Using Race-Based College Admissions Is Morally Egregious and Nonsensical

Earlier this week, we celebrated the Fourth of July, which commemorates the day that the Declaration of Independence was ratified. A major part of the Declaration of Independence is the idea that "all men are created equal" and that all people are endowed with such "unalienable rights" as life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court brought us one step closer to that ideal by striking down race-conscious college admissions in the case of Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. This case not only reaffirms that two wrongs do not make a right, but also that the Fourteenth Amendment means "prohibiting racial discrimination in all but the narrowest circumstances, even when such discrimination is done in service of an otherwise 'noble' goal."

My opposition to affirmative action is nothing new and it still stands even after this latest Supreme Court ruling. When it began in the 1960s, affirmative action was meant to grant special consideration to historically excluded groups, particularly African-Americans and women. The purpose of affirmative action has been to increase employment and education opportunities for these historically underrepresented demographic groups. 

The problem for proponents is that they think they are ending discrimination when affirmative action itself is a form of discrimination. To quote Ibram X. Kendi, "the only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination." The problem with Kendi and this thought process of other affirmative action proponents is that it would be an endless cycle of discrimination. Affirmative action does not eliminate or lessen racial discrimination, but serves to perpetuate it.

As Chief Justice John Roberts brought up in his majority opinion, "the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual, not on the basis of race." Thankfully, most Americans can see why affirmative action is morally problematic, even if university admissions officers cannot. The ideal of equal treatment is still held by Americans of all races. According to the most recent Pew Research polling data (see below), most Americans do not believe race or ethnicity should be a factor in college admissions decisions, and that includes 59 percent of African-Americans. It is a little more divided with selective colleges specifically (see here), but the general finding remains the same: most Americans do not care for race being used as a factor in college admissions. 

One of the other reasons I do not care for affirmative action is because the idea of using race as a basis for college admissions is that upon examination, it is as absurd as it is arbitrary. Justice Neil Gorsuch does a fine job illustrating the inchoate nature of these so-called racial categories in his concurring opinion in the ruling:

These classifications rest on incoherent stereotypes. Take the 'Asian' category. It sweeps into one pile East Asians (e.g., Chinese, Korean, Japanese) and South Asians (e.g., Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi), even though together they constitute about 60 % of the world's population...This agglomeration of so many people paves over countless differences in 'language,' 'culture,' and historical experience.

Gorsuch goes through this analysis for Hispanic, White, and Black. I covered the "White" category when refuting the ridiculous notion of "white culture", so need to do that here. I will provide Gorsuch's analysis on the ridiculousness of the category of "Black":

'The category of' 'Black or African American' covers everyone from a descendant of enslaved persons who grew up poor in the rural South, to a first-generation child of wealthy Nigerian immigrants, to a Black-identifying applicant with multiracial ancestry whose family lives in a typical American suburb.'

This illogic manifests in another way. To quote Gorsuch again, "If anything attempts to divide us all up into a handful of groups have become only more incoherent with time. American families have become increasingly multicultural, a fact that has led to unseemly disputes doubt whether someone is really a member of a certain racial or ethnic group." These crazily broad categorizations used for race similarly shows the illogic of the argument for reparations. 

It also brings up another question of what constitutes an adequate level of diversity: "Should universities be racially representative of their states, their nations, perhaps even the globe? In practical terms, it is a codeword for treating people according to the color of their skin rather than the content of their character."  As the libertarian Cato Institute rightly points out, "the diversity rationale is inherently stereotypical because it assumes that students brings something to the table by virtue of their race alone." And how do we measure diversity? The majority opinion illustrates this point: 

"At the outset, it is unclear how courts are supposed to measure any of these [diversity] goals. How is a court to know whether leaders have been adequately trained; whether the exchange of ideas is robust; or whether new knowledge is being developed? Even if these goals could somehow be measured, moreover, how is a court to know when they have been reached, and when the perilous remedy of racial preferences may cease?"

As Justice Thomas put it, "As she [Justice Jackson] sees it, we are all inexorably trapped in a fundamentally racist society, with the original sin of slavery and the historical subjugation of black Americans still determining our lives today." The use of statistical disparities is the weak argument that Justice Jackson uses in her dissent. The problem is, much like I brought up last May, that the existence of disparity does not automatically mean racism or discrimination. Plus, as Justice Thomas rightly illustrates, what schools cannot do is "use the applicant's skin color as a heuristic, assuming that because the applicant checks the box for 'black' he therefore conforms to the university's monolithic and reductionist view of an abstract, average black person."

In other words, assuming that individuals are primarily or solely their skin color is not only untrue, it is racist to generalize individuals at that level. The Supreme Court was correct in ruling that affirmative action could not be justified on logical or ethical terms. As we will see in my upcoming piece, affirmative action does not a have public policy justification either.