Is Pursuing Diversity a Lost Cause?

Ending segregation at Ole Miss in 1962, amid riots and chaos

“The entire point of the Equal Protection Clause is that treating someone differently because of their skin color is not like treating them differently because they are from a city or from a suburb, or because they play the violin poorly or well.” 

 Chief Justice John Roberts, writing the majority opinion in two seminal affirmative action cases, noted below.

“Today, this court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress… The court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter.” 

Dissenting Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan

The much-anticipated Supreme Court June 29th rulings in two cases challenging affirmative action – Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. (SFAI) v. President and Fellows of Harvard and SFAI v. University of North Carolina – as violating the equal protection provisions of the 14th Amendment, effectively ended decades of that Court’s precedents. For all practical purposes, they ended racially-based affirmative action programs in both state and most private colleges and universities. Such admissions need to be colorblind, the Court’s majority reasoned.

Near the end of a 40-page majority opinion was a slight ray of hope for those who wanted to find some basis for even a modified consideration of race in college applications. ““Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race.” Perhaps a college essay from an applicant outlining their personal struggles against racism might be a back door. Helping disadvantaged racial minorities, often the product of inferior inner city public schools, was no longer a national priority.

Protestors and counter protesters roiled, President Biden decried the decisions, but colleges and universities once committed to affirmative action understood that new paths and considerations were now required. Writing for the June 30th Los Angeles Times, Teresa Watanabe and Debbie Truong addressed how these institutions were considering a path forward. “[The rulings] intensified angst among many higher education leaders who say extending access to a diversity of students could become a challenging, high-cost and labor-intensive effort steeped in uncertainties.

“Many also fear that applications from Black, Latino and other students of color will drop, and say a key priority will be to assure those students that they matter and that campus commitment to diversity remains strong… ‘We’re really worried about private colleges and universities and what it means for representation,’ said Christopher Nellum, executive director of the Education Trust-West, a nonprofit organization focused on education equity. ‘Young people, particularly young people of color … are going to receive this as a message that they don’t belong.’…

“‘Symbolically it ... sends a signal of what’s important and whether people are being treated fairly across the board,’ [Martin Van Der Werf of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce] said. ‘What they will take away from it is that we no longer have a commitment in this country to try to use college admissions as a way to right centuries of wrongs against people from different racial and ethnic groups that have never really had as fair a shake in this country.’

“Another potential effect, he said, would be perpetuating the advantages of those from privileged backgrounds. Students at more selective colleges have higher graduation rates and powerful alumni networks that often result in enhanced careers and earnings. If fewer disadvantaged students have access to them, they could lose out on those lifelong benefits, he said… Some Black and Latino students fear that axing affirmative action will decrease their numbers and make college life even more alienating.”

For less competitive colleges and universities, which tend to admit most applicants, the ruling has little consequence. However, for those elite and high-prestige institutions with severe limits on how many applicants they are able to accept, these rulings are beyond significant. But it is not as if major high-level universities have never faced affirmative action bans before. In 1996, not-as-blue-as-it-is-today California passed proposition 209, which eliminated race-based affirmative action at state colleges and universities (with no impact on private institutions). Since, eight other states have followed this California precedent.

“In 1998, the first admission year after the passage of Proposition 209, the number of California Black and Latino first-year students plunged by nearly half at UCLA and UC Berkeley… Since then, UC campuses have made notable strides. Black and Latino students increased to 43% of the admitted first-year class of Californians for fall 2022, compared with about 20% before Proposition 209. For the third straight year, Latinos were the largest ethnic group of admitted students at 37%, followed by Asian Americans at 35%, white students at 19% and Black students at 6%... UC enrollment still does not fully reflect the state’s racial and ethnic makeup, however, falling particularly short with Latinos.

“Youlonda Copeland-Morgan, the chief architect of UCLA’s rebound effort who recently retired as vice provost of enrollment management, said the university worked with Black churches and L.A. Unified schools in underserved neighborhoods, created early academic outreach programs, offered more scholarships for low-income students and sent top-level officials to visit schools.

“Overall, the UC system has spent an estimated half a billion dollars on its diversity efforts. The work has included two major reforms: an admission guarantee to top-performing students at most high schools and a comprehensive review process that uses several factors — including special talents and location of home and high school — in addition to grades and coursework to evaluate applicants.” LA Times. But finding reasonable alternatives to race-based admissions preferences is labor intensive and thus very expensive. Many institutions may simply follow the Supreme Court ruling and simply cease their efforts toward diversity.

The tilt away from DEI inclusion programs is in the crosshairs of Republican governors and legislatures (mostly led by Texas and Florida), even within private corporate employers. Federal requirements for contractors, often requiring a proportion of minority-owned or controlled vendors to be in the mix (or at least companies with notable DEI programs), are likely an upcoming targets for litigation. As Michael Walden, author of Super Majority, points out: White majorities tend to overestimate the success of progressive DEI programs, while the relevant minorities tend to underestimate such progress. Everyone is unhappy.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the entire thrust of recent MAGA legislative and judicial policies and platforms seems to be to return the United States to the era in the 1950s before the spate of civil rights legislation and Supreme Court decisions.