“We have moved away from thinking of higher education as a public good to more of an individualistic, how-I’m-going-to-get-ahead perspective,” Liliana M. Garces, a professor of higher education at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Chronicle in a recent interview. “But if we come back to the public mission of higher education and its role in advancing the democratic goals of a multiracial society, we understand that institutions trying to build a diverse student body is advancing interests that benefit all of us in a multiracial democracy, by building capacity for diverse students to become leaders. If you ground yourself in that public role and mission of higher education, college admissions is not a zero-sum game.”
Dr. Garces calls out these two competing views, namely, the attainment of higher education as a public good, beneficial to society as a whole. This is diametrically opposite from the neoliberal view of higher education "consumers" enjoying a "market of options." Ample research shows how racially and ethnically diverse classrooms are better than non-diverse ones. That is, they prepare our youth for diverse working environments. Moreover, in terms of fairness, we all pay taxes for education such that all groups should benefit equitably—not equally considering that not all students are equally privileged.
Southern Methodist University Associate Professor Dominique J. Baker's statement compliments that of Garces, expressing that “The majority’s opinion rejects the reality of structural racism," including the real-world notion of privilege as evidenced in legacy admissions.What I would add is that it's frankly convenient for SCOTUS to eschew a public goods perspective because in doing so—as affirmative action does—this readily takes one down the path of remedying the wrongs of structural inequality by compensating for these through policy tools that take race/ethnicity and other factors like class, gender, and ability into account.
The U.S. Supreme court agreed with Students for Fair Admission that race-consciousness equals racial discrimination. The logics of this decision are so patently mystifying because race-consciousness is how and not whether one sees race. Why is this so? The answer is because we live in a society and world where access to the good life that higher education affords, is circumscribed by race and class—with significant overlap between the two. One doesn't go a single day in this country without news of some kind that are expressly about race. Next to guns, it's our national obsession such that one can only be willfully blind to race. Hence, it's next to impossible not to see race.
The issue is rather how one sees race. Does one see it as a basis for inclusion or exclusion, as a means to uplift or derogate? In contrast, so-called "racial discrimination" is an expression of individualist privilege and entitlement that ironically benefits white people, i.e., a racial group, in U.S. society.
Hakeem Jefferson and Victor Ray (2022) also recently nailed it when they anticipated even more consequential repercussions following the January 6 attack on U.S. Capitol that reveals rioters' own racial reckoning as a "white backlash to a perceived loss of power and status."
In the meantime, people of color are ascendant demographically, and to a certain extent socially, because of just policies like affirmative action and diversity, equity and inclusion—even if vast inequities in places like higher education remain (Ellsworth, Harding, Law & Pinder, 2022).
Universities are tasked with creating pipeline programs and recruiting students of color to apply. We should continue along the trajectory, as well, of limiting the use of standardized tests for admissions purposes. In Texas, we should also double-down on percent plans in higher admissions. This brings not just our black and brown communities and coalitions into conversation, but white rural communities, as well. As with vouchers, there is a shared interest and natural constituency for a way forward.
In general, young people and the broader public need to grasp for themselves that higher education is a public good and join the struggle wherever you are for educational justice. Yes, this is a symbolic blow to the goals of diversity, equity and inclusion, but this is not the end, but rather still the beginning of this struggle.
-Angela Valenzuela
References
Jefferson, H. & Ray, V. (2022, Jan. 6) "White Backlash Is A Type Of Racial Reckoning, Too," By Hakeem Jefferson and Victor Ray | FiveThirtyEight
Ellsworth, D., Harding, E., Law, J. & Pinder, D. (2022, July 18). Racial and ethnic Equity in U.S. Higher Education, McKinsey Report. Retrieved: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/education/our-insights/racial-and-ethnic-equity-in-us-higher-education
The Supreme Court’s Decision Reveals a Gulf Between Two Views of Race and Merit
By Eric Hoover
JUNE 29, 2023
ILLUSTRATION BY THE CHRONICLE; PHOTOS BY TOM WILLIAMS, CQ-ROLL CALL, INC.,
GETTY IMAGES; ISTOCKChief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The U.S. Supreme Court looked behind the curtain. Then it knocked over the table and chairs. Now, colleges are left with one big mess and a slew of questions that will define a new era for college admissions in a nation riven by racial disparities.
In its long-awaited decision on Thursday, the court held that the way Harvard College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill had considered applicants’ race violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The ruling, split along the court’s ideological lines, essentially struck down four and a half decades of legal precedent allowing institutions to consider race as one of many factors in their evaluations. The decision, every bit as drastic as many college officials had long feared, will shift the way many admissions offices assess students. And it will very likely change, perhaps dramatically, the racial and ethnic makeup of many campuses.
The ruling was a resounding victory for Students for Fair Admissions, known as SFFA, which sued Harvard and UNC, in 2014. For all the complexities contained within the two cases, SFFA’s argument in each boiled down to this: Race-consciousness is no different than racial discrimination. And in the end, the court agreed.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. forcefully rejected Harvard and UNC’s race-conscious admissions practices. Anyone who reads the opinion closely will detect the same apparent impatience with colleges, the same mistrust of their methods, that he and other conservative justices expressed during oral arguments last fall. The court concluded that Harvard and UNC’s stated goals were too elusive, too difficult to measure, to withstand strict scrutiny.
Above all, the court agreed with SFFA’s contention that the Constitution requires colorblindness in all federal laws, a notion that derives from a particular reading of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees “the equal protection of the laws” to all U.S. citizens. An applicant, Roberts wrote, “must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race. Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”
