A Shot in the Arm for Racial Equity

By Tim Wise, AlterNet. Posted June 24, 2003.

I felt great relief and some surprise when I heard about the Supreme Court's decisions in the two affirmative action cases from the University of Michigan. Although something of a mixed bag for supporters of affirmative action, the rulings must be considered a victory within the current political climate.

Despite the efforts of the Bush Administration and the clamoring of conservative talk-show hosts and think tanks, the Court in a 5-4 vote upheld the Law School's affirmative action efforts, saying that the attempt by the school to enroll a "critical mass" of students of color was perfectly legitimate, and did not amount to a violation of white students' equal protection rights.

On the other hand, the Court struck down Michigan's undergraduate policy, which also sought to enroll a critical mass of students of color, but did so by establishing a point system, whereby members of the under-represented groups would receive 20 extra points, on a 150-point scale, similar to the 20 points offered to all low-income students (including white ones), and the 16 points offered to students from Michigan's mostly white Upper Peninsula, among others.

I was not surprised to see the point system invalidated by the Court. Yes, the points for students of color paled in comparison to the points available mostly to whites (such as those for AP courses, having attended "highly competitive" high schools, having a parent who attended the University, and the Upper Peninsula points referenced previously); nonetheless, the fact remained that this Court was always likely to view the point system as an indirect quota, while conveniently ignoring the overwhelming whiteness of the other preferences.

Although in one sense this part of the ruling could be seen as a defeat, supporters of affirmative action should see it as less a setback than a new opportunity to promote racial equity.

First off, the only schools impacted by the undergrad ruling should be large, highly selective state institutions, for they are typically the only ones who occasionally resort to point systems to boost enrollment of students of color. Smaller schools and private institutions rarely go this route, preferring a more individualized method of evaluation. Those schools need not worry that their current efforts are now going to be challenged, as they more likely to mirror the Michigan Law School's policy rather than the undergrad system.

As for large schools that do use point systems, frankly, as much as I support them, these types of instruments were always about institutional laziness. After all, when a school gets 25,000 applications for only 5,000 slots, they seek to make their jobs easier in terms of paring down the possible pool of admittees. Since they don't have enough admissions officers to scrutinze each applicant and learn what kinds of barriers and obstacles they had to overcome to attain a decent GPA and SAT score, they devise things like point systems, which assume that any person from an underrepresented group likely has overcome race and possibly class bias, and thus should receive a slight preference.

Don't get me wrong, I happen to think this is a very fair assumption -- and certainly more rational than its opposite, which is that everyone has had equal opportunity and thus should be evaluated identically -- but nonetheless, having an explicit numerical value assigned to minority status has always been more about making life easier for the school, rather than making opportunity broader for such students.

If these schools could properly train admissions staff as to the vagaries of institutional inequity in our nation's K-12 educational system, which in turn is effected by racial bias in housing markets, these officers would be able to evaluate applicants more holistically and take into consideration what it means for a black or Latino or Indian student to achieve, let's say, an 1100 on the SAT, whereas the white median might be 150 points higher.

As several studies have indicated, students of color often underperform whites on standardized tests even when their grades and academic abilities are identical or even greater than their white counterparts. Black students, for example, with identical grades at identical schools, having taken the same coursework as whites, will generally score well below white students on standardized tests.

The reasons for this are myriad, from possible cultural test biases, to what researchers have termed "stereotype threat," which refers to the fear that persons from socially stigmatized groups often experience when taking a test that they know will be viewed by the dominant culture as indicative of their intelligence. If admissions officers were taught to understand the way that stereotype threat has been documented to drive down the SAT scores of highly qualified students of color, they would be able to consider that as they evaluate such students.

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