Tie college admissions to a random, unique identifier, and make it as blind to subjective opinion as possible. It could go through an intermediary that does have the personal information, but that gives the universities access to that identifier and only non-identifying information. Ask for motivational letters without as little personal information as possible (or no motivational letter at all), no picture, no name, no sex, financial status, nothing that’s identifiable to the people who have to evaluate the candidates.
The issue with this approach is that it further entrenches gaps that are already there. The best predictor of economic outcome is zip code. That’s because schools are funded by local property tax. Live in a wealthier area, get better schools. Better schools lead to a better outcome. Schools in poorer districts stay poorer. It’s a system that is self perpetuating.
Replacing affirmative action with something that is strictly income based could help but that ignores other systemic biases that are based on race rather that income.
I feel like if we’re ending affirmative action we should also put in place more restrictions on legacy admissions which is just affirmative action for dumb, rich kids and represents a much bigger chunk of students than affirmative action ever did.
Unpopular(?) left-center opinion incoming:
Y’all are in here acting like the world is ending. The Supreme Court just said “No, the Constitution makes clear that you can’t use that specific tool. Use another”.
It did NOT say, for instance: “you can never implement any policy whose outcome is a student body whose racial diversity reflects that of the society”. Just that the policy can’t achieve that outcome by approving or denying students based on their race. You think there’s not room to move within that?
I support the intention behind affirmative action, and I want to live in a world where race predicts as little as possible about your life, but I can’t disagree with Roberts when he says AA is discrimination on the basis of race. And I can’t argue with anyone who says this kind of discrimination is not constitutional (when federal authority OR funding is involved).
And you’ll find me on the left side of most SCOTUS decisions, but I don’t buy the arguments from the dissenting justices, specifically that the court is obliged to keep allowing an unconstitutional practice in order to (my paraphrasing) keep the racial mix of our future leaders balanced. I understand what they mean when they say that, and I agree diversity is important in leaders. It is not the job of the Supreme Court to make this happen.
This affects white people too. Asian students are often discriminated against when applying for colleges. I imagine that we’ll be seeing a lot of Asian students displacing both white and brown students as a result of this.
What a massive win for Asian Americans! They’ll finally be allowed to apply to universities and jobs across the nation without facing legal systemic racial discrimination. I’m surprised by the negativity in here. It’s 2023. It’s time to end systemic racial discrimination in America.
As a first generation white student wanting to go to college, this makes me happy! Hopefully other first generation white students will get equal treatment too.
Edit: I guess racism against white people is socially acceptable now…
