The Supreme Court Outlaws Race as a Factor in College Admission

By a 6-3 margin, the Supreme Court has outlawed the use of race as a factor in college admissions, effectively ending affirmative action and diversity initiatives in colleges. Colleges and universities will no longer be able to consider historical prejudices when weighing admission factors, which will likely result in fewer admissions for Black and Latino students. For example, at the University of Michigan, enrollment among Black students dropped from 7 percent to 4 percent after they were required to end their affirmative action programs, even though the state’s Black population is 14 percent.

“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority, while also citing other cases that condemn racial discrimination against Black people to justify the decision. The Supreme Court has clearly taken the position that racism against white people is a thing. It is not. Racism is defined as “discrimination or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.” White people are neither a minority nor marginalized. On the other hand, Black people and Latinos are minority groups that are often marginalized, and Affirmative Action and diversity initiatives were designed to counterbalance that disadvantage. In the game of life, white people are dealt a pair of tens just for being born, while Affirmative Action programs essentially gave Black people a 10 of clubs in the hopes that it might help.

It took only seven years for the Court to shift in this direction. In 2016, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Affirmative Action programs at the University of Texas. Only one member of that majority opinion remains on the Court, Sonia Sotomayor. In her dissenting opinion in this case, Sotomayor wrote that the Court “rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress,” solidifying “a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter.” She argues that the majority opinion “undermines the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by further entrenching racial inequality in education, which is the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society.”

According to a recent Pew survey, 60 percent of Americans disapprove of race being considered in college admissions. The results broke across racial and ethnic groups.

Source: Pew survey