If it were only about the less qualified getting preference in admission, based on race, then it was a weak and hollow policy that needed to go away. But Affirmative Action has never been that simple. Yet it seems the national discourse has settled on just that. A simple and hollow understanding, and so, it’s gone, leaving it’s true merits untested.
I am compelled to ask. “Why?” I have been driven mad the last few days as I listen to people who should know better, argue against this emaciated shell disguised as Affirmative Action. I know why the simple would prefer the simplistic, but there must be another reason why this simplistic understanding has become so easily accepted, by people who should be smarter than that. People who are smarter than that.
The reality is that colleges and universities have never and will never simply line up test scores and grades from highest to lowest, draw a line under the number of enrollment slots, and deem everyone above the line most qualified and therefore admitted. This didn’t happen before Affirmative Action and it won’t happen after.
Test scores, grades, and class rank are used to set a baseline for qualifications. As a result, schools routinely have more “qualified” applicants than they have enrollment slots. They must then choose from a large pool of “qualified” applicants. In order to do so, they rely on other, accepted subjective qualifiers. Included, among others, are essays, regions of the country, economic status, extracurricular activities, legacies, endowments, citizenship, recommendations, and the always sketchy, timely donations to the institution. Whether unintentional or willful, the ignorance of this gives life to the lie that admissions will now be about merit alone.
It has been from these additional subjective qualifiers that African Americans have been historically deemed “less qualified.” It is from within these corridors the shadowy figures of race and bias lurk, finding disqualifiers like black sounding names, and High Schools with names like Booker T. Washington, Phillis Wheatley, and George Washington Carver. These subjective qualifiers, that are not going away, should unmask the simplistic, yet pervasive, notion that we have now moved from preference to merit. This ruling will only enrich the soil out of which racial disparities have historically grown.
I have never forgotten when my mother was cautioned by a teacher at the Magnet High School I attended. Despite the fact that, based on my grades and test scores, I was qualified, he still found it necessary to say that students like me, from “academically passive” Junior High Schools, don’t do well at their school.
We know these things have happened and do happen, and the evidence is not just anecdotal. But the knowledge of these happenings is being relegated to the fringes of education, working to disconnect us from the roots that bring discomfort. Some genuinely believe these things no longer happen. Others need to believe they don’t. As if we got here from nowhere. The presences of these qualifiers, or disqualifiers, based on race, made Affirmative Action necessary. And they add flesh and strength to the shell of what is so easily argued against in the public discourse. They also acknowledge, we know who we are. We know how we got here.
Echos of the Past: The Elephant
If it sounds like I am questioning the motives of those who are against Affirmative Action, then you would be partly right. I am compelled to question those who should know better. I question those who know Affirmative Action did not arise out of the ground of equal opportunity. I question the men and women my mother’s age who have seen “whites only” signs. Those who heard the vitriol hurled at anyone who dared challenge it. Those who know blacks could not attend the University of Texas Law School and instead were steered to the Texas State University for Negroes, later renamed, Texas Southern University.
When historical disparities persist, isn’t only reasonable to question the motives of those who make decisions to remove the safeguards designed to address those disparities. Especially when the disparities are the proven result of racial biases. Should we not question their motives when the people making the decisions have historically benefited from the disparities? When the disparities will buttresses their wealth and power.
It is idiomatic that power corrupts and does so absolutely. Are we to ignore wisdom when she cries in the street, in favor of a noble, color-blind naivety about how far we’ve come? Should we assume that the wealthy and powerful will not protect it’s own interests? Should we really assume that we have conquered the sins of our past by ruling that race should no longer be considered for college admittance? To do so forced us to trust the very institutions and practices that had to have safeguards like Affirmative Action placed on them, while having yet to prove they can be racially unbiased without safeguards. To ask, is to strain credibility beyond it’s demonstrated capacity. No, this decision to not consider race in college admissions, is all about just that, race.
Nevertheless, despite this latest backlash to progress, we will adjust. We will be okay. Just as we endured the Jim Crow backlash to Reconstruction, and the Conservatism backlash to the Civil Rights Movement, we will find a way. Make no mistake, this is indeed a setback, and it will not be easy, but nothing in our history has been, and we are still here. This is our story, and we will continue to progress.
The Point of Reflection 