As colleges nationwide await a Supreme Court decision, they face an uncertain future about how to craft a class and ensure diversity within their student body. The Supreme Court sided with a Virginia school board in an admissions case. Have these measures proven successful? Fast forward to [today] the chokehold has gone away., Affirmative action opponents often favor so-called race-neutral admissions policies, which do not explicitly consider race. Glynn, Sarah Jane. On October 31, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases about the consideration of race in college admissions: SFFA v. UNC and SFFA v. Harvard. In a response filed Wednesday in the Supreme Court, the school board insisted that its admissions policy is "race-neutral" and said the 4th Circuit was "entirely within its . UVA President Jim Ryan 92 and Provost Ian Baucom issued a statement to University students, faculty, staff and foundations Friday, ahead of Mondays hearing. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch voted to block the new policy, but gave no reasons for their decisions. Within the past few years, Harvard University has been under legal attack to ban affirmative action in its admission process despite the literature available indicating that schools that rely on race-neutral policies and abandon affirmative action decision-making are less accessible and less diverse to underrepresented students of color (Burgess 2020). Evaluate how your institution can continually improve, focusing on, among other things, strategic plans and progress benchmarks. For example, in the first year UC Berkeley eliminated race as a factor in its admissions, the admissions rate for Black students dropped from 50 percent to 20 percent and from 45 . These two cases were heard separately over the course of the day. In 2000, UGA dropped its race-based admissions formula and moved toward a race-neutral admissions policy, which became permanent in 2006. In this video, we look back at the decades-long history of affirmative . But the view of race consciousness as racial discrimination is deeply flawed. The Failure of Race-Blind Economic Policy. The Atlantic, February 16, 2017. Here's how to tilt it back. Articles The plan guarantees students in the top 10% of their high school class automatic admission to any public university in the state. At UCLA, Black enrollment, which had been 7% before Proposition 209, fell to 3.4% by 1998. As a result, those who are admitted are less likely to enroll. As just one example of the gap between the promises of the act and the reality, decades later African Americans still face disparately low rates of homeownership, as shown in Figure A. The United States' highest court is hearing arguments against using race as a factor in college admissions policies Monday in cases involving the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Harvard University. A former columnist for The Chronicle Darlene Earnest is a copy editor for BestColleges. He has 30 years of experience in higher education as a university administrator and faculty member and teaches writing at Johns Hopkins University. Forde-Mazrui said he continues to be disappointed that the primary justification for affirmative action in the legal landscape is diversity. Black undergraduate enrollment fell from 7.03% in 2006, when Proposal 2 was passed, to 3.92% in 2021. Countywide, the demographic breakdown of all high school students is 38% white, 27% Latino, 19.5% Asian and 10% Black. 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41058335. State and local policymakers play a large role in advancing these policies and ensuring equitable and comprehensive pathways for people of color to fully participate in historically inaccessible institutions. The level of racial diversity at such schools, however, has not been as robust as it would be if race could be considered.. Affirmative Action Just Lost in CaliforniaAgain. Vox Media, November 4, 2020. v. Regents of the University of Michigan et al. And the Supreme Court has made clear that quotas are unconstitutional.. UT argues that the Court has already held that a university's interest in diversity is compelling, and that UT's admissions policy is narrowly tailored, because race-neutral approaches are insufficient to achieve its interest. Voters in California passed Proposition 209 in 1996, banning race-conscious admissions policies. The wisdom of race-based admissions policies like Harvard's is subject to vigorous debate. endobj California, where voters banned affirmative action in 1996, has already . "Despite persistent, vigorous, and varied efforts to increase student-body racial and ethnic diversity by race-neutral means, admission and enrollment of underrepresented minority students have . This notion dismisses centuries of racist policies that have created and reinforced structural barriers to prosperity, safety, and equity for these groups. Similar studies conducted by Georgetown's Center on Education and the Workforce issued the same verdict. The act did not tackle the residential patternssuch as the segregation into neighborhoods with lower price appreciation and less investmentthat resulted from the past policies (Rothstein 2017). 61 0 obj Prince 12.5 (www.princexml.com) endobj The law was passed once again in 2020. <>1]/P 6 0 R/Pg 45 0 R/S/Link>> Over the last 40 years, the incarcerated population has increased by 500%, with 2 million people in prison and jail today (The Sentencing Project 2021). 43 0 obj 2021. 23 0 obj Two "race-neutral alternatives" are frequently proposed: a search for socioeconomic diversity, which is often a proxy for racial and ethnic diversity, and a plan to admit the top candidates . The Sentencing Project. One reason is cost. Readersinterested in delving deeper into the issues touched on in this chapter are encouraged to explore the following resources suggested by the author. The outcome of this case will affect the admissions schemes and racial demographics of universities. During that span, the percentage of college-aged Black students in Michigan increased from 16% to 19%. University of Texas's race-conscious admissions policy against the challenger's arguments that the university must instead, as a race-neutral alternative, expand its policy of admitting the top 10% of students from the state's high schools. These disparities are especially problematic given that, with an increasing share of women also being the sole breadwinners for their households, Black women carry a significant amount of the economic cost (Glynn 2019). Review this recorded session from June2022 to learn additional specific, race-neutral enrollment management strategies in advance of the major U.S. Supreme Court action expected this fall and next year. The Unfulfilled Promise of the Fair Housing Act. The New Yorker, April 11, 2018. Harvard and UNC are asking the justices to allow Grutter and other similar decisions to stand. The Sentencing Project, October 2021. 2017. Nellis, Ashley. 1: 5681. 2011. We must face race head-on to meaningfully address the racial inequality that persists in our society. Writing in The Economist, Kahlenberg suggests giving a leg up to economically disadvantaged students of all races, a disproportionate share of whom are people of colour. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Under the new admissions policy at Thomas Jefferson, the entering freshman class would be 54% Asian . For example, while the Fair Housing ActTitle VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968outlaws housing discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability, or familial status,1 it has never fully delivered on its promise to promote and further integration (Adams 2018). Jones, Tiffany, and Andrew Howard Nichols. A moral policy approach for addressing persistent group-based disparities, Serving, organizing, and empowering communities of color, Best practices for aligning research, advocacy, and activism, Asian Americans and the anti-racist equity agenda, Racial and ethnic disparities in the United States, Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN), The Failure of Race Neutral Policies: How Mandatory Terms and Sentencing Enhancements Contribute to Mass Racialized Incarceration, The Failure of Race-Blind Economic Policy, Race Neutral Policies as Barriers to Reconciliation, Theres No Such Thing as Race-Neutral Policy (with Valerie Wilson), The Unfulfilled Promise of the Fair Housing Act, Race-Conscious PoliciesIncluding Affirmative ActionAre Necessary for Addressing Racial Inequity, Affirmative Action Just Lost in CaliforniaAgain, Intersectionality and Public Policy: Some Lessons from Existing Models, Race, Mass Incarceration, and the Disastrous War on Drugs, Housing Vacancies and Homeownership (CPS/HVS), Racial Representation in Professional Occupations: By the Numbers, Black Women Workers Are Essential During the Crisis and for the Recovery but Still Are Greatly Underpaid, Guiding principles for anti-racist research, the bodycam for racial economic injustice, Multidimensional identities of the Hispanic population in the United States, The power of self-determination in building sustainable economies in Indian Country, Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy PREE, Economic Analysis and Research Network EARN. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action et al. See National Fair Housing Alliance 2021. 10 After two decades with Proposition 209 in California, college enrollment by black and Latino students was lower than before the proposition was passed. Sawhill, Isabell V., and Richard V. Reeves. Campuses that have implemented race-neutral admissions policies in recent years have seen dramatic declines in enrollment numbers among underrepresented groups. And at its most selective campuses, the shortfall is especially apparent, causing African American, Native American, and Latino/a students to struggle with feelings of racial isolation. 60 0 obj These cases arise from two distinct yet related lawsuits. Lawyers for some parents had sued to challenge the change in the admissions policy, which they said discriminated against Asian American students. Presently there are two new major categories of race-neutral approaches to admissions. Intersectionality and Public Policy: Some Lessons from Existing Models. Political Research Quarterly 64, no. We need disaggregated race data to truly aid in identifying the inequities, documenting the harm, and advancing equitable and comprehensive policies to address the inequities. At seven of them, the race-neutral admissions policies adopted to replace affirmative action either maintained or increased representation of African American and Latino students on campus. Prepare for the 2023 decision right now following the ADCs Key Action Guide for Every Institution. But leaders at the University of California and the University of Michigan say their race-neutral admissions policies have not worked, telling the Supreme Court and filings they haven`t been able to significantly increase enrollment of underrepresented minorities sends affirmative action bans in their states took effect. Paul B. Stephan 77 Weighs In, A Year of War: Three Experts Weigh In on the Ukraine Invasion So Far, Common Law Explores Why Once-Contentious Natural Gas Pipelines Are Now Rubber-Stamped, Book by Danielle Citron Traces History of Privacy Law, Reforms for Today, Podcast: Global Crisis Triggered by Knowledge Economy, Says Paul B. Stephan 77, Podcast: Kim Krawiec Discusses Political Economy of Organ Transplantation. Campuses that have implemented race-neutral admissions policies in recent years have seen dramatic declines in enrollment numbers among underrepresented groups. Research shows that schools that rely on race-neutral policies areless diverse and less accessible to historically underrepresented students of color. In the 2016 verdict, the court found that race played only a modest role UT's "holistic" affirmative action policy. 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