A Seat at the Table
I’ve reached the age when young people sometimes offer me their seats on the subway in New York City. I take it, knowing I could stand, if necessary. Is that cheating?
Some people think affirmative action is cheating. They say it’s giving seats to people who don’t deserve it.
The policy of affording special consideration in the college application process to students of color, who may have less stellar academic or extracurricular records — or test scores — than some of their white counterparts, in order to create a more diverse student body at elite institutions was dealt a death knell last month by the Supreme Court.
No matter that these students may have come from poor schools with few resources and little access to extracurricular activities like camps and lessons and tutors that other applicants enjoyed since birth.
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
A lot has been written and said about affirmative action since it was outlawed and we wanted to weigh in with some facts, thoughts, and questions to ponder.
Affirmative action was only relevant in 200 of the nation’s colleges and universities and affected only 2% of the Black, Hispanic and Native American students in college.
That said, it did create opportunities for 10,000 to 15,000 kids of color who might otherwise not have been accepted to these elite schools, giving them access to leadership roles in business and government.
At the same time, a 2019 study found that 43 percent of white students admitted to Harvard University were recruited athletes, legacy students, children of faculty and staff, or were on the dean’s interest list — applicants whose parents or relatives have donated to Harvard.
To be clear, as recently reported in the Boston Globe, a 2019 analysis of Harvard admissions data by three economists found that a “typical applicant with only a 1 percent chance of admission would see his admission likelihood increase to 98 percent if he were a recruited athlete.”
That’s right, the number of students of color who benefited from affirmative action was a drop in the bucket compared to the number of students who benefited from being athletes, legacies, or children of large donors (ALDCs).
Yet, the impact of the end of affirmative action on the lives of students of color will be immeasurably greater than that on the lives of the privileged white students who will flourish whether or not they go to Harvard.
There is great fear that the racial diversity on the campuses of the nation’s elite schools will now decrease, ultimately having a ripple effect in boardrooms across the country.
That said, a recent conversation with a guidance/college counselor at a public New York City high school revealed some hope among professionals that elite colleges committed to diversity will find “workarounds” to the end of affirmative action, ways to grant admission to bright students of color who have tackled adversity and have the grit and talent to succeed at the highest levels.
Affirmative action was never a perfect solution to the problem of unequal education or opportunity in our country.
Affirmative action to promote racial equality was initiated in the workplace as part of the Civil Rights Movement in 1961 and expanded in 1965 to open the doors to the best of higher education for students of color who displayed talent, motivation, and aspiration.
These students were recruited from schools where their achievement may have been stymied by poverty, as well as inadequate schools and opportunities.
The initial belief that diverse campuses would benefit the communities of color blossomed into the realization that diverse campuses benefited everyone.
Yet, there was also the recognition that the educational opportunities offered at the college level were not the whole answer.
Schools from pre-K on up needed to be improved in communities of color where there were few resources, overcrowded classrooms, food insecurity, and other impediments to learning.
And, as Jelani Cobb recently wrote in the New Yorker, “middle-class Black students in the United States are still more likely to attend schools with fewer resources than their middle-class white peers.”
Those issues still wait to be addressed.
And what about the millions of other students of color who graduate – or don’t – from high school each year and were never going to be recruited by the most elite colleges and universities?
The truth is that most young men and women – both white and of color – head straight to the work force or attend less selective schools that don’t consider race in admissions, according to a July 1 article in the New York Times.
With cuts in funding to public colleges and universities (Federal Pell Grants for low income students no longer cover all expenses, for example), these students lack the resources to pay for their education, facing huge debts or dropping out.
The end of affirmative action is a blow, but not the only problem in need of attention for students of color. Loan forgiveness, lower tuition at community colleges and state schools, commitments from institutions with embarrassingly enormous endowments to recruit talented students in need within the boundaries of the new law – these are all needed to help students of color achieve their potential.
What can we do?
For one thing, we all need to remember that attending an elite school need not be the only ticket to success. Plenty of people succeed after attending state colleges and universities. Just ask our president, a proud graduate of the University of Delaware. Our public institutions need to start touting their famous graduates and all their schools have to offer students who are ready to work hard for what they want to achieve.
But while we are struggling with that issue, we should also write to our alma maters and encourage them to drop legacy, athlete, and donor preferences (ALDCs) in their admission policies. Make your donations to your schools, or those of your children, dependent on this.
If enough people of means make it clear that their gifts will be forthcoming only if schools drop their ALDCs, it will have an impact.
Also, let’s support free tuition at community colleges, as well as lower tuition and low interest loans at state colleges and universities. Check out the College for All Act.
It’s the right thing to do.
Best,
Judy (she/her/hers)
Therese (she/her/hers)
Didi (she/her/hers)
Leading Ladies Executive Team