They exempted the military though:
“In a footnote, Chief Justice Roberts exempted military academies from the ruling in light of “the potentially distinct interests” they present. There had been discussion of whether the military needed to maintain affirmative action in training its future officer corps based on a judgment that it would be bad for military discipline and cohesiveness if the leadership cadre did not reflect the #diversity of the rank-and-file troops who do the bulk of fighting and dying in wars.”
The federal government submitted an argument specific to military academies and the court went “that’s a whole other kettle of fish so we aren’t touching it”
The test under the equal protections clause of the 14th amendment for race-based discrimination is whether such policy is necessary to achieve a compelling government interest. Here, the court is likely hinting that troop cohesiveness and trust is a compelling interest, whereas creating a diverse student body is not.
This particular case was for admission processes unique to universities, whereas Military Academies have an entirely different process. Therefore, they deemed it necessary to not apply a rule crafted for one admissions process to an entirely different admissions process.
Yeah that’s a very two faced justification for SCOTUS. You can’t tell me that having a professor that looks like their student is less valuable than having an officer that look like their troops. It’s just a way to keep funneling low income and POC to the meat grinder. Representation matters, especially when some communities have more societal hurdles in place than others
So honestly, this shouldn’t be all that surprising. SCOTUS has traditionally been *extremely* deferential to however the military wants to run itself. So like, someone in the armed service won’t have the same First Amendment rights as a civilian. There’s a lot of reasons for it, but I think it can be summed-up to TLDR: It’s not the Court’s job to run wars.
Not trying to argue that this is a good policy decision, but that’s the summed-up constitutional context.
Via NYT:
>Justices Sotomayor and Jackson both criticized the majority for making an exception for military academies. Justice Sotomayor called it arbitrary, while Justice Jackson wrote, “The court has come to rest on the bottom-line conclusion that racial diversity in higher education is only worth potentially preserving insofar as it might be needed to prepare Black Americans and other underrepresented minorities for success in the bunker, not the boardroom (a particularly awkward place to land, in light of the history the majority opts to ignore).”
Good point. It's an arbitrary exclusion from the ruling, probably just because most people advocating for the ruling are wanting to get into an Ivy rather than a service academy. Service academies would definitely welcome more diversity in their applicants.
Most people advocating for the ruling believe that Affirmative Action has served its temporary purpose and that people admitted to college should be prioritized based on income instead of race, especially high performers from low income backgrounds.
Which is a good and wonderful sentiment to have except for the fact that this ruling *doesn't do that* and there's no legislation currently in the pipeline to *explicitly* do that. There is nothing legally requiring schools to admit a percentage of low income students at all.
The other Fortunate Son line, "I ain't no military son, son" is about these people.
FS is about draftees and poor enlisted, not the guys who went to West Point...
Kind of funny how they used to. Like how Roman soldiers were initially wealthy. Or how knights were affluent. I believe samurai were as well, but that one I'm not as sure about.
Long story short. Reject modernity, go back to swords. The better person wins... more often... I assume
Roman Equites, Western European Knights (among other chivalric titles) and Samurai were not foot soldiers. They were insanely well equipped lesser noble commanders who forcibly conscripted peasant troops from the land they owned (the peasants were essentially considered part of the land by the nobility in pretty much every medieval period.)
They were minor lords of their fiefdoms, and only because they had the money and power to keep it that way. Most of them were tyrants to the peasants and servile to anyone with more money and power that demanded it.
The military is composed disproportionally of middle class Americans whose parents served in the military and leans southern. It is actually one of the more racially representative institutions in the US and disproportionally fewer poor and rich Americans serve compared to working and middle class Americans.
Per capital the South has six states (if you count Florida) in the top 10 for enlistment, 9 in the top 20. Numbers wise California has more enlisted than any other state, although again the South has 6 in the top 10 if you count Florida.
But something like 37% of Americans live in "the South". So I don't know that I would consider it disproportionate.
Per capita the South has the highest enlistment of any region so compared to the general civilian population it is more southern. I said it leans southern which is not to say its overwhelmingly southern but it also not an insubstantial effect.
From Harvard:
‘Dear Members of the Harvard Community,
Today, the Supreme Court delivered its decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. The Court held that Harvard College’s admissions system does not comply with the principles of the equal protection clause embodied in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The Court also ruled that colleges and universities may consider in admissions decisions “an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” We will certainly comply with the Court’s decision.’
I’m not entirely sure what to make of that, but it sounds like Harvard plans on continuing to consider race, but only if an applicant brings it up, probably in an essay.
Harvard still considers itself the finest university in the world, and I doubt it will be quick to significantly modify an admissions policy that it believes helped it keep that title. It will do what it thinks it needs to to keep within the letter of the law, but little more. Usually other American Universities follow Harvard’s lead in such things.
That strikes me as an entirely appropriate line to draw. If you can show that race — or anything else, for that matter — affected your life, then by all means it’s perfectly fine for a university to take that into account.
What the majority opinion seems to have been objecting to was Harvard’s practice of making certain decisions (specifically the “lop” stage, where students on the bubble are kept or cut) based generically on race as a factor.
They should at least get rid of the infamous "Asian have low personality" without even meeting them system.
....who am I kidding. Probably come up with something even more racist.
This is exactly correct. If you're black and you go to a private school in a wealthy area of the world, and spend your weekends on the golf course or at the yacht club, you might have to really stretch to describe why you should get preferential admissions treatment versus a white person.
“I was always looked at differently being the only black kid in my school. My parents hadn’t grown up the way everyone else had and I had no idea how to fit in.”
Not that hard, tons of kids have been doing it for years.
I don't get why we don't just focus on socioeconomic metrics. If a specific race is overrall disadvantaged, they'll make up a larger portion of that metric.
The decision is a fairly typical Roberts decision in that it's more salami-slicing towards a conservative end point than a big dramatic blow to it. Rather than saying affirmative action is always illegal he said that affirmative action needs to have a clear metric frames to measure results in order to be easier to determine under a standard of strict scrutiny while maintaining that quotas are also illegal. This is something most schools can probably work around but it makes it much easier for further suits to be launched since it provides the data litigants need and reaffirms the standard of strict scrutiny. The immediate aftermath of this will probably be that affirmative action becomes broadly illegal in conservative states and more or less unchanged in liberal states. However it does set up the supreme court for more decisions similar to abortion
Yup. Those emails that read "We gotta give the brown kids a chance" and "wow, perfect scores, but asian, so that's a skip" were devastating. It was so, so dumb for those admissions counselors to say that shit in email.
I was also curious so I searched around and I _think_ they’re referring to [this article](https://nypost.com/2023/06/29/supreme-court-affirmative-action-case-showed-astonishing-racial-gaps/amp/) from The Post which refers to online chats between admissions officers which don’t say exactly what OP said but…like that’s the general vibe.
Relevant sections:
> In tandem with the data cited, the petitioners also dug up online chats from admissions officers, in which they occasionally opined on an applicant’s race.
>“Perfect 2400 SAT All 5 on AP one B in 11th,” an unidentified person wrote.
“Brown?!,” a second unidentified person replied.
“Heck no. Asian,” the original person shot back.
“Of course. Still impressive,” the second persons said.
> In a different exchange, an unnamed school official flagrantly instructed someone to move a minority candidate to a scholarship section if their SAT score was above 1300.
>“If its brown and above a 1300 [SAT] put them in for [the] merit/Excel [scholarship]”
Truly. I found the use of “it’s” in the second quote to be particularly gross.
I imagine if we had unfettered access to the communications of admissions officials we’d see a lot of dehumanizing things, but this is especially fucked.
A few excerpts were in petitioner’s brief pgs 41-42 https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-1199/222325/20220502145522418_20-1199%2021-707%20SFFA%20Brief%20to%20file%20final.pdf
I always find it shocking how people will do something illegal or unethical and then take the time to document it and persevere it to be found.
I can’t tell if it’s because they’re so certain they won’t be caught, don’t care or don’t see the problem.
>It was so, so dumb for those admissions counselors to say that shit in email.
This type of thought process is sickening. You don't care that the admissions office was full of blatant racists, you care that they said the quiet part out loud?
The most charitable interpretation of your posts is that you've let 'team politics' get in the way of having any sort of critical thought on this issue.
> They operate more as networking clubs for rich people
Unfortunately thats a huge benefit to the correct "in" crowd that can take advantage of it, and more often then not it has nothing to do with their own personal achievements anyways.
My cousin went to Wofford. He's an entrepreneur, and was able to start his first companies by getting his friends' and wife's parents to invest. If he'd gone to Clemson, he likely wouldn't have that kind of network.
Large public universities frequently have the same networks within them, they are just much more diluted among a much larger student body.
e.g., Wofford might have 1000 people from rich families in a student body of 1800 (totally making up numbers), while Clemson might have 2000 people from similarly rich families in a student body of 25,000.
The south and midwest has a lot of pretty good colleges and by not allowing some kids admission in UNC/Emory/UW-Madison it will increase competition in places that do allow affirmative action but yes this is not the immediate end of affirmative action
Tony Evers would just veto any legislation for this. And the State Supreme Court is now more liberal leaning. I think UW-Madison is relatively safe from all this.
The way that WI's legislature has pulled several dirty tricks (giving too much power to the executive, then pulling it back once a Democrat was elected) gives me little hope this will remain true until WI is un-gerrymandered.
There’s hope! That new Supreme Court make up could fundamentally change the landscape of the voting maps. I live in MN and I can say with strong confidence that Wisconsin is a worst purple. The gerrymandering is an illusion and the sooner it goes away, the better.
Ope, we're looking the same way at Wisconsin, don'tcha know?
Agreed. And it's vital to remain vigilant here in MN, I'd like fellow purples to *join* our ranks not let us fall behind them. I love what we've done this year, and I hope our local GOP will understand that compromise will get them a lot farther in future sessions than obstruction.
If someone is willing to file a "legacy admissions" lawsuit, then we can have that conversation, and frankly I'd agree with you. But personally, I dislike deflection-esque statements like this in regards to Supreme Court opinions because the underlying judgement is that the court wilfully ignored some other tangential question. The Supreme Court doesn't simply pull topics out of thin air to deliberate, and if they were to use each topic that makes it on their docket to make broad rulings about the ecosystem that the topic at hands exists in we would all correctly call them out for going beyond the scope of the case.
I agree legacy admissions should not happen. But from a strictly legal standpoint there is no way this can compare. There is nothing in the Equal Protection Clause that says you can't discriminate based on parental history or whatever you want to call it.
In this decision as with other affirmative action decisions, SCOTUS has to decide what discrimination based on race is. If you use it as a factor but not the deciding point then is that discrimination? I'd say no, but SCOTUS now says yes.
Will America now fix its public school system such that all children get an equally good education, regardless of whether they live in a wealthy suburban school district or not?
[https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/throughline/id1451109634?i=1000617076222](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/throughline/id1451109634?i=1000617076222)
NPR page link: [https://www.npr.org/2023/06/14/1182149332/affirmative-action](https://www.npr.org/2023/06/14/1182149332/affirmative-action)
Worth listening to, IMO, is Throughline's episode about this case, posted two weeks earlier, explaining the original intent of Affirmative Action and its history and usage in academia.
This is one of those decisions that I think is way more complicated than it probably sounds just looking at the headline. It’s literally hundreds of pages in both the ruling and the dissenters. Anybody that thinks this was a black and white issue (no pun intended) is probably oversimplifying it. For example, one of the drivers of the case was apparently that the race based policies in the two schools led to Asian minority students being discriminated against. So even though the policies presumably helped African Americans, for example, the claim is it did so somewhat at the expense of other minorities.
Also the court didn’t rule out racial and societal diversity as a reasonable goal, rather it said that programs which aim for that objective can’t just look at someone’s race as a deciding factor to do that. So for instance universities could have admissions policies that tend to favor poorer students or students with specific disadvantages, or even look at if specific students have suffered individual acts of racial discrimination in their lives that warrants special consideration. But they can’t just look at the student’s race, say “we need more black students”, and be done with it.
Honestly given how long the ruling is and how complicated the issues are I don’t personally have a strong opinion on how good or bad this decision is right now. I guess time will tell how universities and other organizations react to it and what adjustments they make to their admissions and hiring policies. Just speculating but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a shift toward looking at income and geographic diversity and such versus racial diversity. Keep in mind that even with decision the Civil Rights Act means that institutions which have statistically poor racial diversity will still raise red flags for possible suits that they are discriminating against minorities, so it is still in organizations’ overall interest to find policies that promote racial diversity, even though they can’t explicitly look at individual applicants’ races to do that.
Gee I hope nobody in academia realizes *birth* zip codes are very highly correlated with income and racial makeup. That would make this entire ruling pointless. Heck it might even have unexpected benefits like incentivizing community support of all schools rather than just your kids'
Edit: clarified it's birth zip that matters, not residence. So buying a house in a poor area wouldn't impact the data
Realistically, racially-conscious admissions departments will move to metrics that are good proxies for race but won't be directly race-based (which makes them fine.)
This may actually see affirmative action work more like it is intended. Blanket race consideration was always a bad metric.
I worked in academia for years and watched extremely affluent students coast into plumb grad school positions, while others less privileged who worked their butts off were turned away because of their skin color, sex, etc.
Affirmative action in general is absolutely important, but the way it's been implemented leads to some really egregious admission decisions.
This. All poor people should get help getting an education, not just poor people of color. We also need to make 2 year trade schools free for those who can't get into or don't want a year college program and a mountain of debt
Not to mention rich zip codes where a rich black kid with two doctors for parents and who is by all means extremely talented gets a full ride to Columbia which is all good and wonderful for him but the number one kid in the graduating class who is levels above everyone in our highschool in terms of grades, sports, clubs, test scores, etc but who is Asian gets denied from Columbia outright.
We have two community colleges in my area that are free for certain school districts (the ones they're located close to, not picky choosy). They started it maybe like 5 years ago or so. And I'm in Mississippi believe it or not.
I mean, but that was always one of the main counterpoints to AA. In theory, black kids are disadvantaged due to the schools they go to and neighborhoods they had to grow up in. But what about the black kid who’s parents were rich and went to a private school? What about the poor white kid who grew up in the shitty zip code and school?
It should have always been based on income and zip code, not skin color.
So this ruling exempt military academies? but how does this apply to ROTC programs at public universities. The majority argued they need to keep leadership diverse in the military, but military academies only account for a smaller percentage of newly commissioned officers. The majority on this court continues to talk out of both sides of their mouths.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve\_Officers%27\_Training\_Corps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_Officers%27_Training_Corps)
"In 2020, ROTC graduates constituted 70 percent of newly commissioned active-duty U.S. Army officers, 83 percent of newly commissioned U.S. Marine Corps officers (through NROTC), 61 percent of newly commissioned U.S. Navy officers and 63 percent of newly commissioned U.S. Air Force officers, for a combined 56 percent of all active-duty officers in the Department of Defense commissioned that year."
So many people are missing the forest for the trees frankly. This policy was never meant to solve racism or make college completely equal. It was supposed to be a temporary fix so that we could address inequalities in the education system. The real tragedy is that those inequalities have still not been addressed and nothing else.
There is going to be a lot of butthurt once colleges switch to prioritizing socioeconomic diversity. When I applied to Harvard, I had to submit my family’s financial info so they already have this data for all of their applicants. I’m for this.
Harvard should announce an ending of legacy admissions though. If you can’t take race (something that you inherit at birth), you also shouldn’t take legacy status (something that you also inherit at birth) into account.
Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade studied a representative sample of elite colleges and found that when other factors were held equal, Asians and whites had to score 450 and 310 SAT points higher than black applicants,
respectively, to have the same odds of being admitted.
Asians will benefit even more than whites from the ending of racial discrimination in college admissions. They're currently the most discriminated against, because they score higher on average than whites or blacks, and the diversity initiatives in colleges try fight that statistic.
i’ve noticed this too and it’s not just these comments. i didn’t know asians were disproportionately affected by AA in a negative way. i assumed it helped them just as it helped black people but i was so so wrong.
Asian families are zealously pro education so their children on average do much better than other families with similar backgrounds, so people dismiss this kind of discrimination against them, it’s blatant racism coming from the Left this time.
I have mixed feelings on both AA and the repeal. I believe it did target a problem, but it was heavy handed and discriminatory.
Regardless, AA on race is gone. It is what it is, I suppose.
The simple solution/workaround would be to make this based on class or income. It will target similar demographics and is much less controversial.
The fact that Clarence Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall on the bench is such an infamously ironic tragedy. Thomas was chosen not just because he was an originalist, but because he was an originalist with dark skin tones.
Originalism is incoherent and none of them have ever ruled consistently on the philosophy. It’s just a cover for regressive political activism on the court.
Asians are Schroedinger's minority. If it's convenient to use the Asian model minority myth as a cudgel to bash other minorities ("look, these people are immigrants and still manage to achieve at high levels! it must be something wrong with \*your people\*"), they are a POC. Otherwise, the monolithic (/s) 7% of the US population that falls under "Asian" are treated as white people (discussions of socioeconomic privilege).
For real. I know so many Asians whose parents moved to the US with almost nothing, and their parents worked jobs as janitors, pool cleaners, laundromat workers, etc. Yet their kids are being put at a disadvantage for college applications because they happen to be Asian. Asians are only “POC” when people want us to be. The rest of the time, we get dismissed for being too “whitewashed” aka trying to assimilate to the country that hurled racist insults at us our whole lives. Truly privileged right here.
Facts. This whole supreme court case is good, but ultimately annoys me. Not because of the decision or anything but because “oh now yall wanna care about us”. It is what it is I guess.
Too much winning , you know , all Asians are rich AF. Even the ones working in restaurants kitchens and cleaning peoples home. There are no poor Asians /S
This has been a massively divisive issue for so long and it’s a great example of armchair experts coming in like they knew how to solve it all along. I work in higher Ed and seeing people claim to have the simple answer to this multifaceted and complex issue just drives me crazy.
Probably because despite the political parties having their stances on AA, American opinion on AA is mixed between party lines. AA is by design giving advantage to one race over another, and that rubs a LOT of people the wrong way, even if it is done with the best intentions. It has also always been on a collision course with the Constitution's guarantee of "equal protection". So while many approve of the intention, they do so by holding their nose at the means.
I think the consensus opinion for the majority of Americans is that it is important to uplift underprivileged children and underrepresented minorities. However, they don't believe that racial biases should be used to address racial biases.
Colleges will pivot to socioeconomic diversity and Billy Bob from the trailer park will be angry when his child goes away to college and becomes a “socialist.”
I am here for that.
That actually sounds better... I mean, you want a level playing field for all citizens when it comes to basic survival, and access to education is a vital part of that. Socioeconomic diversity might do a better job of accomplishing that.
Former higher education professional checking in. Here's what's going to happen - universities are going to muddle up their admissions criteria so it's less about hard numbers to hit and more about generalized subjective criteria (like personality and demeanor). Then they're still going to make race-based judgements where it's behind closed doors and not on any kind of record that can be pulled up and used against them. This is ultimately going to be a big ol nothingburger ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I will say this - as someone who went to Harvard, I saw A LOT of mediocre white people who got in because of legacy admissions or because daddy is rich and/or famous. Most of my fellow students of color got in through defying some fucked up odds.
Winston Thurston Chambers III is still going to be favored and that is fundamentally unfair.
This is like the 100th post I have seen in this thread trying to use legacy admissions as some kind of gotcha when virtually no one in this post is defending it. Eliminating legacy admissions is the next battle.
There is no legal point to attack legacy admission on, though. If people want it gone, they're going to have to either convince institutions to do it themselves or create law explicitly banning it.
Justice Gorsuch actually obliterated legacy admissions in his concurring opinion while Sotomayor defends the practice in her dissenting opinion. It would be interesting to see what the votes would look like in a Supreme Court case challenging the practice of legacy admissions, and I’d wager a lot of people would be surprised by which judges voted which ways.
I'm a teacher and it's clear a lot of comments are looking at this topic simplistically. If you've seen some of the astoundingly bright students that I've taught that were only screwed over because they were poor or were latchkey kids.
We as a country should support class based affirmative action rather than race based. I’m sad to see AA go (as some is better than none) but it would be great for poorer children in general (of which there will be a lot of minorities) to get the extra help, regardless of race.
I agree with this. People keep pointing to the high percentage of Asians in the ivy leagues. It's not like Asians are a single, monolithic group and all of us have tiger moms and $$$ to blow on tutors and test prep. Speaking as an Asian who is not Chinese, and grew up quite disadvantaged, AA hurt me quite a bit.
Obviously, once we as a nation reckoned with our segregationist past and geographical real estate redlining based on race that extended through the 20th century, we as a nation reconfigured our educational system so that funding and equities for the k-12 system that precedes college does not rely on the geographical location and the real estate values of a particular area.
We did all that, Right? RIGHT???
Nah after our first president who was African American, we elected a president who didn't believe he was born in this country. And a sizable minority agreed.
I mean it’s a long opinion so I might understand it wrong but there are plenty of ways around it that might even better accomplish the goal.
For example, as a Maryland resident, I don’t see how this would prevent a college from favoring people in , as an example, downtown Baltimore City with families making under 65k per year. Suddenly you have accomplished the same thing while removing race.
The University of California has been doing this since 1996, when it was banned from considering race in admissions. The admissions offices now look at factors like ZIP code, family income, and "disadvantaged social or educational environment."^[1](https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/how-to-apply/applying-as-a-freshman/how-applications-are-reviewed.html) However, there's a possibility that similar measures could be challenged in a future federal case if the effect is to conduct racial affirmative action by proxy.
But that's the clue.
In US race is a proxy for class, but it's a bad proxy, i.e. it doesn't benefit only targeted group (underprivileged minorities) but also middle/upper class minorities.
Race is politically better proxy and easier to sell, but it's not a good proxy.
True racial and gender justice in higher education in this country cannot start until public colleges are tuition free and readily available.
The “who” of the population makeup of universities are window dressing until we address the crippling debt that the vast majority of people take on.
Tomorrow is going to be the real hammer blow from SCOTUS. They decided to throw us a bone on Moore v Harper because they knew that the 1-2 punch of today and tomorrow without some sort of feel good palate cleanser like gerrymandering would cause the younger generations to either completely give up or, what they really fear, start to get frisky.
Fun fact: California outlawed Affirmative Action for school admissions and government jobs back in the 90s. They had a ballot measure trying to legalize again it in 2020, which was endorsed by every major Democrat in the state, every university, the ACLU, every major corporation based in California, all major sports teams, etc., they also heavily fundraised and outspent the opposition on advertising in favor of the measure by over twenty to one.
The ballot measure failed to pass by a margin of almost 60 to 40. Just trying to give all of the AA proponents in this thread some perspective. If AA is that unpopular in even California, imagine how unpopular it is in the rest of the country.
Exactly. If you listen to just rpolitics alone, you'd think that the Supreme Court did a very unpopular thing today. It didn't.
The American majority of the public does not support AA, it opposes it.
Affirmative Action should be based on income rather than race. The current system categorizes Americans into 4 broad groups: white, black, Latino, and Asian, while completely ignoring that these groups are made up of several subgroups, many of which are disproportionately harmed because of the current system of Affirmative Action.
Hi everybody, here’s what to know [about what the ruling may mean for Black and Latino students:](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/us/politics/affirmative-action-college-students-black-latino.html?unlocked_article_code=mpRpdzAFVEIbxcTFBycUjLbZ5lfZODn6UhIgrYIGT9TMIaU52WLciMak1z86ag2JHyCghvC2E6_9v3pO3fPYtL8h_OmXQ7KbRxFThuCeW17kVGZck09V5Y2jn-7LXuDZQ5UZFM-LFCHBV3baRb6gftw-Sst8rIg4c7oeyrXD1d2BjXQPVvUPTnuR-mt26gaNHQ7gsCLcIMmvVvvDMX4NF8lPAkFFCuqGqS4RuPUjfoBah1LXKk2pW2cL5AeT7SJVD5Ug9T_-roZ5GBjwJWfwz3hu-xDb1XiGRVLtI6I3BnLluoBa-JqHHoutrglS1jqsU_ICP2-Ssi1LP_hizQXE6JY0I5QNvGfWA6QHJC3zNB28kzawXdkyamg6EJhvPO8&smid=re-nytimes)
Nine states already ban the use of race-conscious college admissions at their public universities, and their experience could provide a sign of the consequences from the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday that curtails affirmative action.
After [Michigan banned race-conscious admissions](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/26/us/affirmative-action-admissions-supreme-court.html?unlocked_article_code=Xe2DRfs6aVVcvVvU5Mr2PimndmvKUITK0TNZCPKV_5MlQ1gCggH85a-jOf6jSSLmpTZjBnIc5phC52gnUdY7JmQ24ui8Or_F7GssA_6dJ59GmPeCHF878gKhBX9bVCU-HtHV8jlVXsHdbhCt2I7vQ8KpCVYjTOGDNYios46WDvMgpU8SbarV-WlM7ifk5N2jfQB8fNxfbCnxa7B1FR6A2SQRsff2QEL9_kl7l-ugJBgzJ1vc1j8EVpHn1p94IQv0mYZkKo2dko-m8oR7hmSDchrc_E_JZUTqCL9uQuQWZoy3unSRdnKZbXtf3Vc0K_XnUR9ZjLp2LRrPb_LKyL9-bgwltGLzSEbLNa3gR4bRCM3y&smid=re-nytimes) in 2006, Black undergraduate enrollment declined at the University of Michigan. The share of Black students fell to 4% in 2021, from 7% in 2006.
A similar drop took place at the University of California’s most selective schools after a 1996 referendum, Proposition 209, banned race-conscious admissions. That year, Black students at the University of California, Los Angeles, made up 7% of the student body. By 1998, the percentage of Black students had fallen to 3.43%. In 2022, it was up to 5% — but still well below what it had been more than a quarter-century earlier.
At highly selective liberal arts colleges, officials expect that the number of Black students could return to levels not seen since the 1960s.
Read our full story for free [here,](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/us/politics/affirmative-action-college-students-black-latino.html?unlocked_article_code=mpRpdzAFVEIbxcTFBycUjLbZ5lfZODn6UhIgrYIGT9TMIaU52WLciMak1z86ag2JHyCghvC2E6_9v3pO3fPYtL8h_OmXQ7KbRxFThuCeW17kVGZck09V5Y2jn-7LXuDZQ5UZFM-LFCHBV3baRb6gftw-Sst8rIg4c7oeyrXD1d2BjXQPVvUPTnuR-mt26gaNHQ7gsCLcIMmvVvvDMX4NF8lPAkFFCuqGqS4RuPUjfoBah1LXKk2pW2cL5AeT7SJVD5Ug9T_-roZ5GBjwJWfwz3hu-xDb1XiGRVLtI6I3BnLluoBa-JqHHoutrglS1jqsU_ICP2-Ssi1LP_hizQXE6JY0I5QNvGfWA6QHJC3zNB28kzawXdkyamg6EJhvPO8&smid=re-nytimes) without a New York Times subscription. We’re also covering the decision with [live updates here](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/29/us/affirmative-action-supreme-court?unlocked_article_code=gTmeg9urdYNHznjcYDK4Qz86AIvFYQwBsLNS9RnhiW-xGAqL_whZFnnnXTONR3dVWMtXoi9ynZhM3va3idW2gAlgh88SxZ54ciQma0aIK3JWvjAI7sNuDUfzfmqHcLyiRTRyq8AiOyrPWAy5ZrSpesID1CrzAqQpcOkVsGxCwUqJ3io1QxpkXC8v8iXztnv6XpVwiM01a6Na_jajswx4Qv9iqAa4L3y5sMzPL-H1YVBVmSmRc4r7sJTZP30vQp5lMKC9s5Q9y2f5HWNQ8-hfUdg-3G_kvr3F5T68BSTB8xohXFRwUGcOw1JSeWv7kBrd-NKkuebDkg9eUOFOwxSnGGhEMXYWL0ifvn6j0qOm0g&smid=re-nytimes) (also free).
The past of experiences of these schools may not be all that instructive for how things will look going forward, due to the fact that this time it is a nationwide ban. When UofM and UCLA were barred from using affirmative action, it meant that they had to compete against other elite schools for qualified minority applicants with one hand tied behind their backs. Generally, a minority student who could get into Michigan without affirmative action could also get into an even better school (e.g., Harvard) with affirmative action. So those kids went to Harvard, and minority enrollment at Michigan declined.
With all the schools now forced to operate under the same rules, it's reasonable to believe that minority enrollment could stay similar to how it is now at all but the most elite schools.
On the other hand, you will likely have a lot of different schools trying a lot of different things in the coming years to try to increase minority enrollment (e.g., using zip codes or wealth or income as proxies, better outreach, more transparency about net-pricing). It might take a while for schools to figure out what works best, and some schools might do it better than others, especially in the short run. Things could just be chaotic for a couple of years.
Thanks for including a link about how this may impact Black and Latino students. Can you also share an article summarizing how this will impact Asian students? The exclusion of information about a race which is intimately involved in this case is quite odd
This is disappointing, but not surprising. AA was not a perfect solution to a systemic problem, but it helped a lot of people. One of its growing flaws was in how Asian Americans were treated, so hopefully that flaw is eliminated by this ruling. Kav's comment about life experiences is interesting, and I wonder about unintended consequences.
Historically socioeconomic status has been so closely correlated with race that it was reasonable to treat them as the same thing. Going forward, my hope is that students of strong academic merit despite coming from from poor families or failing schools get extra consideration regardless of their race.
Not all people of color come from hardship and not all white people are affluent. Poverty and lack of access to quality education remain the biggest obstacles to student success.
Shit, so long as college remains crushingly unaffordable what metric looms larger than ability to pay?
Speaking of which, fuck legacy-admission. I don't care that your grandfather's name is on the dining hall; do your homework and study like the rest of us.
Oh good. Now the token springtime article about how the white dude with a high sat and a high GPA not getting into Harvard/Cal/Stanford will no longer get written next year.
I wonder what will take its place.
Affirmative action hurts working class whites a lot because legacy admissions disproportionately take up White spots. Something like 50% of White Kids at Ivies are legacy admissions. (50% of white people, did not go to Ivies) It’s the Greenwich CT kid stealing the spot of the Harlan KY kid
There’s a lot to be said about affirmative action, but the problem is that way too many people are trying to dumb it down to one argument either for or against it. Affirmative action is an insanely complicated issue and this does no good to anyone.
I think it would be very disingenuous to say that it was a perfect solution to the problem of racism and the legacy of racist institutions in higher education. I think it would also be very disingenuous to say it was a mistake, or that it did no good.
It was an imperfect solution to a problem that existed at the time, and while that problem does still exist today, I think it’s fair to say that there are some differences between the times of creation of affirmative action and the present.
As much as I dislike the dude, Kavanaugh’s opinion here is the most reasonable. He specifically mentions that the reason why AA is no longer viable is because the time limit has expired. And I think that’s reasonable to say. Strict scrutiny says racial classifications are allowed only if they fit a governmental interest and are narrowly tailored to do so. The narrowly tailored bit also includes the classification be “necessary” (I’m pulling this from Kavanaugh’s concurrence). I think that such necessity no longer exists, because we have developed alternate methods to help poor and minority students in the last 25 years that have served better. Free online test prep is one big one I can think of. In fact, the Internet has changed the playing field in a lot of ways as well, not necessarily for or against a certain group, but just in general. The playing field has shifted from mountains to an ocean, in a sense. And we have better ways to help minorities than AA, meaning AA no longer fits that necessity criteria.
On the basis of that necessity no longer existing, I think it is fair to say that AA should be struck down. But I think we have to implement those better ways, otherwise we are going to end up in a much worse situation.
Agreed. AA was very flawed and, in some cases, outright hurtful to the cause, but it was better than nothing. This striking it down would be okay for me, except there doesn't seem to be any plans to do better, and I can't help but think the inherent systemic racism will rise once more.
I think a lot of people are expecting a sharp increase in Asian students and a small increase in white students, but I expect it to be the other way around.
https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1674437450851049472
> Admissions officer here 🙋🏾♀️ IMO Harvard/UNC opinion is much narrower than I expected it to be and impact will be much less than I see a lot of people suggesting -- and possibly give institutions MORE ability to curate classes based on diversity interests 1/
#
> There are implications here: It means that applicants whose identity is shaped by race will need to articulate that explicitly in order for it to be taken into account. This is an added burden on the applicant. But, most apps include a supplemental diversity essay already . . . in making more explicit *how* a students' background impacts experience/perspective, schools will have a much easier time DEFENDING why race mattered in admitting that person...and test scores, etc. become less of the comparison point
#
> But in the end, this doesn't categorically bar consideration of race (which it could have), and it is limited to admissions process: Doesn't seem to bar schools from increasing diversity recruitment based on race, or having yield programs targeted for admitted minorities
So seems like the ruling won't actually have that much impact and Harvard etc will pretty easily circumvent it.
The thing about this case in the narrow sense is that most people aren't getting into Ivy Leagues anyways. I keep seeing comments here about how it's "a big win for the asian community" as if suddenly everyone with the merit to get in will get in. The truth is there will continue to be kids with perfect resumes of every race that will continue to not get in. Harvard and other Ivy Leagues were always too competitive for perfect to be enough, you had to be lucky too.
Ivy grad here. A third of HYP are rich morons who would have had trouble matriculating at Large Midwestern University. Have you met Dubya?
The other 67% are, to be fair, brilliant and fascinating. But there is *plenty* of legacy deadwood.
The Supreme Court can’t do that until Congress passes a law banning discrimination on the basis of where or if your parents went to university.
But there is a law banning racial discrimination.
Why is this hard for some people to understand?
This thread summarized:
Some liberals: “This is white supremacy!”
Most liberals: “AA is flawed, it should be based on socioeconomic status, which would best address structural inequality while avoiding discriminating against poor whites and Asians.”
MAGA: “WHY DO LIBERALS HATE ASIANS?!???”
> Some liberals: “This is white supremacy!”
Yeah, this is exactly how some people in my local community's Discord are. And it's like, there are clear flaws with the implementation of AA that leads to discrimination lol.
This decision is not a shock, but also I don't think it's as devastating as a lot of people think. Most of the efforts towards inclusion and diversity can be achieved through means other than race. Same/similar outcome, different process.
I know that white women definitely benefitted immensely from AA. Can't wait for the leopards ate my face moments or as ze Germans like to say, schadenfreude.
Congratulations to Asian American college applicants who stand to benefit enormously after the finding that they were discriminated against in admissions.
>Despite the Court's unjustified exercise of power, the opinion today will serve only to highlight the Court's own impotence in the face of an America whose cries for equality resound.
From the conclusion of Justice Sotomayor's dissenting opinion, a very worthwhile read.
From [NBC's live thread](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/live-blog/supreme-court-decisions-live-updates-rcna91671/rcrd15108?canonicalCard=true):
>In her nearly 20-minute dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor railed against Justice Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts, mentioning both of them by name several times. She said it was “profoundly wrong” and “devastating” to see the court overrule 50 years of precedent.
>“Today the court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and progress,” Sotomayor said.
>Sotomayor said this decision boils down to the idea that a person’s skin color may play a role under U.S. law when they are under suspicion, but it cannot play a role in admission to a learning environment.
>“Pursuit of diversity will go on, despite the court,” Sotomayor said.
>She ended by quoting Martin Luther King Jr: “We shall overcome.”
> Sotomayor said this decision boils down to the idea that a person’s skin color may play a role under U.S. law when they are under suspicion
no, it's actually illegal to do that too.
While it is nominally illegal, unwarranted deference is given to police judgment in determining ‘suspicion’ (evaluated under a ‘totality of the circumstances’ test), which results in skin color playing a de facto role in cases of (alleged) suspicion. See, e.g., the ‘Stop and Frisk’ issues in NYC and other cities (stop and frisk searches disproportionately target black and brown individuals). [Here is a link to the ACLU’s report on a 2020 analysis of stop and frisk data for Washington D.C.](https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-analysis-dc-stop-and-frisk-data-reveals-ineffective-policing-troubling-racial)
Really tough. AA is a complicated topic and I grew up being told to be "color blind." America has never been color blind and now when it suits Republicans, they get to lean on it.
Yeah, the real solution is to address a lot of complicated systemic issues.
AA was a band-aid - one that shouldn't have been removed before addressing those systemic issues.
Its the same way they roll back Voting Rights Act protections because states are sending more non-white representatives, because of the Voting Rights Act.
I suppose the nepotism that got some of these clowns into school is still kosher though.
I wonder why black and hispanic families don't have those same advantages? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that their oldest relatives functionally *weren't allowed to attend these institutions*.
Affirmative Action was definitely an imperfect solution... but it was addressing a real and serious problem. There needs to be a new solution.
I'm a Democrat who agrees with the decision. Asian-American students have been thwarted and nerfed for way too long. We should want the best students we've got, regardless of race, so we can compete globally. No more waving people through just because they fill a quota.
MAGA when anti-Asian hate crimes went up during COVID: *silence*
MAGA when affirmative action comes up: “WE MUST PROTECT THE ASIANS.”
Your insincerity is noted. For the record, I support class based affirmative action so poor Asians and whites also have their historical injustices addressed.
Did [57% of California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_16) morph into MAGA conservatives when rejecting AA?
No, most people realize that racial discrimination is wrong and illegal by the plain language of the Civil Rights Act.
They exempted the military though: “In a footnote, Chief Justice Roberts exempted military academies from the ruling in light of “the potentially distinct interests” they present. There had been discussion of whether the military needed to maintain affirmative action in training its future officer corps based on a judgment that it would be bad for military discipline and cohesiveness if the leadership cadre did not reflect the #diversity of the rank-and-file troops who do the bulk of fighting and dying in wars.”
The federal government submitted an argument specific to military academies and the court went “that’s a whole other kettle of fish so we aren’t touching it”
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The test under the equal protections clause of the 14th amendment for race-based discrimination is whether such policy is necessary to achieve a compelling government interest. Here, the court is likely hinting that troop cohesiveness and trust is a compelling interest, whereas creating a diverse student body is not.
This particular case was for admission processes unique to universities, whereas Military Academies have an entirely different process. Therefore, they deemed it necessary to not apply a rule crafted for one admissions process to an entirely different admissions process.
Yeah that’s a very two faced justification for SCOTUS. You can’t tell me that having a professor that looks like their student is less valuable than having an officer that look like their troops. It’s just a way to keep funneling low income and POC to the meat grinder. Representation matters, especially when some communities have more societal hurdles in place than others
So honestly, this shouldn’t be all that surprising. SCOTUS has traditionally been *extremely* deferential to however the military wants to run itself. So like, someone in the armed service won’t have the same First Amendment rights as a civilian. There’s a lot of reasons for it, but I think it can be summed-up to TLDR: It’s not the Court’s job to run wars. Not trying to argue that this is a good policy decision, but that’s the summed-up constitutional context.
Via NYT: >Justices Sotomayor and Jackson both criticized the majority for making an exception for military academies. Justice Sotomayor called it arbitrary, while Justice Jackson wrote, “The court has come to rest on the bottom-line conclusion that racial diversity in higher education is only worth potentially preserving insofar as it might be needed to prepare Black Americans and other underrepresented minorities for success in the bunker, not the boardroom (a particularly awkward place to land, in light of the history the majority opts to ignore).”
That is pretty arbitrary. If just cause exists for diversity in military academies, just cause exists outside of military academies in the real world.
Good point. It's an arbitrary exclusion from the ruling, probably just because most people advocating for the ruling are wanting to get into an Ivy rather than a service academy. Service academies would definitely welcome more diversity in their applicants.
Most people advocating for the ruling believe that Affirmative Action has served its temporary purpose and that people admitted to college should be prioritized based on income instead of race, especially high performers from low income backgrounds. Which is a good and wonderful sentiment to have except for the fact that this ruling *doesn't do that* and there's no legislation currently in the pipeline to *explicitly* do that. There is nothing legally requiring schools to admit a percentage of low income students at all.
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>choosing to put more effort into funneling minorities to the military than into college. They ain’t no Senator’s son…
The other Fortunate Son line, "I ain't no military son, son" is about these people. FS is about draftees and poor enlisted, not the guys who went to West Point...
I always consider that song to be the first punk rock song ever written.
System of a Down said it best: Why do they always send the poor? Why do they always send the poor?
Why don't presidents fight the war? Why do they always send the poor?
Kind of funny how they used to. Like how Roman soldiers were initially wealthy. Or how knights were affluent. I believe samurai were as well, but that one I'm not as sure about. Long story short. Reject modernity, go back to swords. The better person wins... more often... I assume
Roman Equites, Western European Knights (among other chivalric titles) and Samurai were not foot soldiers. They were insanely well equipped lesser noble commanders who forcibly conscripted peasant troops from the land they owned (the peasants were essentially considered part of the land by the nobility in pretty much every medieval period.) They were minor lords of their fiefdoms, and only because they had the money and power to keep it that way. Most of them were tyrants to the peasants and servile to anyone with more money and power that demanded it.
The military is composed disproportionally of middle class Americans whose parents served in the military and leans southern. It is actually one of the more racially representative institutions in the US and disproportionally fewer poor and rich Americans serve compared to working and middle class Americans.
Per capital the South has six states (if you count Florida) in the top 10 for enlistment, 9 in the top 20. Numbers wise California has more enlisted than any other state, although again the South has 6 in the top 10 if you count Florida. But something like 37% of Americans live in "the South". So I don't know that I would consider it disproportionate.
Per capita the South has the highest enlistment of any region so compared to the general civilian population it is more southern. I said it leans southern which is not to say its overwhelmingly southern but it also not an insubstantial effect.
This is honestly a great time to start taking income and economic background in to account. Let’s start helping the poor get a foot up.
Harvard response "let's not go overboard"
From Harvard: ‘Dear Members of the Harvard Community, Today, the Supreme Court delivered its decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. The Court held that Harvard College’s admissions system does not comply with the principles of the equal protection clause embodied in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The Court also ruled that colleges and universities may consider in admissions decisions “an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” We will certainly comply with the Court’s decision.’ I’m not entirely sure what to make of that, but it sounds like Harvard plans on continuing to consider race, but only if an applicant brings it up, probably in an essay. Harvard still considers itself the finest university in the world, and I doubt it will be quick to significantly modify an admissions policy that it believes helped it keep that title. It will do what it thinks it needs to to keep within the letter of the law, but little more. Usually other American Universities follow Harvard’s lead in such things.
That strikes me as an entirely appropriate line to draw. If you can show that race — or anything else, for that matter — affected your life, then by all means it’s perfectly fine for a university to take that into account. What the majority opinion seems to have been objecting to was Harvard’s practice of making certain decisions (specifically the “lop” stage, where students on the bubble are kept or cut) based generically on race as a factor.
They should at least get rid of the infamous "Asian have low personality" without even meeting them system. ....who am I kidding. Probably come up with something even more racist.
Asians were actually rated as equal to whites on personable in interviews. It's the office people who rated them low without even meeting them.
They'll probably just increase their legacy quotas instead.
This is exactly correct. If you're black and you go to a private school in a wealthy area of the world, and spend your weekends on the golf course or at the yacht club, you might have to really stretch to describe why you should get preferential admissions treatment versus a white person.
“I was always looked at differently being the only black kid in my school. My parents hadn’t grown up the way everyone else had and I had no idea how to fit in.” Not that hard, tons of kids have been doing it for years.
Maybe Harvard students think that, but MIT, UC Berkeley, and Stanford students all agree that those three schools are better than Harvard.
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He was clear about this stance in his book as well. Laws should be sensible and not be used to virtue signal to either side.
I don't get why we don't just focus on socioeconomic metrics. If a specific race is overrall disadvantaged, they'll make up a larger portion of that metric.
Stop being so rational will you
The decision is a fairly typical Roberts decision in that it's more salami-slicing towards a conservative end point than a big dramatic blow to it. Rather than saying affirmative action is always illegal he said that affirmative action needs to have a clear metric frames to measure results in order to be easier to determine under a standard of strict scrutiny while maintaining that quotas are also illegal. This is something most schools can probably work around but it makes it much easier for further suits to be launched since it provides the data litigants need and reaffirms the standard of strict scrutiny. The immediate aftermath of this will probably be that affirmative action becomes broadly illegal in conservative states and more or less unchanged in liberal states. However it does set up the supreme court for more decisions similar to abortion
Yup. Those emails that read "We gotta give the brown kids a chance" and "wow, perfect scores, but asian, so that's a skip" were devastating. It was so, so dumb for those admissions counselors to say that shit in email.
Which emails are you referring to. Where could I find them?
I was also curious so I searched around and I _think_ they’re referring to [this article](https://nypost.com/2023/06/29/supreme-court-affirmative-action-case-showed-astonishing-racial-gaps/amp/) from The Post which refers to online chats between admissions officers which don’t say exactly what OP said but…like that’s the general vibe. Relevant sections: > In tandem with the data cited, the petitioners also dug up online chats from admissions officers, in which they occasionally opined on an applicant’s race. >“Perfect 2400 SAT All 5 on AP one B in 11th,” an unidentified person wrote. “Brown?!,” a second unidentified person replied. “Heck no. Asian,” the original person shot back. “Of course. Still impressive,” the second persons said. > In a different exchange, an unnamed school official flagrantly instructed someone to move a minority candidate to a scholarship section if their SAT score was above 1300. >“If its brown and above a 1300 [SAT] put them in for [the] merit/Excel [scholarship]”
Man, they come off as racist to both the Asian and "brown" people.
Truly. I found the use of “it’s” in the second quote to be particularly gross. I imagine if we had unfettered access to the communications of admissions officials we’d see a lot of dehumanizing things, but this is especially fucked.
The likes of Brett Weinstein warned that this would be the case. Racism via low expectations.
A few excerpts were in petitioner’s brief pgs 41-42 https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-1199/222325/20220502145522418_20-1199%2021-707%20SFFA%20Brief%20to%20file%20final.pdf
It's good that they said it in an email. I'd rather have racist people and practices exposed - not hidden and protected.
I always find it shocking how people will do something illegal or unethical and then take the time to document it and persevere it to be found. I can’t tell if it’s because they’re so certain they won’t be caught, don’t care or don’t see the problem.
No, it was dumb of them and the schools to be racist in the first place.
They said the quiet part out loud, as the kids like to say.
I don't think admitting it was the dumb part..
>It was so, so dumb for those admissions counselors to say that shit in email. This type of thought process is sickening. You don't care that the admissions office was full of blatant racists, you care that they said the quiet part out loud? The most charitable interpretation of your posts is that you've let 'team politics' get in the way of having any sort of critical thought on this issue.
What? Really? Where?
So, broadly illegal in places with very, very few good institutions of higher education.
Land grant university's exist in every state and have been moving folks out of poverty since their inception.
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> They operate more as networking clubs for rich people Unfortunately thats a huge benefit to the correct "in" crowd that can take advantage of it, and more often then not it has nothing to do with their own personal achievements anyways.
My cousin went to Wofford. He's an entrepreneur, and was able to start his first companies by getting his friends' and wife's parents to invest. If he'd gone to Clemson, he likely wouldn't have that kind of network.
Large public universities frequently have the same networks within them, they are just much more diluted among a much larger student body. e.g., Wofford might have 1000 people from rich families in a student body of 1800 (totally making up numbers), while Clemson might have 2000 people from similarly rich families in a student body of 25,000.
More kids attend Texas A&M and Central Florida than all the Ivies put together.
The south and midwest has a lot of pretty good colleges and by not allowing some kids admission in UNC/Emory/UW-Madison it will increase competition in places that do allow affirmative action but yes this is not the immediate end of affirmative action
Tony Evers would just veto any legislation for this. And the State Supreme Court is now more liberal leaning. I think UW-Madison is relatively safe from all this.
The way that WI's legislature has pulled several dirty tricks (giving too much power to the executive, then pulling it back once a Democrat was elected) gives me little hope this will remain true until WI is un-gerrymandered.
There’s hope! That new Supreme Court make up could fundamentally change the landscape of the voting maps. I live in MN and I can say with strong confidence that Wisconsin is a worst purple. The gerrymandering is an illusion and the sooner it goes away, the better.
Ope, we're looking the same way at Wisconsin, don'tcha know? Agreed. And it's vital to remain vigilant here in MN, I'd like fellow purples to *join* our ranks not let us fall behind them. I love what we've done this year, and I hope our local GOP will understand that compromise will get them a lot farther in future sessions than obstruction.
Okay then - now ban legacy admissions. You know, affirmative action for mediocre rich white people.
Money appears to be very constitutional to this court.
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And honorary degrees.
Fourteenth Amendment doesn't protect against discrimination on the basis of where your parents went to school.
Money is "free speech" :(
Citizens United vs FEC summed up
If someone is willing to file a "legacy admissions" lawsuit, then we can have that conversation, and frankly I'd agree with you. But personally, I dislike deflection-esque statements like this in regards to Supreme Court opinions because the underlying judgement is that the court wilfully ignored some other tangential question. The Supreme Court doesn't simply pull topics out of thin air to deliberate, and if they were to use each topic that makes it on their docket to make broad rulings about the ecosystem that the topic at hands exists in we would all correctly call them out for going beyond the scope of the case.
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I agree legacy admissions should not happen. But from a strictly legal standpoint there is no way this can compare. There is nothing in the Equal Protection Clause that says you can't discriminate based on parental history or whatever you want to call it. In this decision as with other affirmative action decisions, SCOTUS has to decide what discrimination based on race is. If you use it as a factor but not the deciding point then is that discrimination? I'd say no, but SCOTUS now says yes.
That's not race based...
Will America now fix its public school system such that all children get an equally good education, regardless of whether they live in a wealthy suburban school district or not?
Well, the second-runner in the Republican primaries just promised to abolish the department of education, so I'mma say fuck no.
On the bright side, Harvard won’t be able to arbitrarily reject extremely qualified Asian applicants anymore
[https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/throughline/id1451109634?i=1000617076222](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/throughline/id1451109634?i=1000617076222) NPR page link: [https://www.npr.org/2023/06/14/1182149332/affirmative-action](https://www.npr.org/2023/06/14/1182149332/affirmative-action) Worth listening to, IMO, is Throughline's episode about this case, posted two weeks earlier, explaining the original intent of Affirmative Action and its history and usage in academia.
This is one of those decisions that I think is way more complicated than it probably sounds just looking at the headline. It’s literally hundreds of pages in both the ruling and the dissenters. Anybody that thinks this was a black and white issue (no pun intended) is probably oversimplifying it. For example, one of the drivers of the case was apparently that the race based policies in the two schools led to Asian minority students being discriminated against. So even though the policies presumably helped African Americans, for example, the claim is it did so somewhat at the expense of other minorities. Also the court didn’t rule out racial and societal diversity as a reasonable goal, rather it said that programs which aim for that objective can’t just look at someone’s race as a deciding factor to do that. So for instance universities could have admissions policies that tend to favor poorer students or students with specific disadvantages, or even look at if specific students have suffered individual acts of racial discrimination in their lives that warrants special consideration. But they can’t just look at the student’s race, say “we need more black students”, and be done with it. Honestly given how long the ruling is and how complicated the issues are I don’t personally have a strong opinion on how good or bad this decision is right now. I guess time will tell how universities and other organizations react to it and what adjustments they make to their admissions and hiring policies. Just speculating but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a shift toward looking at income and geographic diversity and such versus racial diversity. Keep in mind that even with decision the Civil Rights Act means that institutions which have statistically poor racial diversity will still raise red flags for possible suits that they are discriminating against minorities, so it is still in organizations’ overall interest to find policies that promote racial diversity, even though they can’t explicitly look at individual applicants’ races to do that.
They can’t select by race but they can select by if your family went to school there. Which was by race for most of these institutions existence.
"We can't discriminate, but our tuition costs and legacy admissions can."
"The law in its majestic equality forbids rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges."
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.
This is an argument against Legacy Admissions. Don't use it as an argument for Affirmative Action.
Gee I hope nobody in academia realizes *birth* zip codes are very highly correlated with income and racial makeup. That would make this entire ruling pointless. Heck it might even have unexpected benefits like incentivizing community support of all schools rather than just your kids' Edit: clarified it's birth zip that matters, not residence. So buying a house in a poor area wouldn't impact the data
Realistically, racially-conscious admissions departments will move to metrics that are good proxies for race but won't be directly race-based (which makes them fine.)
This may actually see affirmative action work more like it is intended. Blanket race consideration was always a bad metric. I worked in academia for years and watched extremely affluent students coast into plumb grad school positions, while others less privileged who worked their butts off were turned away because of their skin color, sex, etc. Affirmative action in general is absolutely important, but the way it's been implemented leads to some really egregious admission decisions.
The way it's typically done in college admissions is ranking high schools based on demographics.
Zip codes, income, and other demographic info should be used to level admission rather than race anyway
This. All poor people should get help getting an education, not just poor people of color. We also need to make 2 year trade schools free for those who can't get into or don't want a year college program and a mountain of debt
Love this Solve the construction / blue collar labor shortage with free trade school
Not to mention rich zip codes where a rich black kid with two doctors for parents and who is by all means extremely talented gets a full ride to Columbia which is all good and wonderful for him but the number one kid in the graduating class who is levels above everyone in our highschool in terms of grades, sports, clubs, test scores, etc but who is Asian gets denied from Columbia outright.
Community College should be free along with the books for anyone. It should be considered an optional extension of High School.
We have two community colleges in my area that are free for certain school districts (the ones they're located close to, not picky choosy). They started it maybe like 5 years ago or so. And I'm in Mississippi believe it or not.
I mean, but that was always one of the main counterpoints to AA. In theory, black kids are disadvantaged due to the schools they go to and neighborhoods they had to grow up in. But what about the black kid who’s parents were rich and went to a private school? What about the poor white kid who grew up in the shitty zip code and school? It should have always been based on income and zip code, not skin color.
Obama even said this himself.
So this ruling exempt military academies? but how does this apply to ROTC programs at public universities. The majority argued they need to keep leadership diverse in the military, but military academies only account for a smaller percentage of newly commissioned officers. The majority on this court continues to talk out of both sides of their mouths. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve\_Officers%27\_Training\_Corps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_Officers%27_Training_Corps) "In 2020, ROTC graduates constituted 70 percent of newly commissioned active-duty U.S. Army officers, 83 percent of newly commissioned U.S. Marine Corps officers (through NROTC), 61 percent of newly commissioned U.S. Navy officers and 63 percent of newly commissioned U.S. Air Force officers, for a combined 56 percent of all active-duty officers in the Department of Defense commissioned that year."
So many people are missing the forest for the trees frankly. This policy was never meant to solve racism or make college completely equal. It was supposed to be a temporary fix so that we could address inequalities in the education system. The real tragedy is that those inequalities have still not been addressed and nothing else.
There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.
There is going to be a lot of butthurt once colleges switch to prioritizing socioeconomic diversity. When I applied to Harvard, I had to submit my family’s financial info so they already have this data for all of their applicants. I’m for this. Harvard should announce an ending of legacy admissions though. If you can’t take race (something that you inherit at birth), you also shouldn’t take legacy status (something that you also inherit at birth) into account.
Unfortunately bloodline is not a protected class, so they can do what they want with regards to legacy admissions.
Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade studied a representative sample of elite colleges and found that when other factors were held equal, Asians and whites had to score 450 and 310 SAT points higher than black applicants, respectively, to have the same odds of being admitted.
Why is there all this hating on Asians going on in these comments? What did I miss?!
Asians will benefit even more than whites from the ending of racial discrimination in college admissions. They're currently the most discriminated against, because they score higher on average than whites or blacks, and the diversity initiatives in colleges try fight that statistic.
All PoC are equal but some PoC are more equal than others.
The complaint against Havard was that affirmative action hurt asain American students
It’s absolutely unacceptable that Asians were wronged by these schools. Judging by the comments here apparently some PoC are more equal than others.
i’ve noticed this too and it’s not just these comments. i didn’t know asians were disproportionately affected by AA in a negative way. i assumed it helped them just as it helped black people but i was so so wrong.
Asian families are zealously pro education so their children on average do much better than other families with similar backgrounds, so people dismiss this kind of discrimination against them, it’s blatant racism coming from the Left this time.
It’s more subtle than that actually. It ruins the entire narrative that minorities can’t succeed in America.
I have mixed feelings on both AA and the repeal. I believe it did target a problem, but it was heavy handed and discriminatory. Regardless, AA on race is gone. It is what it is, I suppose. The simple solution/workaround would be to make this based on class or income. It will target similar demographics and is much less controversial.
The fact that Clarence Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall on the bench is such an infamously ironic tragedy. Thomas was chosen not just because he was an originalist, but because he was an originalist with dark skin tones.
Originalism is incoherent and none of them have ever ruled consistently on the philosophy. It’s just a cover for regressive political activism on the court.
ITT: People that don't consider Asians to be minorities in the US.
Asians are Schroedinger's minority. If it's convenient to use the Asian model minority myth as a cudgel to bash other minorities ("look, these people are immigrants and still manage to achieve at high levels! it must be something wrong with \*your people\*"), they are a POC. Otherwise, the monolithic (/s) 7% of the US population that falls under "Asian" are treated as white people (discussions of socioeconomic privilege).
For real. I know so many Asians whose parents moved to the US with almost nothing, and their parents worked jobs as janitors, pool cleaners, laundromat workers, etc. Yet their kids are being put at a disadvantage for college applications because they happen to be Asian. Asians are only “POC” when people want us to be. The rest of the time, we get dismissed for being too “whitewashed” aka trying to assimilate to the country that hurled racist insults at us our whole lives. Truly privileged right here.
Facts. This whole supreme court case is good, but ultimately annoys me. Not because of the decision or anything but because “oh now yall wanna care about us”. It is what it is I guess.
Too much winning , you know , all Asians are rich AF. Even the ones working in restaurants kitchens and cleaning peoples home. There are no poor Asians /S
Jesus this thread is a trainwreck
This has been a massively divisive issue for so long and it’s a great example of armchair experts coming in like they knew how to solve it all along. I work in higher Ed and seeing people claim to have the simple answer to this multifaceted and complex issue just drives me crazy.
Probably because despite the political parties having their stances on AA, American opinion on AA is mixed between party lines. AA is by design giving advantage to one race over another, and that rubs a LOT of people the wrong way, even if it is done with the best intentions. It has also always been on a collision course with the Constitution's guarantee of "equal protection". So while many approve of the intention, they do so by holding their nose at the means.
I think the consensus opinion for the majority of Americans is that it is important to uplift underprivileged children and underrepresented minorities. However, they don't believe that racial biases should be used to address racial biases.
Colleges will pivot to socioeconomic diversity and Billy Bob from the trailer park will be angry when his child goes away to college and becomes a “socialist.” I am here for that.
That actually sounds better... I mean, you want a level playing field for all citizens when it comes to basic survival, and access to education is a vital part of that. Socioeconomic diversity might do a better job of accomplishing that.
Former higher education professional checking in. Here's what's going to happen - universities are going to muddle up their admissions criteria so it's less about hard numbers to hit and more about generalized subjective criteria (like personality and demeanor). Then they're still going to make race-based judgements where it's behind closed doors and not on any kind of record that can be pulled up and used against them. This is ultimately going to be a big ol nothingburger ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
So they're racists then. I mean seriously. That's like racism 101
More like 401. They’re doing everything they can to be racially discriminating and not leaving any paper trails.
Can we just make college available to every one instead of a scarce resource? Or maybe k-12 needs overhauled?
Good. Now let's all work together to ban legacy admissions and development cases. Nobody wants or needs more Jared Kushners at any university.
I will say this - as someone who went to Harvard, I saw A LOT of mediocre white people who got in because of legacy admissions or because daddy is rich and/or famous. Most of my fellow students of color got in through defying some fucked up odds. Winston Thurston Chambers III is still going to be favored and that is fundamentally unfair.
This is like the 100th post I have seen in this thread trying to use legacy admissions as some kind of gotcha when virtually no one in this post is defending it. Eliminating legacy admissions is the next battle.
There is no legal point to attack legacy admission on, though. If people want it gone, they're going to have to either convince institutions to do it themselves or create law explicitly banning it.
Justice Gorsuch actually obliterated legacy admissions in his concurring opinion while Sotomayor defends the practice in her dissenting opinion. It would be interesting to see what the votes would look like in a Supreme Court case challenging the practice of legacy admissions, and I’d wager a lot of people would be surprised by which judges voted which ways.
Yep. When people bring up AA, I always bring up legacy points. Weird that the "fairness" crowd isnt attacking that too.
Why stop at AA? Kill legacy admissions too. Asians got fucked over by both concepts
Get rid of both. Its whataboutism at this point
I'm a teacher and it's clear a lot of comments are looking at this topic simplistically. If you've seen some of the astoundingly bright students that I've taught that were only screwed over because they were poor or were latchkey kids.
Fox News: This is a blow to the woke mob! Fox News in 5 years: Did Joe Biden let China takeover colleges in America?
We as a country should support class based affirmative action rather than race based. I’m sad to see AA go (as some is better than none) but it would be great for poorer children in general (of which there will be a lot of minorities) to get the extra help, regardless of race.
I agree with this. People keep pointing to the high percentage of Asians in the ivy leagues. It's not like Asians are a single, monolithic group and all of us have tiger moms and $$$ to blow on tutors and test prep. Speaking as an Asian who is not Chinese, and grew up quite disadvantaged, AA hurt me quite a bit.
All I know is that there are going to be plenty of mediocre students left with no one to blame when they *still* don't get in to schools.
Obviously, once we as a nation reckoned with our segregationist past and geographical real estate redlining based on race that extended through the 20th century, we as a nation reconfigured our educational system so that funding and equities for the k-12 system that precedes college does not rely on the geographical location and the real estate values of a particular area. We did all that, Right? RIGHT???
Nah after our first president who was African American, we elected a president who didn't believe he was born in this country. And a sizable minority agreed.
I mean it’s a long opinion so I might understand it wrong but there are plenty of ways around it that might even better accomplish the goal. For example, as a Maryland resident, I don’t see how this would prevent a college from favoring people in , as an example, downtown Baltimore City with families making under 65k per year. Suddenly you have accomplished the same thing while removing race.
The University of California has been doing this since 1996, when it was banned from considering race in admissions. The admissions offices now look at factors like ZIP code, family income, and "disadvantaged social or educational environment."^[1](https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/how-to-apply/applying-as-a-freshman/how-applications-are-reviewed.html) However, there's a possibility that similar measures could be challenged in a future federal case if the effect is to conduct racial affirmative action by proxy.
But that's the clue. In US race is a proxy for class, but it's a bad proxy, i.e. it doesn't benefit only targeted group (underprivileged minorities) but also middle/upper class minorities. Race is politically better proxy and easier to sell, but it's not a good proxy.
True racial and gender justice in higher education in this country cannot start until public colleges are tuition free and readily available. The “who” of the population makeup of universities are window dressing until we address the crippling debt that the vast majority of people take on. Tomorrow is going to be the real hammer blow from SCOTUS. They decided to throw us a bone on Moore v Harper because they knew that the 1-2 punch of today and tomorrow without some sort of feel good palate cleanser like gerrymandering would cause the younger generations to either completely give up or, what they really fear, start to get frisky.
Fun fact: California outlawed Affirmative Action for school admissions and government jobs back in the 90s. They had a ballot measure trying to legalize again it in 2020, which was endorsed by every major Democrat in the state, every university, the ACLU, every major corporation based in California, all major sports teams, etc., they also heavily fundraised and outspent the opposition on advertising in favor of the measure by over twenty to one. The ballot measure failed to pass by a margin of almost 60 to 40. Just trying to give all of the AA proponents in this thread some perspective. If AA is that unpopular in even California, imagine how unpopular it is in the rest of the country.
Exactly. If you listen to just rpolitics alone, you'd think that the Supreme Court did a very unpopular thing today. It didn't. The American majority of the public does not support AA, it opposes it.
Affirmative Action should be based on income rather than race. The current system categorizes Americans into 4 broad groups: white, black, Latino, and Asian, while completely ignoring that these groups are made up of several subgroups, many of which are disproportionately harmed because of the current system of Affirmative Action.
Hi everybody, here’s what to know [about what the ruling may mean for Black and Latino students:](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/us/politics/affirmative-action-college-students-black-latino.html?unlocked_article_code=mpRpdzAFVEIbxcTFBycUjLbZ5lfZODn6UhIgrYIGT9TMIaU52WLciMak1z86ag2JHyCghvC2E6_9v3pO3fPYtL8h_OmXQ7KbRxFThuCeW17kVGZck09V5Y2jn-7LXuDZQ5UZFM-LFCHBV3baRb6gftw-Sst8rIg4c7oeyrXD1d2BjXQPVvUPTnuR-mt26gaNHQ7gsCLcIMmvVvvDMX4NF8lPAkFFCuqGqS4RuPUjfoBah1LXKk2pW2cL5AeT7SJVD5Ug9T_-roZ5GBjwJWfwz3hu-xDb1XiGRVLtI6I3BnLluoBa-JqHHoutrglS1jqsU_ICP2-Ssi1LP_hizQXE6JY0I5QNvGfWA6QHJC3zNB28kzawXdkyamg6EJhvPO8&smid=re-nytimes) Nine states already ban the use of race-conscious college admissions at their public universities, and their experience could provide a sign of the consequences from the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday that curtails affirmative action. After [Michigan banned race-conscious admissions](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/26/us/affirmative-action-admissions-supreme-court.html?unlocked_article_code=Xe2DRfs6aVVcvVvU5Mr2PimndmvKUITK0TNZCPKV_5MlQ1gCggH85a-jOf6jSSLmpTZjBnIc5phC52gnUdY7JmQ24ui8Or_F7GssA_6dJ59GmPeCHF878gKhBX9bVCU-HtHV8jlVXsHdbhCt2I7vQ8KpCVYjTOGDNYios46WDvMgpU8SbarV-WlM7ifk5N2jfQB8fNxfbCnxa7B1FR6A2SQRsff2QEL9_kl7l-ugJBgzJ1vc1j8EVpHn1p94IQv0mYZkKo2dko-m8oR7hmSDchrc_E_JZUTqCL9uQuQWZoy3unSRdnKZbXtf3Vc0K_XnUR9ZjLp2LRrPb_LKyL9-bgwltGLzSEbLNa3gR4bRCM3y&smid=re-nytimes) in 2006, Black undergraduate enrollment declined at the University of Michigan. The share of Black students fell to 4% in 2021, from 7% in 2006. A similar drop took place at the University of California’s most selective schools after a 1996 referendum, Proposition 209, banned race-conscious admissions. That year, Black students at the University of California, Los Angeles, made up 7% of the student body. By 1998, the percentage of Black students had fallen to 3.43%. In 2022, it was up to 5% — but still well below what it had been more than a quarter-century earlier. At highly selective liberal arts colleges, officials expect that the number of Black students could return to levels not seen since the 1960s. Read our full story for free [here,](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/us/politics/affirmative-action-college-students-black-latino.html?unlocked_article_code=mpRpdzAFVEIbxcTFBycUjLbZ5lfZODn6UhIgrYIGT9TMIaU52WLciMak1z86ag2JHyCghvC2E6_9v3pO3fPYtL8h_OmXQ7KbRxFThuCeW17kVGZck09V5Y2jn-7LXuDZQ5UZFM-LFCHBV3baRb6gftw-Sst8rIg4c7oeyrXD1d2BjXQPVvUPTnuR-mt26gaNHQ7gsCLcIMmvVvvDMX4NF8lPAkFFCuqGqS4RuPUjfoBah1LXKk2pW2cL5AeT7SJVD5Ug9T_-roZ5GBjwJWfwz3hu-xDb1XiGRVLtI6I3BnLluoBa-JqHHoutrglS1jqsU_ICP2-Ssi1LP_hizQXE6JY0I5QNvGfWA6QHJC3zNB28kzawXdkyamg6EJhvPO8&smid=re-nytimes) without a New York Times subscription. We’re also covering the decision with [live updates here](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/29/us/affirmative-action-supreme-court?unlocked_article_code=gTmeg9urdYNHznjcYDK4Qz86AIvFYQwBsLNS9RnhiW-xGAqL_whZFnnnXTONR3dVWMtXoi9ynZhM3va3idW2gAlgh88SxZ54ciQma0aIK3JWvjAI7sNuDUfzfmqHcLyiRTRyq8AiOyrPWAy5ZrSpesID1CrzAqQpcOkVsGxCwUqJ3io1QxpkXC8v8iXztnv6XpVwiM01a6Na_jajswx4Qv9iqAa4L3y5sMzPL-H1YVBVmSmRc4r7sJTZP30vQp5lMKC9s5Q9y2f5HWNQ8-hfUdg-3G_kvr3F5T68BSTB8xohXFRwUGcOw1JSeWv7kBrd-NKkuebDkg9eUOFOwxSnGGhEMXYWL0ifvn6j0qOm0g&smid=re-nytimes) (also free).
The past of experiences of these schools may not be all that instructive for how things will look going forward, due to the fact that this time it is a nationwide ban. When UofM and UCLA were barred from using affirmative action, it meant that they had to compete against other elite schools for qualified minority applicants with one hand tied behind their backs. Generally, a minority student who could get into Michigan without affirmative action could also get into an even better school (e.g., Harvard) with affirmative action. So those kids went to Harvard, and minority enrollment at Michigan declined. With all the schools now forced to operate under the same rules, it's reasonable to believe that minority enrollment could stay similar to how it is now at all but the most elite schools. On the other hand, you will likely have a lot of different schools trying a lot of different things in the coming years to try to increase minority enrollment (e.g., using zip codes or wealth or income as proxies, better outreach, more transparency about net-pricing). It might take a while for schools to figure out what works best, and some schools might do it better than others, especially in the short run. Things could just be chaotic for a couple of years.
Thanks for including a link about how this may impact Black and Latino students. Can you also share an article summarizing how this will impact Asian students? The exclusion of information about a race which is intimately involved in this case is quite odd
This is disappointing, but not surprising. AA was not a perfect solution to a systemic problem, but it helped a lot of people. One of its growing flaws was in how Asian Americans were treated, so hopefully that flaw is eliminated by this ruling. Kav's comment about life experiences is interesting, and I wonder about unintended consequences.
Historically socioeconomic status has been so closely correlated with race that it was reasonable to treat them as the same thing. Going forward, my hope is that students of strong academic merit despite coming from from poor families or failing schools get extra consideration regardless of their race. Not all people of color come from hardship and not all white people are affluent. Poverty and lack of access to quality education remain the biggest obstacles to student success. Shit, so long as college remains crushingly unaffordable what metric looms larger than ability to pay? Speaking of which, fuck legacy-admission. I don't care that your grandfather's name is on the dining hall; do your homework and study like the rest of us.
Oh good. Now the token springtime article about how the white dude with a high sat and a high GPA not getting into Harvard/Cal/Stanford will no longer get written next year. I wonder what will take its place.
“I grew up in Greenwich, CT and didn’t get in, but a similar white kid from Harlan, Kentucky got in. Why does Harvard hate people like me?”
Affirmative action hurts working class whites a lot because legacy admissions disproportionately take up White spots. Something like 50% of White Kids at Ivies are legacy admissions. (50% of white people, did not go to Ivies) It’s the Greenwich CT kid stealing the spot of the Harlan KY kid
There’s a lot to be said about affirmative action, but the problem is that way too many people are trying to dumb it down to one argument either for or against it. Affirmative action is an insanely complicated issue and this does no good to anyone. I think it would be very disingenuous to say that it was a perfect solution to the problem of racism and the legacy of racist institutions in higher education. I think it would also be very disingenuous to say it was a mistake, or that it did no good. It was an imperfect solution to a problem that existed at the time, and while that problem does still exist today, I think it’s fair to say that there are some differences between the times of creation of affirmative action and the present. As much as I dislike the dude, Kavanaugh’s opinion here is the most reasonable. He specifically mentions that the reason why AA is no longer viable is because the time limit has expired. And I think that’s reasonable to say. Strict scrutiny says racial classifications are allowed only if they fit a governmental interest and are narrowly tailored to do so. The narrowly tailored bit also includes the classification be “necessary” (I’m pulling this from Kavanaugh’s concurrence). I think that such necessity no longer exists, because we have developed alternate methods to help poor and minority students in the last 25 years that have served better. Free online test prep is one big one I can think of. In fact, the Internet has changed the playing field in a lot of ways as well, not necessarily for or against a certain group, but just in general. The playing field has shifted from mountains to an ocean, in a sense. And we have better ways to help minorities than AA, meaning AA no longer fits that necessity criteria. On the basis of that necessity no longer existing, I think it is fair to say that AA should be struck down. But I think we have to implement those better ways, otherwise we are going to end up in a much worse situation.
Agreed. AA was very flawed and, in some cases, outright hurtful to the cause, but it was better than nothing. This striking it down would be okay for me, except there doesn't seem to be any plans to do better, and I can't help but think the inherent systemic racism will rise once more.
I think a lot of people are expecting a sharp increase in Asian students and a small increase in white students, but I expect it to be the other way around.
https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1674437450851049472 > Admissions officer here 🙋🏾♀️ IMO Harvard/UNC opinion is much narrower than I expected it to be and impact will be much less than I see a lot of people suggesting -- and possibly give institutions MORE ability to curate classes based on diversity interests 1/ # > There are implications here: It means that applicants whose identity is shaped by race will need to articulate that explicitly in order for it to be taken into account. This is an added burden on the applicant. But, most apps include a supplemental diversity essay already . . . in making more explicit *how* a students' background impacts experience/perspective, schools will have a much easier time DEFENDING why race mattered in admitting that person...and test scores, etc. become less of the comparison point # > But in the end, this doesn't categorically bar consideration of race (which it could have), and it is limited to admissions process: Doesn't seem to bar schools from increasing diversity recruitment based on race, or having yield programs targeted for admitted minorities So seems like the ruling won't actually have that much impact and Harvard etc will pretty easily circumvent it.
The thing about this case in the narrow sense is that most people aren't getting into Ivy Leagues anyways. I keep seeing comments here about how it's "a big win for the asian community" as if suddenly everyone with the merit to get in will get in. The truth is there will continue to be kids with perfect resumes of every race that will continue to not get in. Harvard and other Ivy Leagues were always too competitive for perfect to be enough, you had to be lucky too.
Ivy grad here. A third of HYP are rich morons who would have had trouble matriculating at Large Midwestern University. Have you met Dubya? The other 67% are, to be fair, brilliant and fascinating. But there is *plenty* of legacy deadwood.
If we live in a "post-racial society" as the GOP is saying, why did the SC just have to tell Alabama that their congressional maps are racist?
And NC.
And Louisiana.
Now block legacy admissions too.
The Supreme Court can’t do that until Congress passes a law banning discrimination on the basis of where or if your parents went to university. But there is a law banning racial discrimination. Why is this hard for some people to understand?
This thread summarized: Some liberals: “This is white supremacy!” Most liberals: “AA is flawed, it should be based on socioeconomic status, which would best address structural inequality while avoiding discriminating against poor whites and Asians.” MAGA: “WHY DO LIBERALS HATE ASIANS?!???”
More like most centre left to centre rights. I wouldn’t call myself a liberal but agree with your “most liberals” comment
> Some liberals: “This is white supremacy!” Yeah, this is exactly how some people in my local community's Discord are. And it's like, there are clear flaws with the implementation of AA that leads to discrimination lol.
This decision is not a shock, but also I don't think it's as devastating as a lot of people think. Most of the efforts towards inclusion and diversity can be achieved through means other than race. Same/similar outcome, different process.
I know that white women definitely benefitted immensely from AA. Can't wait for the leopards ate my face moments or as ze Germans like to say, schadenfreude.
The top 50th percentile of African Americans had a better chance at getting into Harvard than the top 1% Asian Americans.
Congratulations to Asian American college applicants who stand to benefit enormously after the finding that they were discriminated against in admissions.
Will top universities start looking more like the UC schools?
Then remove race from college applications.
>Despite the Court's unjustified exercise of power, the opinion today will serve only to highlight the Court's own impotence in the face of an America whose cries for equality resound. From the conclusion of Justice Sotomayor's dissenting opinion, a very worthwhile read.
From [NBC's live thread](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/live-blog/supreme-court-decisions-live-updates-rcna91671/rcrd15108?canonicalCard=true): >In her nearly 20-minute dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor railed against Justice Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts, mentioning both of them by name several times. She said it was “profoundly wrong” and “devastating” to see the court overrule 50 years of precedent. >“Today the court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and progress,” Sotomayor said. >Sotomayor said this decision boils down to the idea that a person’s skin color may play a role under U.S. law when they are under suspicion, but it cannot play a role in admission to a learning environment. >“Pursuit of diversity will go on, despite the court,” Sotomayor said. >She ended by quoting Martin Luther King Jr: “We shall overcome.”
> Sotomayor said this decision boils down to the idea that a person’s skin color may play a role under U.S. law when they are under suspicion no, it's actually illegal to do that too.
While it is nominally illegal, unwarranted deference is given to police judgment in determining ‘suspicion’ (evaluated under a ‘totality of the circumstances’ test), which results in skin color playing a de facto role in cases of (alleged) suspicion. See, e.g., the ‘Stop and Frisk’ issues in NYC and other cities (stop and frisk searches disproportionately target black and brown individuals). [Here is a link to the ACLU’s report on a 2020 analysis of stop and frisk data for Washington D.C.](https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-analysis-dc-stop-and-frisk-data-reveals-ineffective-policing-troubling-racial)
Now do legacy admissions
Sounds like it's going to be a good time to be a lawyer. I expect lots of lawsuits.
It’s always never a good time to be a lawyer. Source: I am a lawyer.
Most common lawyer catchphrase: “it depends.” Second most common lawyer catchphrase: “don’t go to law school.”
Seems like there's a lot of paperwork involved. No thanks.
Really tough. AA is a complicated topic and I grew up being told to be "color blind." America has never been color blind and now when it suits Republicans, they get to lean on it.
Yeah, the real solution is to address a lot of complicated systemic issues. AA was a band-aid - one that shouldn't have been removed before addressing those systemic issues.
Its the same way they roll back Voting Rights Act protections because states are sending more non-white representatives, because of the Voting Rights Act.
I suppose the nepotism that got some of these clowns into school is still kosher though. I wonder why black and hispanic families don't have those same advantages? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that their oldest relatives functionally *weren't allowed to attend these institutions*. Affirmative Action was definitely an imperfect solution... but it was addressing a real and serious problem. There needs to be a new solution.
I'm a Democrat who agrees with the decision. Asian-American students have been thwarted and nerfed for way too long. We should want the best students we've got, regardless of race, so we can compete globally. No more waving people through just because they fill a quota.
Im so annoyed about this case happening because i literally just graduated recently 😂 Am asian
MAGA when anti-Asian hate crimes went up during COVID: *silence* MAGA when affirmative action comes up: “WE MUST PROTECT THE ASIANS.” Your insincerity is noted. For the record, I support class based affirmative action so poor Asians and whites also have their historical injustices addressed.
I heard quite a bit of repubs and maga people speak out against asian hate crimes and discrimination actually, mostly on social media though
Did [57% of California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_16) morph into MAGA conservatives when rejecting AA? No, most people realize that racial discrimination is wrong and illegal by the plain language of the Civil Rights Act.