant (CA Dept of Education).” California Department of Education, 23 February 2023, https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/me/mt/overview.asp. Accessed 1 July 2023.
“UC system admits largest, most diverse undergraduate class.” AP News, 20 July 2021, https://apnews.com/article/education-race-and-ethnicity-79f7d0e7eb812ce36538b9e112c38956. Accessed 30 June 2023.
Bowman, Emma. “Here’s what happened when affirmative action ended at California public colleges.” NPR, 30 June 2023, https://www.npr.org/2023/06/30/1185226895/heres-what-happened-when-affirmative-action-ended-at-california-public-colleges. Accessed 3 July 2023.
Watanabe, Teresa. “UC Berkeley spreads the gospel of data science with new college, free curriculum.” Los Angeles Times, 18 May 2023, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-05-18/uc-berkeley-spreads-the-gospel-of-data-science-with-new-college-free-curriculum. Accessed 30 June 2023.
