Our conservative Supreme Court has decided that affirmative action in university admissions must end. By that, they mean that we need to make it easier for white students to get a college education than black students. It’s a white supremacist sort of decision, although white supremacists do love to couch their position as only fair.
Elite universities have contended that without considering race as one factor in admissions, their student bodies will contain more Whites and Asian Americans, and fewer Blacks and Hispanics.
But, “the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race,” Roberts wrote, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. “Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”
Our constitutional history is built on a document written by wealthy slaveholders, in a country that has long discriminated against people based on the color of their skin. Those Supreme Court wankers may not understand that history, but universities are full of people who do, and are going to be working hard to defy the court and continue to promote diversity. So, for instance…
Elizabeth H. Bradley, president of Vassar College in New York, said she thinks colleges like hers will figure out how to maintain an inclusive environment. “It’s just so core to who we are,” Bradley said. “We will find a legal way in which that can be accomplished.”
Everyone at my university was sent this memo yesterday from our vice president and provost saying the same thing.
Dear University of Minnesota students, faculty, and staff,
As you may know, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today on two cases regarding college admissions. The decisions limit the ability of colleges and universities that receive federal funding to consider an applicant’s race or ethnicity in decision-making for admission.
We remain steadfast in our commitments to our educational mission of inclusion and access, to remove barriers to higher education for underrepresented populations, and to ensure that all members of our community have equitable access to the University and its resources.
A working group led by the Provost’s Office, in close consultation with the Office of the General Counsel (OGC), has been preparing for this decision for many months. That group will ensure that our processes in undergraduate, graduate, and professional education are compliant with the new state of the law, and that we continue to live out our values of inclusion and access.
We will continue our recruiting efforts that have yielded increased diversity in our entering classes. We remain committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice on all our campuses.
I’m afraid the Supreme Court will have to hand down an injunction blatantly stating that we can’t admit black students before it will stop the march of diversity. Remember, white people will be a minority in this country in a few years.
Meanwhile, another tool to maintain white majorities is allowed to continue: legacies. 43% of white students at Harvard are legacies, to name an example. What legacies are are admissions based on family connections — your dad was a Harvard grad? Well then, we’ll just ignore those Cs and Ds on your transcript and your low SAT scores, and whisk you right into our school.
I don’t see much of it here in the Midwest, but it was infuriatingly common in East coast schools. It was egregious at the Temple medical school. One year I had two students working in my lab at Temple, and both were applying to the med school. One was a rather lackadaisical student who was full of confidence that they would get in — they didn’t have to worry about grades (and it showed) because they had a grandparent and two parents who were Temple med grads, and they were white. The other was a passionate, hard-working young person with near perfect grades who wanted to get a degree and open a clinic in their black, North Philadelphia neighborhood.
Guess which one waltzed into med school, and which one was repeatedly denied? It drove me crazy. I was writing these glowing recommendation letters, but they didn’t help at all. The students were all fully aware of how the deck was stacked, too. The white students counted on it, the black students had to work twice as hard to overcome it.
And that’s what this court decision is all about: protecting and promoting the advantages of inherited wealth and privilege. Now we’re going to all have to work twice as hard to defy the oligarchs.
Rolling back civil rights, heavy smog, I feel like I’m back in the 1960’s again.
Maybe they’ll get the next missile crisis right and launch away.
Something really needs to be done about Trump’s treason SCOTUS pronto and it needs to be somehow ruled invalid and illegitimate for its rulings sicne we lost RBG.
Impeachments? Arrests? Re-organising? Something…
Pitchforks and torches?
I don’t believe you. Well, maybe I believe PZ has good intentions, but that’s a flat-out lie.
Higher education is a playground for upper-class kids, and they will put as many barriers in front of everyone else as they can get away with. This was not solved by a half-measure like affirmative action — this ruling will hardly be an adjustment for them as an institution.
‘But, “the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race,” Roberts wrote, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. “Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”’
One wonders how supposedly intelligent people can be so blind. It helps, I suppose, if you like being blind.
Oh, goody! We’re not going to look at race. We’re going to look at the individual’s experiences, the “challenges bested, skills built, lessons learned.” And are we really going to claim that someone’s race doesn’t shape their experiences, their challenges, skills and lessons learned? Are we really going to believe that a minority’s experience is the same as the majority’s? Are we really going to believe that the challenges, skills and lessons are the same?
One little memory that has stayed with me for almost 50 years now. Way, way back, when I was still young, I was working at an electronics store in Providence, R.I. One day a young guy came in to apply for a job. To look at him, you’d think he might be a good candidate. Well-dressed, he looked smart, he looked educated, he looked like the kind of guy you could get along with. If I were the boss at the time, I’d have had a good look at his CV to find out what his qualifications were.
But he was never going to get a job in that place. He knew it, I knew it, everybody knew it. He was black, and this store was white, white, white. We were about half Italian, half Irish, and the rest (like me) were your usual sort of mongrel. He was just going through the motions. He filled in the form and left, and we never saw him again.
This is why we don’t need Affirmative Action. We’re not going to look at somebody’s race. We never have.
Uh-huh.
Conservatives playing dumb: we oppose racism, so we shouldn’t see race.
The majority: we oppose crime, so we shouldn’t see it in any criminal trial.
We oppose war, so we don’t see the need for a Department of Defense.
It’s interesting that Military Academies are specifically excluded from this ruling. Apparently they believe that the military needs diverse officers.
Not exactly. If your dad was a Harvard grad and donated consistently over the years, then you get in despite having only As and nothing particularly notable. They can afford to be quite selective like that.
To get in with bad grades you’d need your dad to be naming buildings.
@3. wzrd1 : Maybe. That’s starting to look like an awfully tempting option..
StevoR: I’ve noticed that Home Depot is all sold out of pitchforks lately.
I saw the same thing also.
I once taught a course that had a lot of premeds in it.
One student was loud, obnoxious, and his grades weren’t all that good.
But we all knew he was going to get into med school without any problems and so did he.
His father was a powerful elected official and politician in the state government.
There were two of us teaching and we used to have nightmares that someday we were in a serious accident and ended up in the emergency room. And the doc on duty was…that guy.
The goal has been, and always will be, to provide opportunity to whites, especially, and the “good” minority (Asians) reluctantly. If you question the motives of those who support this ruling, look at their other statements concerning race and race relations.
What a lot of people don’t know including the US Supreme court is…why we even have Affirmative Action.
It’s real simple.
Societies with inequality and institutionalized racism aren’t stable.
They often don’t go any where, are always in one crisis or another, full of social problems, and occasionally just implode.
We see it all the time. Northern Ireland. Lebanon. Sudan. USSR. Russia. Apartheid South Africa. Iraq. Syria.
There is a record 89 million refugees in the world today and many or most are fleeing from ethnic, religious, and economic conflicts.
It is in everyone’s interest to have a society without a permanent underclass, with equality of opportunity, and the possibility of upward mobility.
Huge numbers of us in the USA, including myself, are descended from recent immigrants who came a long way to get to the USA exactly because the USA offered a better life and future.
Genuine question (I’m not from the States): has no-one sued over legacy admissions ever? I can easily imagine there’s not the Republican dark money behind this kind of lawsuit, but I’m surprised that I’ve never heard of such blatant discrimination being challenged legally.
Really sorry about this result. There’s no smugness in watching from Europe, either, since where you guys go, we seem to follow, sooner or later.
Speaking of our fascist SCOTUS: Reuters is reporting that they ruled on behalf of the Bible-fucker web designer. More horrors to come.
I don’t know for sure.
But such a lawsuit would be unlikely to go anywhere.
The Universities that have legacy students are all private.
Harvard, Yale, Temple, etc..
The US mostly leaves private institutions alone.
It’s no secret how George Bush got into Yale despite not being the best student. His father went there as well.
AND they just struck down student loan forgiveness.
Hey libs! How’s trusting in THE PROCESS working for ya!?
@ ^ Akira MacKenzie : What’s the alternative and how likely is it to deliver better results? At what costs? 7
At a very basic level, I agree with comments asserting that this should be a meritocracy. Two problems. First, it’s not and never has been (and I doubt it will be any time soon). Second, even if we were to wave a magic wand, and suddenly all discrimination went away, this does nothing about the effects of the history. What I’m talking about is generational wealth and opportunity (or the lack of it).
It’s like having a 5k race: Everyone lines up, but a group of people are forced to start 2 miles behind the starting line. Ten minutes into the race we wave that magic wand and that group immediately gets transported to the starting line. No, that does not make things equal. The rest of the field is ten minutes ahead already. The problem is that some bumbler who made it a half-mile in those ten minutes is going to scream his head off if you transport any of that group even one inch beyond the starting line because he thinks that would be unfair to him.
Clarence Thomas’ education.
He hates diversity programs because he got to where he is through one. Reminds me of Milton Friedman, whose education was through a scholarship, who decided scholarships victimized the recipient. It’s sad to shit all over your legacy because of your ideology, which is your actual legacy. Thomas will be remembered for his corruption, and little else unless its his sexual abuse.
@ ^ Marcus Ranum : His wife’s treason on or leading up to J6th too..
@PZ
The dirty secret about legacies is that very few people want them to go away – not white applicants, nor Asians, nor any under-represented minority. The part that few people will say out loud is that they see something in it for themselves. It is true that today the main beneficiaries of legacy admissions are white applicants but potentially anyone could benefit down the line. If your kid gets into Harvard then his kids will have a leg up. I can see this in the Indian community – most people are vociferously against affirmative action and were cheering on the plaintiffs. When reminded that legacy preferences are doing more to prevent Asians from getting in to these schools than affirmative action ever could, they will nod their heads and say something must be done about that as well – but the enthusiasm just isn’t there.
The judge that got confirmed by then senator Biden (I will not say the name in case he will appear behind me) spent more than two decades openly stating his intentions.
As he had denied those intentions during the confirmation hearings the Democrats could have impeached him for perjury during those periods when Democrats had a majority, but it was apparently too much work for them. Better kick the can down the road and hope everything will be fine.
Stevo @ 18:
If you have to ask those questions, then you really don’t give a shit about what you claim to value.
Meanwhile, my father is wandering around the house loudly gloating about the student loan decision. “I guess you’ll have to work like the rest of us.” he said to me.
Fucker.
StevoR @18: Akira wants a left-wing dictatorship which will eliminate all those he sees as undesirables. That’s always gone so well in the past.
Worth noting that Harvard doesn’t need a court to tell them they’re not allowed to do that. They could just, you know, voluntarily stop doing it. And that would most certainly improve diversity at Harvard. But they won’t do it, because diversity isn’t really a priority for them.
Is anyone really surprised by this? Lawyers craft arguments given conclusions, and the current SCOTUS is majority Federalist Society. The outcome of any case that’s big enough to get reported is predictable to a high degree of accuracy.
The actual opinions are fictions that have no use except to other lawyers who might want to quote some phrase out of context to give the appearance of authority to their own arguments (although I suppose that there are some at which one can point and laugh).
@ 23
It won’t be “fine!” It’s going to be fucking hell-on-earth! That the whole problem with this incrementalism bullshit! How many more years, decades, generations, or centuries will we have suffer before we can get a mother-may-I from not just the powers-that-be, but the greedy, stupid masses who still support the status quo?!
I’m sick and tired of this bullshit!
Vox has an insightful piece by Ian Milhiser about the latest (as of yesterday) SCOTUS vandalism:
Do psychologists still use the term “double bind”? It fits here perfectly.
Akira MacKenzie @ # 29: That [is] the whole problem with this incrementalism bullshit!
Please bear in mind today’s fascists got where they are now by several decades of incrementalism (and of bullshit).
Fuck the law. The law will jail people for having an abortion. The law legislates people like me and my community out of existence. It is brutal violence, and I’m fucking tired of people acting like it isn’t. Fuck the entire institution of the supreme court, fuck the power structures of this country’s government and capitalism. There needs to be revolt but far too many people are fine with marginalized groups being brutalized so they can live in relative comfort in this country built on and maintained through imperialism, genocide, and slavery. I hate having my life dictated by these ignorant, malicious assholes, I hate that so many of my loved ones have suffered and died because they just can’t fucking let trans people exist. Punch your local fascist already, especially any Republican in power.
Women are already out-achieving men at college, so that part of the job is done.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/08/whats-behind-the-growing-gap-between-men-and-women-in-college-completion/
And as far as actual minorities, Asian and South Asian kids can out-test white kids, so removing the barriers means more minority students.
As for this hurting black students, reparations would go a long way toward fixing that. Get your Democrats to actually support (with their votes, not just feelings of unity) reparation. While we’re at it on reparations, why aren’t indigenous folks asking for those, too?
Instead of reparations, could we just codify proper wealth redistribution programs from the rich to the poor that go on until the end of the time instead of a one-time payment?
In light of this new SCOTUS ruling, I am even more in favor of fixing the unfair funding of primary and secondary schools. Primary and secondary school funding should be at the State level with laws forbidding any funding from any other source (including city taxes, bake-sales, and donations; unless the donations go directly to the State-wide fund). Vouchers should be illegal too. It’s not perfect, but it’s a step in the right direction.
And please, let’s get rid of “no child left behind” law already with its excessive focus on standardized testing and with its other harmful consequences.
If a college can’t use race as a factor, how about whether or not being the victim of race-based discrimination? There should be some way around the ruling.
The one about the web designer worries me more because it’s based on a lie and the ruling is another “Christians can ignore the law when it’s inconvenient for them.”
Also also, please push for the following fixes for election laws already: instant runoff elections, shortest split-line districting to eliminate gerrymandering, and party-list voting to eliminate districts entirely (at least for everything but the US senate) and to allow choosing from a dozen different parties instead of two parties.
Oh come on. You have to ask those questions. You can’t just say “we should do something else” as a meaningful critique without offering a clear alternative and some cost-benefit analysis.
They could use sufficiently distinct proxies, such as household income, favoring students from poor households.
They can and do use the criteria of, “coming from historically disadvantaged backgrounds”.
That covers a lot of groups including white children from Appalachia and the South.
That is what a university I was at briefly on the east coast did.
You could tell who those kids were because they had heavy mountain or southern accents. Some of them were also lost outside of their rural regions and needed all the help they could get.
I wonder if SCOTUS would strike that down as being too close to race-based affirmative action. Might as well try.
I’m reminded of the tea party’s initial assault on, well, everything. They championed young people not going to college, as degrees were a waste of time and money, there were trades…
Well, their wealthy masters saw them go off the wire and hijacked the lot into a new, new, new version of farther right idiocy, culminating the gift that keeps on giving, Trump.
We now reap the benefits today, with civil rights being rolled back at a rapid incremental rate. At the rate they’re going, we’ll have slavery back by the time the current crop of injustices are retiring or dying off.
As for Biden and student loans, I’m reminded of Jackson’s reply to the SCOTUS ruling against the removal of the Cherokee, “If they feel that strongly about it, let them march up here and try to enforce their ruling!”. Look up the Trail of Tears.
And borrow from FDR’s book as well, stack the court or watch a nation die.
Given that SCOTUS ruled against the insane theory State legislatures should not be bound by State constitutions regarding federal elections, this sentiment is a little IMHO premature. We definitely have a problem, and court packing is one solution, but it’s far from the only solution. We could start winning elections, and many of these problems could be fixed by new federal law. Some of our problems, e.g. guns, would require a constitutional amendment.
I think we should focus on fixing our election system instead of bandaiding the problem by packing SCOTUS: instant runoff elections, and shortest splitline districting, and even better: party-list voting.
Separately, we should also fix the appointment process for SCOTUS. My preferred fix there is still: All federal judges require 75% approval from the senate (to force compromise and make the appointment process less political). 18 year term limits for SCOTUS (to reduce the number of SCOTUS judges with dementia). Every 2 years the current president gets an appointment to SCOTUS (to eliminate the randomness of which president gets to make SCOTUS appointments). No additional appointments for SCOTUS deaths and retirements (to eliminate the randomness of which president gets to make SCOTUS appointments). If no SCOTUS appointment is confirmed within 1 month of an opening, then the new SCOTUS judge shall be chosen by lottery from all current federal judges (in order to force compromise and prevent shutdown-like tactics; this is the key part of the proposal).
Why not tie it to the funding level of the high school the applicant attended? If it’s underfunded, you get extra consideration for obstacles overcome.
Just as society in general, four year colleges in the u.s. have almost never been an equal playing field. There have been attempts: los Angeles city colleges in the 60’s cost $7.50 per semester no matter who you were. The Cal State system had tuition fees in the $300 range per semester for everyone. But, Ronnie the Criminal Raygun and his feed the wealthy and starve everyone else started a trend, that has only grown ever more destructive, to devastate that egalitarian system of education for all.
And, there always have been innumerable categories of people that have been pushed into a ‘disadvantaged category’. We see a lot of those categories and those that cause them, mentioned by PZ and commenters here. Hatred, prejudice and bigotry have no bounds. The six justices that make up SCROTUM just codify it and make it ‘socially acceptable’. As I commented elsewhere, if the united states had a fully funded public college system that could offer matriculation to everyone, the entire country would benefit in so many ways: better educated teachers, workers with a wide range of knowledge and skills. ‘a well informed electorate’!, etc. But, the Crapitallists, Banksters Xtian Terrorist organizations and the greedy idiot politicians they have bought and own will NEVER let that happen.
We see that pile of rancid mayonnaise, Pence, deny that bigotry and racism still exist saying that “There may have been a time, 50 years ago, when we needed to affirmatively take steps to correct long-term racial bias in institutions of higher education. But, I can tell you, as the father of three college graduates, um, those days are long over.”
(I have to fight to keep from vomiting every time he talks)
@24. Akira MacKenzie : Stevo @ 18: If you have to ask those questions, then you really don’t give a shit about what you claim to value.”
That makes no sense, doesn’t follow and isn’t an answer to my questions.
StevoR, there was this recent article on Slate:
Had I responded to Akira (“How’s trusting in THE PROCESS working for ya!?”), I’d have noted that Biden is the President. Worked at least that well.
Has changed some stuff for the better, however dismissive Akira is.
Oh, hey:
(https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/06/biden-student-loan-announcement-debt-relief-programs-supreme-court-decision.html)
Unfortunately, the end run solutions don’t seem to be effective enough. NPR had an article today about California’s experiences since affirmative action was banned for the state in 1998. After 25 years and 1/2 billion U$, they still haven’t managed to get back to a diverse enough student population to match the state or high school populations, especially at the more prestigious schools.
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/30/1185226895/heres-what-happened-when-affirmative-action-ended-at-california-public-colleges
John Morales, I’ve yet to review the decision proper, only news reviews, but based upon Barrett’s reasoning, Biden needs to turn over CIC of the military and especially all nuclear response mechanisms, as her opinion clearly placed that authority under Congress exclusively.
SCOTUS basically, if the decision is as reported, which I somewhat doubt, is exclusively Congressional, to debate for the 15 minutes before the missiles detonate overhead of the debaters.
Just another fine example of short thinking jurists, utterly out of their weight class.
Lest he order too many apples or too few babysitters or something.
Still, I’ll have to get to review the actual text of the decision to be properly scathing. As near as I can tell, around 150 years of case law has been undermined by this current outlaw court.
And yes, that last statement can be backed up, but it’d take me around a month to get it good enough for proper review.
wzrd1, I have no doubt whatsoever that your grasp of USA politics and politicking is way beyond what I can muster — but I was endorsing StevoR and the issue of Akira’s question about how the process is working.
(It’s not not working)
[TLDR: were it not working, Biden would not be President]
I disagree. I think that the process is indeed working as designed. Not as intended originally, but as designed over recent years.
Gone is unity, consensus and compromise in a nation with competing interests, division and eventual violence is becoming inevitable as the wealth-poverty gap increases and civil rights evaporate.
I’ll add the trepidation I’ve long felt over an increasing number of times that the SCOTUS has relabeled rights that are enumerated in the Bill of Rights as privileges. I guess we need to get that old parchment out and use whiteout on Rights to make it what the SCOTUS has decreed, the Bill of Privileges.
The difference is, rights can only be suborned by order of a court. Privileges may be administratively revoked.
If it comes down to pitchforks and torches, I’m not heading to Home Depot. I want the rustiest pitchfork that I can find and drag through the dirt. Let them eat tetanus.
They can still use location. If universities want to get around the race objection, then can use zip code and because of how segregated the US is it’d be just as good.
@52, that’d be gerrymandering and that’s only OK for the GOP.
But, it’d also disadvantage children of parents that managed to blockbuster their way into suburbia.
Not an optimal solution at all.