Affirmative action in college admissions has been around since the mid-1960s, intended to accomplish the impossible – obliterate the grotesque exclusivity of higher education throughout the United States resulting from the systematic and savage discrimination on which our nation’s economic disparities were constructed.
This long overdue attempt to marginally and symbolically offset centuries of injustices was almost immediately opposed with cries of so-called reverse discrimination. Just as swiftly, the beneficiaries of affirmative action were resented and marginalized for their sudden narrow advantage.
Such policies, it was argued, punished young white college applicants for the sins of their ancestors – and mostly some other white person’s ancestors. And they stigmatized African American students, whether or not they were the beneficiaries of affirmative action.
These policies also did nothing to mitigate our K-12 system’s “savage inequalities,” which author Jonathan Kozol detailed in his bestseller book by that name.
What are ‘objective’ college admissions assessments?
Affirmative action gave higher education opportunities to thousands of first-generation students of color and changed the trajectory of many families and of our country. It helped integrate the professional class and modestly closed the racial wealth gap created through centuries of inequality.
Did it disadvantage college applicants of European and Asian descent?
If freshman seats are a finite resource then yes, and, to be clear, not all white and Asian college applicants enjoy the same historical advantage. Generational poverty and lack of access is not exclusive to any ethnic group.
In 1996, voters in my state passed a proposition that banned the use of race-based affirmative action at the University of California. Since then, its student population of African American and Hispanic students has declined sharply, perpetuating a vicious and destructive lie – that there just aren’t enough qualified students of color.
This implication is based on the assumption that colleges and universities are accurately – and without bias – measuring the intellectual capabilities and college readiness of applicants.
Affirmative action wasn’t a handout.It gave me an opportunity.
From what I have learned from the admissions people with whom I’ve spoken, such “objective” assessments are based on grades, SAT or ACT scores (much less in recent years), personal statements and other written responses, a résumé of extracurricular activities and community service, and, mostly for private universities, letters of recommendation and, sometimes marginally, interviews.
High school grades might seem a fair criterion, and no teacher I know wants to disempower that which we command. But, honestly, grades can be wildly inconsistent. Some teachers are harder than others, and the “honors” and “AP” labels don’t always represent the same degree of demand or curricular complexity.
I’m sure that most private school teachers have unwavering integrity, but do we really believe that a teacher in a $50,000-a-year prep school can always objectively grade a student whose family has made a six- or seven-figure donation? Would the administration and board really allow a teacher to fail such a student?
Public school teachers have pressures of our own – administration and district bosses who want graduation rates high. On top of that, now thousands of teaching positions remain unfilled throughout the country. Who is grading the students in classrooms with a revolving door of substitutes?
What SAT, ACT test scores and grades don’t tell us about students
Perhaps now that the Supreme Court has made its regressive ruling for Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, some other lawsuit can have them consider the grading practices on which all of this is based.
Even if grades were always consistent and fair, what exactly are those grades measuring?
Mostly work ethic and compliance.
The former seems a fair criterion. College academics require the kind of discipline and focus, and high school grades tend to reflect this.
Nothing wrong with being a compliant person, either, but high schools often marginalize students who are outspoken and oppositional. If colleges and universities want to believe they are nurturing the next generation of leaders and change agents, I’m not sure why they would be so swayed by high school grades on compliance.
Of course, for generations, the SAT and ACT tests offered a seemingly objective measure of student intelligence and ability. Only it turned out they more accurately measured whether a student’s family had the resources to pay for private test prep.
What SCOTUS decision means for colleges:Supreme Court ends affirmative action in admissions. Colleges will be whiter for it.
In fairness, any student who ever benefited from that advantage also had to work their butt off preparing for the test, but it is also fair to point out that low-income students are more likely to be working their butts off in part-time (or sometimes full-time) jobs and taking care of siblings and other child relatives along with other responsibilities for their families.
Every part of the college admissions process presents an opportunity for privileged families and their children to exploit their advantage – and for the disadvantaged to feel discouraged.
In that regard, affirmative action has always existed – affirming privilege. No ballot proposition or lawsuit has hindered it. If universities want incoming freshmen classes that aren’t quite so privileged and are more diverse, they might be well-served to rethink the process, the criteria, the application.
Would it be such a great loss if ambitious high school students had less anxiety and agony about maintaining a perfect academic record weighted with AP classes, along with an impossibly impressive (sometimes half made-up) extracurricular résumé? Or a brilliant personal statement – written with (or by) a special tutor (for those who can afford one)?
What if colleges and universities recruited scholars the way they recruited athletes? Don’t get me wrong, I love March Madness. I’m just not so crazy about the November, December, January and February madness of college applications and higher education’s depraved indifference to the emotional assault on the disadvantaged students of color I teach and try to console.
What if colleges sent recruiters to classrooms instead of football games? What if they created a clearing house for scholars that tracked the best and brightest with an army of recruiters who went around getting to know all the remarkable high school students from every part of the country and every ethnicity and all levels of income?
What if all the conservative justices on the Supreme Court cared to acquaint themselves with the fact that affirmative action was never more than an adjustment to a system that never had anything to do with equal access?
Larry Strauss has been a high school English teacher in South Los Angeles since 1992. He is a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors and the author of more than a dozen books, including “Students First and Other Lies: Straight Talk From a Veteran Teacher” and his new novel, “Light Man.” Follow him on Twitter: @LarryStrauss
