“Suddenly,” maybe not, but the University of California did see a substantial boost in Asian enrollment when California phased out affirmative action decades ago. Harvard and the Ivy Leagues might see an uptick.
But as far as they are concerned, once removed is enough. Just becuase 99.999% of legacy candidates are white doesn’t mean its racist. Their interpretation there is no such thing as systemic racism. As soon as the modern interpretation of the 14th Amendment ended Jim Crow laws, our society became completely equal, and acting as though it is otherwise is racist.
Putting it another way, the 50’s interpretation of the 14th ammendment meant that it was racist put additional shackles on blacks. This 21st century interpretation is that its racist to try to take off the ones that had been put on over the last 400 years.
Surprising that no one has mentioned California until now. Somehow, California universities haven’t turned into some white hellscape after AA was banned.
NPR’s take on it:
So you saw pretty big changes at the most selective universities but no net changes in the middle and, if anything, small increases in Black and Hispanic enrollment at the least selective public universities in the state.
I’m less convinced about the wage claims. It assumes that AA-enabled degrees from these universities are worth the same as otherwise.
It’s possible the Supreme Court would rule that way, but I’d still be interested to see a case like that make it’s way to the Court and see what happens.
I interview kids who apply to Harvard (it mostly relies on alumni for interviews) and I’ve been following this for years. I agree with you. I don’t see this as a win for Asian students at all.
First, the most credible claims of systemic discrimination against Asians are orthogonal to the practices covered by this ruling. Harvard admissions gives each student three scores: academic, leadership/extra curricular, and personal qualities. There are credible accusations that the internal “personal qualities” scores assigned to Asians by the admissions department are systemically lower than the scores assigned by alumni interviewers.
Second, they’ve be preparing for this for a few years now, and have removed the requirement that kids submit standardized test scores. They’ve also been more actively discouraging alumni interviewers from asking about grades. They are clearly preparing to weight “personal qualities” more heavily.
Third, they have already publicly announced:
Dear Members of the Harvard Community,
Today, the Supreme Court delivered its decision in
Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College . The Court held that Harvard College’s admissions system does not comply with the principles of the equal protection clause embodied in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The Court also ruled that colleges and universities may consider in admissions decisions “an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” We will certainly comply with the Court’s decision.
That they have lined up alternative ways to take race into account.
I do expect that wealthy white applicants will get a bit of a bump. (Which, IMHO, was the goal of the wealthy white man who brought this suit.) I’ll be very surprised if Asian students do so.
The ultimate irony–a really terrible irony–is that the 14th Amendment didn’t end Jim Crow laws. Instead, we have the Commerce Clause to thank for that. On its face, at least, the same old Commerce Clause the Founders had before they even appended a Bill of Rights to the Constitution.
If only the Supreme Court had grounded its decision upholding the CRA of 1964 in the 14th Amendment, we might not be where we are today. But as it stands, the14th Amendment is as neutered today (at least as an engine for racial justice) as it was under Jim Crow. Hence our current predicament, where apparently the 14th Amendment was passed in a vacuum, with only the most limited aims of granting formal equality.
Excellent post, even though I am not on your side here.
As with Brown v. Board of Education, discriminatory motives are too deeply embedded to be much impacted by a single Supreme Court decision. It took fifteen years of follow up lawsuits to break up most dual school systems. The “Dear Members of the Harvard Community” message you quote should also be quoted in future litigation.
If so (and I have no idea if your implied accusation against said white man is fair), said wealthy white man made a mistake to file this lawsuit. If the Asian percent doesn’t shoot up, that’s evidence the problem is holistic admissions. To me, holistic admissions is the upper class version of separate but equal. While liberal at the most superficial level, both holistic admissions and separate but equal are inherently discriminatory.
P.S. History doesn’t exactly repeat. While most dual school systems evaded the Brown mandate for many years, the targeted system, Topeka Kansas, gave in right away. I wonder if UNC will be as cheeky as Harvard.
It is either incredibly ignorant or incredibly disingenuous to keep bringing up Brown in this context. You should genuinely be embarrassed that you’ve gotten yourself into that position.
As I read the relevant history, making an analogy between holistic admissions and dual school systems is not an insult to those who support AA.
Just as there is a liberal case for AA, there was a liberal case for dual school systems. Segregated schools were often the pride of Black communities. They were run by liberal teachers, liberal high school department heads, and liberal principals who usually were Black and often were the justifiably most respected individuals in their communities. As explained in this highly readable Yale University Press book I recommend, the hurt of closing those schools remains:
Review of Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation
Was the liberal case for separate but equal strong enough that it should have prevailed? No. I think the same for AA, but of course there is a sincere liberal case for AA. For any and all who sensed an accusation people in your camp are discriminatory ogres, I apologize.
The best punditry I have seen on this is a paywalled New York Times essay by Tyler Austin Harper. It is so good that I will go out on the slightest limb and say it will make it into the Best American Essays annual compendium. While literally pro-AA, the essay is, like great literature, subject to multiple interpretations. A summary is here:
Roberts missed that you can’t end race discrimination while class discrimination remains. Holistic admissions is inherently discriminatory.
Moderating:
Modnote: This is attacking the poster and not the post. Please do not do this outside the Pit.
Understood. I’m sorry.
The argument that there is a worthwhile analogy between the racial discrimination discussed in Brown v. Board and the racial discrimination at the heart of the Harvard & UNC cases relies on one of two things: either ignoring entirely the historical context, or the false premise that the historical context is something other than what it was.
The analogy is that both involve who goes to a school, and both involve the decision-makers taking race into account. But no reasonable reading of Brown is that the conclusions was “don’t take race into account when you decide who goes to school,” with no other application. It’s a case, and part of a line of cases, about state action “denoting the inferiority of the negro group.” Any fair reading of any one of those cases leads to the conclusion that the reason there was an Equal Protection violation was that the state was stamping black people as inferior by separating them from whites. If it was true that there was no necessary stamp of inferiority, the holding would have been different.
Specifically, the message of Brown is that “separate but equal” as set forth in Plessy had no place in education. Plessy said that
Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation. If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.
So first you had a Supreme Court saying it was pointless to bring the races together because one was so obviously inferior that the law could never fix the problem. Then you had a Supreme Court saying, actually, that’s a racist conclusion, it is definitely just and proper for the law to bring the races together compulsorily, because state action premised on the idea the “negro race” is naturally inferior is illegal, and the separation is itself a consequence of state action.
Any argument that purports to extend that logic to “step 3: it is illegal for a school to voluntarily try to make sure they are bringing different racial groups together” is not credibly based on steps 1 and 2. It’s just going back to step 1, and saying the races are naturally distinct, and shouldn’t be integrated.
I don’t think he made a mistake, because i am very cynical and think he doesn’t actually care about Asians, nor about holistic admissions. I think he filled a suit on behalf of Asians in an attempt to get standing, and his real concern is for wealthy white applicants.
And while there is plenty of room to criticize holistic admissions, it’s not clear what Harvard ought to be doing. It’s not as if you can rank all the applicants in some objective way that corresponds to Harvard’s goals (which is not to educate the most academically gifted, but to educate future leaders, and to maintain the prestige of Harvard.)
Which do you rank first? The kid who might lead the football team to victory? The potential Nobel prize winner? The potential future president? The potential world class cellist?
Harvard could literally fill its freshman class with students who scored 1600 on the SATs, and that would be bad for its mission.
In short, it’s pitting minorities, and for that matter poor white people too, against each other for the benefit of wealthy white people. Just like when they re-wrote all the state constitutions in the south to make it easier to disenfranchise black people, and sold it to poor whites as somehow being of benefit to them to see their erstwhile socioeconomic peers reduced to a lesser status.
I expect Asian students to get the absolute minimum bump that Harvard can point to and say, “See?! Look, we’re letting in more Asians! We totally don’t have an Asian quota!” So maybe a few percent. Sort of like what happened in the early 90’s.
I expect they won’t, so Harvard can say, “see, we never had an Asian quota”. But i guess we’ll find out in a year.
I’m thinking Harvard is an insurance school for the cellist.
Harvard’s importance includes curing diseases, figuring out how to reduce the murder rate (Kennedy School), and producing Pulitzer Prize winning history books for me to read. Undergraduates have little to do with that. And whether a high school student goes to Chicago rather than Harvard is not a matter of public interest. But the message Harvard sends to high school students, as to what should be their priority, does have significance, because so many of them think Harvard is the best.
Let’s suppose you have the data showing that school students who scored a bit lower, but aced the interview, are more likely to grow up to be governors and Ivy League presidents. I don’t see why anyone should care about that. The problem with basing admissions mostly on standardized tests is that it would send a terrible message to high school students — ignore your teachers and just study for the test. As in Canada, admissions should be mostly based on grades, as a matter of good policy, although other transparent criteria should be legal. Blind cello auditions are transparent. Interviews are not.
Holistic admissions sends bad messages. One is that you need an admissions consultant to craft your essay and prep you for the interview. Another is that having your parents determine your fate is acceptable, unavoidable, and should be embraced.
I remember reading somewhere that there is a tremendous Ivy League development office fear that without preference for alumni children, alumni won’t give — and that this was incorrect. But if you treat alumni children worse than the average applicant, then they won’t want to give. This is one reason why race and class preference are intertwined. Both have to go. Biden was a fool not to make this the focus of his reaction to the decision.
Yoyo Ma went to Harvard. I’m sure his musical ability was a major reason Harvard wanted him. Wikipedia says he also went to Juliard.
I mean, they can (and of course do) say that, but it’s really clear to anyone who looks at the percentage of Asians at Harvard graphed over time, and they know that.
(I really wish I could find a graphic with more recent numbers in it, though – anyone have one? The percentage has clearly gone up substantially since 2010 but I don’t know what those numbers look like as a trendline.)
But yes, we’ll find out. Though this year the percentage admitted actually went up by two percent as well. Maybe it’s a coincidence that this happened the same year that this case was ongoing. Could be.
There’s also the Lampoon, a funky little burger joint just off campus, and getting pranked by MIT.
So, if it goes up, that proves they had a quota, and if it doesn’t, that proves they still do?