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A view of the campus of Harvard University on July 8, 2020 in Cambridge, Massachusetts – Image: © AFP
If you read the SCOTUS ruling on Students for Fair Admissions vs Harvard judgment, you’ll notice an odd point. SCOTUS goes to great lengths to emphasize that race is a compulsory point for consideration when judging applicants for admission. This is an Affirmative Action option, enshrined for many years.
The theory is that this form of selection improves the chances for non-white students to gain entry to otherwise inaccessible colleges. This is also a major conservative issue. Conservatives oppose any form of Affirmative Action on principle. It’s part of their global Bring Back the Stone Age agenda. This is therefore the logic of the decision; remove any chance of Affirmative Action regarding college admissions.
There’s a certain level of hi-rev absurd conservative publicity spin in this decision. It’s intended to be the default Jim Crow option to re-segregate America. This decision is supposed to shut the doors to colleges for non-white students.
Well, does it?
No, it doesn’t.
It can do the exact opposite.
Ironically, the colleges are under no obligation to consider race. They’re simply under an obligation not to discriminate based on race.
The SCOTUS ruling goes to some lengths to detail the process of admission. It points out that race is currently a factor for consideration in the formal process of deciding admissions. The main reason for that is a well-intentioned but dubiously worded application reading process for admissions which requires race to be considered. There’s a severe twist in this tale.
The legal status of the word “race” is highly debatable. In strict interpretation, except in anti-discrimination matters, it has no status. Everyone has equal rights. The Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees rights to all Americans is ironically the working principle SCOTUS has used as the basis for decision.
That cuts both ways.
If race is simply excluded from the formal application consideration process, the whole admissions issue is made very easy. It becomes a Yes or No process. As a direct result of this ruling, Harvard can just open the doors as it wishes to any students it deems suitable for admission. No discrimination, for or against, is required.
Consider:
- Race is not and cannot be an academic qualification.
- The decision whether to admit any student remains at the sole discretion of the college.
- Student placements can be made on better grades or better fits to the degree courses.
- The college cannot be compelled to accept any application except by law in individual cases.
- There is nothing in this ruling which can actually exclude non-white students.
- At its discretion, the college may set up and engage in any desired admission process based on merit without any legal basis to challenge admission decisions.
Does this look a bit more hygienic than the “Buy my rich brat a degree” culture which is doing so much to discredit US colleges? On strictly merit-based criteria, none of these Future Plutobrats of America would get in the door.
The conservatives think it’s a win. Let them think that. It’ll take them 50 years to figure it out.
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