The campaign against affirmative action has reduced the complicated process of college admissions to a simple and highly inaccurate sound bite: Black and brown students are being admitted over higher-achieving white and Asian American applicants. Ascribed a flawed essence, affirmative action has become easier to reject.
In recent years, there has been an increase in state-level ballot initiatives to prohibit the consideration of race in the college application review process. And, of course, there have been the legal challenges with judicial decisions more closely tracking with the shift in public opinion away from inclusion. On Thursday, the Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision held that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s efforts to create a diverse class violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. In short, a majority of the court determined that it was time for affirmative action to end.
Affirmative action, at its core, encourages steps (actions) to positively (affirmatively) enable a culture in which talented folks with great potential will not be denied educational or employment opportunities because of their race, religion, gender or national origin. It is corrective — by saying that past practices of exclusion are no longer tolerable or justifiable.
A long and unfortunate history of exclusion exists within the American educational system. Simply walk across certain university campuses during summer reunion season, and you will be able to ascertain by looking at attendees assembled by class year when that school began in earnest to admit women, nonwhite racial minorities and/or international students. This was something that I realized when I attended my first Yale reunion more than 20 years ago.
College admissions is a complex endeavor. It is sufficiently challenging when misinformed narratives — the idea that a person was rejected or accepted solely because of self-identified race or gender — gain traction. The reality is that a lot of people apply to college, and depending on the school, some or most or nearly all applicants will not receive an offer of admission.
To take an extreme example: Yale admitted only 2,275 out of 52,250 applicants this past school year. Although the demographics of the incoming class, beyond their geographic origin, have not yet been posted, history tells us that probably less than 7% or fewer than 150 these students will self-identify as Black or African American. To put this in perspective, the self-identified Black population of the United States is a bit less than 14%; 33% of the residents in New Haven, Connecticut, where Yale is located, identify as Black.
Clearly, the 150 Black students who will constitute the Class of 2027 are not the reason 50,000 people did not receive offers of admission. To assert otherwise is a convenient lie and poor math. Such a contention also willfully overlooks the qualifications and aptitude of the students, of all backgrounds, who received offers of admission.
There are many factors that inform an admission decision within a holistic review of an application. How would you compare an Olympic gold medalist with mostly A’s and a straight-A student with distinguished service as a community volunteer? How would you evaluate the potential of an applicant who was elected student body president in high school and aims to be the first person in their family to attend college in comparison with a legacy applicant, whose family members have attended the college for generations always with great distinction?
The admissions review process is even more complex than these scenarios. Indeed, there are scores of variables. Geographic origin can be one. Yale’s incoming class includes students hailing from all 50 states in addition to four U.S. territories and more than 70 countries.
This geographic diversity is a reminder that one of the many benefits of a college education is the opportunity to be introduced to a diversity of ideas. And this exposure works only if there is a diversity of people. To bring together talented folks with great potential from various backgrounds and allow them to spend four years together is exceptional training to live and, perhaps, lead in an increasingly interconnected world.
The challenge, which prompts the various lawsuits, is a question of how to think about the value ascribed to self-identified race, gender, religion and national origin among these many other variables. For whatever reason, people seem more willing to understand that it is a good thing for a person from North Dakota to be roommates with someone from California, but they struggle to comprehend why it would be a good thing for two people with varying experiences as a result of their gender, ethnicity or national identities to be in conversation.
For much of the past 20 years, I have held leadership roles at selective universities. Although the undergraduate admissions process has always existed outside of my purview, I have witnessed firsthand the good that occurs when students with great potential who possess varying experiences and contrasting beliefs come together. They learn as much from one another as they do from their professors in the classroom.
Although the death knell of affirmative action has sounded, it is difficult to imagine universities and colleges closing their doors to the populations they deliberately excluded in the past. One of the lessons of recent efforts toward inclusion has been that excellence emerges not from a uniformity of look and thought but rather through a diversity of ideas and people.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Harvey Young is dean of the College of Fine Arts at Boston University and the author of “Embodying Black Experience.”
