Affirmative Action Bred 50 Years of ‘Mismatch’
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.