Envisioning the End of Affirmative Action

On October 31st, 2022, the Supreme Court’s six-justice conservative majority skeptically interrogated proponents of affirmative action in a pending case involving the University of North Carolina. Although the outcome of the case likely won’t be publicized until June, many have already begun to speculate what the future holds for race-conscious admissions programs.
Students for Fair Admissions, an organization led by conservative legal activist Edward Blum, brought forth cases against UNC and Harvard, attempting to overturn the long-standing precedent of affirmative action in America. Many of Monday’s arguments referenced the 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger, which affirmed the University of Michigan Law School’s choice to consider race during admissions in its efforts to ensure a diverse student body. This decision was intended to be a temporary one. “25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in her majority opinion.
19 years since then, the Supreme Court’s conservative justices seem poised to overturn Grutter, doubtful that universities have any intention of phasing out race-conscious programs. “When is your sunset? When will you know?” Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked.
While affirmative action has been implemented in several institutions throughout the country and across the globe, Americans continue to be divided on the issue. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly three-quarters of Americans believe race or ethnicity should not be a factor in college admissions decisions. For a vocal community of Asian Americans rallying for the end of affirmative action, the admissions process is, as Justice Samuel Alito described it in the courtroom, a zero-sum game in which granting advantages to one group necessarily disadvantages another.
Proponents of affirmative action tout the researched benefits of attending a diverse environment and stress the importance of evening the playing field, adjusting for the structural inequities that disadvantage minority students throughout their lives. They also continue to emphasize that affirmative action does not involve hard and fast quotas, but rather is one aspect of a holistic review that takes race into account among several other factors. Without affirmative action, all projections point towards a less diverse student body, and the universities implicated by this pending decision maintain that there is no current race-neutral alternative that works as well to ensure diversity.
For a minority of Asian Americans that oppose affirmative action, the issue is not one of diversity but discrimination. The prevailing belief is that the opaque holistic admissions process, a sharp contrast to the highly pressurized standardized test system that several Chinese immigrant parents endured, is one that overlooks them. Natasha Warikoo, author of “Race at the Top: Asian Americans and Whites in Pursuit of the American Dream in Suburban Schools,” said, “I remember speaking on a panel years ago at one of these exam schools and an Asian American woman stood up and said, ‘You know, just as we figure out your system of meritocracy, it feels like you’re pulling the rug from underneath us.”
Warikoo believes that the issue of anti-Asian discrimination that parents and children are concerned with is a separate issue. Ending race-conscious admissions programs still won’t strip guidance counselors and admissions officers of their implicit biases. Warikoo’s research also revealed that several factors, such as universities prioritizing recruitment from the Midwest or humanities students, also disadvantage Asian students, who are statistically less likely to pursue humanities degrees and often live along the coastlines.
Bethany Li, the legal director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, additionally stated that many Asian American students across the country realize the educational benefits of attending a diverse university. “Being able to bring their whole identities to college helps students contextualize their past experiences and struggles as they navigate a new and complex world,” Li said. “Exposure to the diversity of this environment is crucial for Asian American students who might otherwise feel pressure to fit harmful stereotypes.”
Notably, the end of race-conscious programs also does not signify an end to other factors that advantage certain groups over others. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, 43% of white Harvard University admits were recruited athletes, legacy students, and children of faculty and staff. Harvard’s own analysis also reveals that legacies are nearly six times as likely to be admitted than non-legacies, and unsurprisingly, the majority of legacies are white.
Affirmative action does nothing to fix the systemic inequities that require its existence in the first place, but without workable race-neutral alternatives, phasing out race-conscious admissions programs only means a greater struggle to ensure diversity on college campuses across the country. If the end of affirmative action truly is near, then greater emphasis must be placed on finding tangible solutions to systemic disparities and re-evaluating admissions systems that inherently advantage white students above all.