When the Supreme Court ruled earlier this summer that institutions of higher education cannot consider race in their admission decisions, they undermined the concept of “affirmative action,” one of few well-established tools designed to acknowledge and rectify the continuing and tangible legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and redlining.
The term “affirmative action” is so commonly used that it’s easy to forget the actual meaning of the phrase: after decades and centuries of policies that enslaved, excluded, and disadvantaged Black people and other people of color, we are morally obligated to take “affirmative” steps to reverse the individual and collective harm that societal realities continue to impose. It is an acknowledgement that outlawing overt racism is only a first step.
Why is affirmative action in higher education so important? Because the realities of historic and current inequality, inequity, and segregation in P-12 education stack the deck against students of color.
Imagine a world where no affirmative action in higher education would be necessary. For that to be possible, there would have to be no correlation between race and how supported and prepared students are. All students would have to have had the same access to quality early education, to individual attention, to the most skilled and experienced teachers, to staff who have respect, empathy and high expectations for them, to curriculum in which they see themselves, to tutoring, musical training, college counseling, mental health counseling, out-of-school support, and all the other resources that set students up for success.
In sum, all students would have to feel welcome, safe, seen, supported, and challenged in their schools.
The sheer difficulty of picturing such an America speaks volumes to how far we have left to go. As Justice Sonya Sotomayor said in her dissent, the Court’s decision “cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter.”
So what are we to do?
While higher ed institutions scramble to find ways to meet their academic and moral obligations to provide the diverse, inclusive, and culturally rich environments that benefit all students and make affirmative amends for the failures of the past and present, we must dedicate ourselves to expediting the day when affirmative action would not be necessary.
Perfect equity may seem beyond America’s grasp, but progress toward the north star of a welcoming public school for every child is not. Fighting for the proper resources, funding, and governance necessary to create truly welcoming schools has always been critical – what the Supreme Court just did to affirmative action makes it an immediate moral imperative.
Now that the Supreme Court has eviscerated one avenue of repair for America’s original sin, we have no choice but to double down on the uniquely American vision of public education as the great equalizer.
Respectfully,
Lisa Weil
