On June 29, local time, the US Supreme Court, promoted by the absolute majority of conservatives, ruled that the "affirmative action" (affirmative action) enrollment plans of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina were unconstitutional, and public and private universities in the United States must stop considering race in admissions. The Guardian published an opinion piece saying that the ruling overturned decades of precedent in American social life and dealt a huge blow to the cause of diversity of campus students.
On October 31, 2022, local time, Washington, USA, Harvard students Shruthi Kumar (left) and Muskaan Arshad attended a rally with other activists, where the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases that could determine the future of affirmative action for college admissions. People's Visual Infographic
Affirmative action policies are "not perfect", but they are still a "ladder of opportunity"
In 1964, the United States enacted the famous "Affirmative Action Act", requiring any university, enterprise and institution receiving federal funding to prohibit racial discrimination, in order to help disadvantaged minorities, the law provides for special consideration and compensatory preferences for minorities in education and employment.
But the conservative judge concluded this time that the admissions policies of Harvard and the University of North Carolina violated the equal protection provisions of the U.S. Constitution. The court concluded that the race-conscious admissions programs of Harvard and the University of North Carolina failed to comply with narrow limits set by the court in previous cases, noting that college programs "must adhere to rigorous scrutiny, must never make race a stereotype" or negative, and must "end" at some point. This effectively prohibits the use of "affirmative action" policies.
Supreme Court rulings against Harvard and the University of North Carolina would limit the right of colleges and universities, especially selective institutions, to consider an applicant's race as a factor in the admissions process. The court noted that students could still discuss their race in their applications, but that the university "erroneously concluded" that "the touchstone of personal identity is not the challenges overcome, the skills developed or the lessons learned, but the color of their skin."
Past studies have shown that the disappearance of race awareness in college admissions affects about a quarter of U.S. colleges and universities, which will lead to a decline in the number of black, Latinos, and Indigenous students admitted to highly selective colleges. This may cause these students to constantly switch to other less selective universities and may lead to less diversity at elite institutions.
Highly selective private and state universities will now scramble to pursue race-neutral alternatives to boost diversity, a phenomenon that past studies have shown in states that have banned affirmative action do not reach the same level of diversity as race-conscious admissions.
In the nine-member Supreme Court, six conservative-leaning judges prevailed over three-pro-liberal-leaning judges. Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first black woman on the Supreme Court, issued a clear dissent, saying the ruling meant "it will take longer for racism to leave."
In response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Harvard President Lawrence Bakau said in a statement that while the Ivy League "will certainly abide by the court's ruling," it will continue to include "people with diverse backgrounds, perspectives and life experiences."
University of North Carolina President Kevin Guskivic said that while this is not the outcome the university "hopes," it will review the decision and "take whatever steps are necessary to comply with the law."
Former U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama also spoke publicly about the ruling, recalling her efforts to gain a sense of belonging as one of the few African-American students at the university.
The former first lady recalled her experience as one of the few black students on campus during her undergraduate years at Princeton, explaining that she sometimes questioned whether people thought she was admitted simply because of affirmative action policies. But over time, she said, she and other students of color have shown that they too belong to elite academic environments. While affirmative action policies are "not perfect," she wrote, it has helped "provide a new ladder of opportunity for those who have often been denied the opportunity in our history to demonstrate their climbing speed."
Michelle Obama wrote in a statement: "Many times, we simply accept that money, power, and privilege are perfectly justified forms of affirmative action, while children like me who grow up are expected to compete on uneven ground. So today, I feel heartbroken for young people who want to know what their future holds and what opportunities they will face. ”
She also wrote that the court's repeal of affirmative action plans reminds us not only of the importance of policies that reflect the principles of fairness and justice, but also of the importance of making "these values a reality in all of our schools, workplaces, and communities."
Barack Obama echoed that sentiment in a brief statement, writing that while affirmative action policy had its flaws, "it has allowed generations of students like Michelle and me to prove where we belong." ”
"It is now incumbent upon all of us to give young people the opportunities they deserve and to help students around the world benefit from new perspectives," the former president wrote. ”
Asian American groups have mixed views on this ruling. Asian American Education Alliance president Yukong Zhao said in an interview with the BBC that he welcomed the ruling. His organization argues that affirmative action has negatively impacted the odds of Asian-American students getting into elite schools.
"This decision will preserve meritocracy, which is the cornerstone of the American dream." Zhao Yukong said.
The San Francisco Chinese Rights Association said it was frustrated and opposed to the ruling. "The U.S. Supreme Court's decision severely undermines the ability of colleges and universities to create true educational equity," the group wrote in a statement. However, it is important to recognize that the ruling was strictly limited to considerations of race in college admissions and did not limit other important initiatives such as targeted outreach and recruitment, or ensure that the school has a more diverse staff and school leadership. ”
Lin Yao: Be wary of the discourse traps of the privileged class
Yao Lin, J.D. from Yale University, Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University, and currently teaches at NYU Shanghai, introduced and analyzed the "affirmative action" (i.e., "affirmative action") policies pursued by American universities over the years. He believes that the current limitations of the "affirmative action" policy are not rooted in the left-wing identity movement itself; On the contrary, it is precisely because of the containment and strangling of more ambitious and intersectional racial equality demands by right-wing conservative forces in the United States over the past few decades that the space for policy experimentation in transitional justice has been shrinking, leaving only a few small preferential compensation measures.
Lin Yao believes that compared with the admission of colleges and universities where most people have no chance to compete, the improvement of the quality of basic education in primary and secondary schools is the way to cure the root cause; But since the Supreme Court decided in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), after the desegregation of public basic education, white racists and the various levels of government under their control resorted to various perverse measures to ensure that black communities could not enjoy basic education of the same quality as whites: first, they simply closed all public schools, transferred all teachers to private schools open only to white students, and left black children without books; After this practice was ruled unconstitutional (Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, 1964), it assisted the large-scale "white flight" of urban middle-class whites through policies such as suburban land planning, while reducing municipal services and infrastructure investment in urban black communities, which greatly reduced the property value of black households. Under the American-style system, which uses school district property taxes as the main source of funding for public education, it is unable to maintain the basic education level of black school districts; Civil rights activists challenged this system to ensure the quality and fairness of basic education through public education funding, rather than school districts relying on property taxes to fend for themselves; But that challenge was hit hard after conservatives retook the Supreme Court in the seventies (San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 1973), the school district property tax system has been maintained to this day, and the quality of public education in the United States has also declined, and the black community is naturally the first victim, and the bottom white people who cannot afford to attend expensive private schools also suffer from pond fish.
Lin Yao pointed out that it is in this context that colleges and universities in the United States have successively implemented "affirmative action" in admissions, aiming to make some compensation to the black community that has suffered from layers of policy discrimination since the beginning of basic education. But even attempts at "affirmative action" have been restrained by conservatives: for example, the Supreme Court has been in a series of cases (Regents of the University of California v. Bakke，1978；Grutter v. Bollinger，2003；Gratz v. Bollinger, 2003), refusing to see "affirmative action" as a correction and compensation for the consequences of systemic discrimination in history (intersectional perspective), and only accepting colleges and universities to defend them from the benefits of "on-campus racial diversity" (single identity dimension perspective), resulting in later college admissions increasingly focusing on more subjective evaluation criteria such as "diversity statement"; College admissions are not allowed to use a system of racial quota or point allocation with clearer criteria and higher transparency, and only allow colleges and universities to conduct vague "holistic reviews" of applicants.
Lin Yao said that in recent years, some Asians have complained that they have been discriminated against in college admissions interviews and given low scores because of interviewers' racial stereotypes of Asians, which is actually the result of the conservative Supreme Court's continuous narrowing of the space for experimentation and adjustment in colleges and universities' "affirmative action" policies. In addition, a large part of the admission quota of many colleges and universities in the United States (especially private schools) has been occupied by programs such as the "legacy admission" (which originated from white supremacy) and the "dean's interest list" (aimed at currying favor with the powerful and wealthy people), and the vast majority of the beneficiaries of these programs are upper-middle-class whites. Ignoring the existence of these privileged admission programs, ignoring conservatives' restrictions and distortions on the college admissions reform model, and ignoring conservatives' long-term resistance to deeper and broader reform demands beyond college admissions, but viewing "affirmative action" itself as the culprit of anti-confrontation between different minorities and between minorities and low-level whites, it is undoubtedly falling into the discursive trap of the privileged class in the privileged race.