The Race to Get In

American’s birthrate, on average, has fallen to 1.9 per woman, less than the 2.1 rate considered necessary to sustain replacement values. Since economic growth is in part a function of population, without immigration, the United States would actually be contracting in size, representing another stopper in future economic recovery. Some countries, notably Japan, are predicted to have their birth rates fall to 1.35 by 2050, which would represent a population drop of almost a third in a country that has one of the lowest immigration rates on earth. It’s no surprise, then, that Japan’s last “good economic year” was 1991.

But the birth rates within the United States skew even more within our racial and ethnic mixes, with white births dropping below those of so-called minorities:“[Based on Census date t]he United States has reached a historic tipping point -- with Latino, Asian, mixed race and African American births constituting a majority of births for the first time… Minorities made up about 2 million, or 50.4%, of the births in the 12-month period ending July 2011, enough to create the milestone. The latest figure was up from 49.5% in the 2010 census.” Los Angeles Times, May 17^th. In short, minorities are becoming the majority in the United States.

With upward mobility almost a thing of the past in this dire economy of lost job opportunities, rising tuition with falling student aid and massive cuts to publicly-funded education at every level, our class structure may be frozen to its current state. The 1% of America that owns 42% of our wealth may not be impaired by the slam to the system, but the vast majority of Americans feel the pain in lost income and lowered expectations. So if white is becoming a minority – although no other single race has a greater U.S. population segment – is ethnic or racial minority status even relevant in college admissions standards? Is it time to abandon that criterion from the mix or has that frozen upward mobility issue made moving those in the lower socio-economic classes – overwhelmingly populated by African-Americans and Hispanics – up the ladder even more important?

It’s an issue that the Supreme Court has wrestled with from its “separate but equal” ruling (the infamous Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896, reversed in Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954) in the first levels of public schooling to more contemporary decisions that have allowed racial considerations in college admissions in the interest of diversity as long as quotas are not used. “‘We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today,’ Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote [in 2003] for the majority in Grutter v. Bollinger .” Washington Post, July 31, 2011. The Supreme Court now faces a challenge (Fisher vs. University of Texas), even to that standard, from a white woman who claims she lost a place in the 2008 freshman class at the prestigious UT to a minority student.

“Under the banner of racial diversity, [Abigail] Fisher contends, the UT admissions process — which considers race as a factor in choosing one-quarter of its students — unfairly favors African Americans and Hispanics at the expense of whites and Asian Americans.” Washington Post, September 27^th. But the Supreme Court has reconfigured, and Ms. O’Connor has retired from the bench…” with a conservative majority now highly skeptical of — even hostile to — racial preferences. The justice most likely to decide the case for the divided court — Anthony M. Kennedy — has agreed in principle that diversity is important but has never voted to approve an affirmative-action plan… [O’Conner’s] successor, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., has proved to be a staunch opponent of race-based classifications, as has Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. ‘Racial balancing is not transformed from ‘patently unconstitutional’ to a compelling state interest simply by relabeling it ‘racial diversity,’ ’ Roberts wrote in a 2007 decision about K-12 education.

“Justice Elena Kagan, President Obama’s former solicitor general, is recused from the case. Kennedy is by all accounts the pivotal justice in the case — the briefs submitted by Fisher and UT mention his opinions a combined 50 times… In case of a tie vote, UT’s plan would remain in place, although the decision would not serve as a precedent. And if the majority decides against Texas, it could do so narrowly — saying that because the Top 10 plan has diversified the student body, there is no need to consider race in the rest of the admissions — or broadly, by overturning Grutter, as some have urged the court to do…

“There is little doubt that, if the court says race may not be considered, the numbers of white and Asian American students on college campuses will increase and the numbers of blacks and Hispanics will fall. The University of California submitted a brief saying it has not been able to ‘reverse the precipitous decline in minority admission and enrollment’ that followed voters’ decision in 1996 to explicitly prohibit affirmative action in higher education.” The Post. If upward mobility at the lowest socioeconomic levels becomes further encumbered, will anger and frustration accelerate in that sector? How will people react who may believe that they have little stake in this society and nothing left to lose? Or have we come so far that race realities “are what they are” and it’s time to go to a pure meritocracy system? What do you think?

I’m Peter Dekom, and in a world of complex choices, balancing individual rights can be exceptionally difficult.