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Students walk through the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan on Tuesday, after the US supreme court upheld a ban on affirmative action. Photograph: Ryan Garza / AP Photograph: Ryan Garza/AP
Students walk through the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan on Tuesday, after the US supreme court upheld a ban on affirmative action. Photograph: Ryan Garza / AP Photograph: Ryan Garza/AP

Class-based college admissions are no magic wand for keeping schools diverse

This article is more than 9 years old

The US supreme court's Michigan decision brings the next chapter of affirmative action. Race-conscious policies may be imperfect, but they can't be forgotten

Every blow to affirmative action sends people casting about desperately for alternatives. With the particular hostility of the Roberts Court to race-conscious admissions policies, the blows are coming faster and faster these days. And Tuesday's US supreme court ruling in Schuette v Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action was no different: socioeconomic-based affirmative action is now the impending – but seriously flawed – substitute to which universities are turning as they anticipate a day, perhaps in the not-so-distant future, when they can no longer consider race in the application process.

Class-centric approaches to diversity are already making headway at US colleges, but they're not the substitute for race that income- or wealth-focused proponents imagine. Even the most fervent supporters of class-based admissions are quick to acknowledge the dilemma: the sudden ascendance of socioeconomic affirmative action has been made possible by American courts with a waning appetite for racial remedies to racial discrimination – not because it's the best solution.

To be sure, the most compelling argument for class-based admissions preferences is one of political practicality. Public support for affirmative action is at historic lows, and the supreme court is eagerly whittling away at what gains had come from affirmative action. If there was a time to find a politically sustainable substitute, that time is now.

Advocates of a socioeconomic alternative – either by income levels, wealth or household composition – make an intriguing case. Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and the approach's most forceful advocate, has made the argument several times: when it comes to the related educational barriers of class and race, class predominates. What's more, according to Kahlenberg and researcher Halley Potter's analysis, seven of 10 public universities have been able to maintain or even exceed black and Latino student enrollment totals by adding new considerations for low-income applicants, including in some states where affirmative action was banned.

But this crowd ends up pitting class and race against each other. Whether it's political expediency or ideological difference, proponents of a class-based approach seem as eager as affirmative action foes to dispense with race-conscious remedies altogether. So long as universities may continue to consider race in their admissions, it's disingenuous – if not dangerous – to present an either-or option.

Race and socioeconomic status converge in plenty of ways. Kahlenberg told me himself last spring when we were awaiting the supreme court's ruling in Fisher v Texas:

Much of the reason African-American and Latino students are socioeconomically disadvantaged has to do with racial discrimination in the housing market, with our history of slavery and segregation.

So, yes, class and race are in many ways inextricably linked, but it's folly to focus solely on socioeconomic factors if you're looking for diversity in college admissions – they'll never serve as a magic proxy for race.

When controlled for income, K-12 students of color still lag behind their white peers in academic achievement, as well as in their admission rates to selective colleges. Black students still grow up in very segregated neighborhoods, and therefore attend racially isolated schools. In 2014, a full 60 years since Brown v Board of Education, scores of primary and secondary schools throughout the country look as if the landmark school integration ruling never happened at all.

California, for one, has yet to recover from the disastrous impact of Proposition 209, the nation's first statewide affirmative action ban, which state voters passed in 1996. Despite adopting aggressively class-based, race-neutral admissions policies to stay in line with Prop 209, the state's flagship universities have not been able to return black student enrollment to their pre-1996 levels. Today, California's university system is educating an increasingly economically diverse but racially isolated crop of students. Roughly one-third of University of California undergrads qualify for federal Pell Grants, but in 2012-2013, black students made up just 2.4% of UC-Berkeley's enrolled undergrads. African-Americans, meanwhile, make up about 6.6% of the state's population. The economic workaround is not working alone.

On Tuesday the supreme court upheld the constitutionality of Proposal 2, Michigan's 2006 voter-backed affirmative action ban. Since Prop 2, black student enrollment at the University of Michigan dropped 30%. The race ban isn't working either.

We live in an increasingly stratified landscape of higher education, one where college tuition has ballooned 60% in just two decades; where the nation's top producer of black undergrad degree holders is the scandal-plagued, for-profit University of Phoenix; and where Stanford University recently boasted its lowest admittance rate in its history (5%, for those keeping track). Affirmative action, even in its gutted state, is still crucial to mitigate the harm of enduring racial discrimination. Class-based approaches cannot do all the heavy lifting by themselves.

However enticing, it's plainly impossible to rectify that which we are too afraid to name. Racial oppression is built into the very foundations of America. That enduring legacy is embedded into our current social, political and economic reality. At a time when economic and racial stratification is growing, privileging the consideration of one over the other is a naive cop-out. It's not hard to imagine a legal reality where universities are barred from considering race at all in their admissions. Until then, we need to be considering both options.

"And race matters for reasons that are only skin deep, that cannot be discussed any other way, and that cannot be wished away," Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her impassioned dissent Tuesday. "We ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society."

Wherever the majority of the supreme court finds itself on the issue, we'll find no escape from racism by refusing to confront it – or by hiding behind a race-blind quick fix.

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