Heather Mac Donald:

Jus­tice So­nia So­tomayor had harsh words for her col­leagues who voted last month to bar the use of race in col­lege ad­mis­sions. She al­leged in her dis­sent­ing opin­ion that the six-jus­tice ma­jor­ity in Stu­dents for Fair Ad­mis­sions v. Har­vard had sub­verted the Con­sti­tu-tion’s guar­an­tee of equal pro­tec­tion un­der the law, not up­held it, by “fur­ther en­trench-ing racial in­equal­ity in ed­u­ca-tion.” Chief Jus­tice John Roberts’s ma­jor­ity opin­ion slammed shut the door of op­por­tu­nity to un­der­rep­re-sented mi­nori­ties, es­pe­cially black stu­dents, who still fight against a so­ci­ety that is “in­her­. un­equal,” she wrote.

Many in acad­e­mia agreed with Jus­tice So­tomayor. In­com­ing Har­vard pres­i­dent Clau­dine Gay warned in a video state­ment that the de­ci­sion “means the real pos­si­bil­ity that op­por­tu­ni­ties will be fore-closed.” David A. Thomas, pres­i­dent of his­tor­i­cally black More­house Col­lege, as­serted that in the ab­sence of racial pref­er­ences, black stu­dents will rightly con­clude that they are “not wanted.” Stu­dents “of color” may not feel that they “mat­ter,” ac­cord­ing to An­gel B. Pérez, chief ex­ec­u­tive of the Na­tional As­so­ci­a­tion for Col­lege Ad­mis­sion Coun­sel­ing.

The charge that col­or­blind ad­mis­sions will fore­close ed­u­ca­tional op­por­tu­ni­ties for blacks rests on a breath­tak-ingly elit­ist view of ed­u­ca­tion. And the idea that mi­nor­ity stu­dents should now con­clude that they aren’t “wanted” on col­lege cam­puses de­fies re­al­ity. Black stu­dents will at­tend col­lege in the same num­bers af­ter af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion as they did be­fore, if they so choose. Col­leges will be as ea­ger to have them. The only dif­fer­ence, as­sum­ing com­pli­ance with the rul­ing (a big if), is that such stu­dents will at­tend col­lege on the same foot­ing as most stu­dents from un­pre­ferred racial groups: ad­mit­ted to schools for which their aca­d­e-mic skills qual­ify them.