The Supreme Court recently decided to review affirmative action case, Fisher v. University of Texas. In the case, Abigail Fisher, who’s White, alleged that she was denied admission to the University of Texas because of her race.
As a result, national discourse about perceived merit, societal duty and race continues.
Fisher’s case followed the path of Allan Bakke, a White man, who alleged that he was denied admission to University of California at Davis’ medical school because of quotas.
The Supreme Court ruled that affirmative action and its inherent race consideration is legal; nonetheless, set asides solely for certain groups are not.
Texas currently employs a plan by accepting the top 10 percent of students from high schools to state institutions. Some believe that this alone will diversify classrooms, and that race conscious admissions are unfair.
The thinking is that if largely black and brown areas have students who look like their communities, they will get into college without consideration specifically of their race and/or ethnicity.
Ten percent plans will not suffice.
Students who work hard to remain highly ranked in their classes and score well on standardized tests ought to be rewarded for their efforts; however, in many instances class rank is linked with bureaucracy, and test scores often indicate student familiarity with the mode of assessment than with the actual material.
Middle and upper middle class students often share backgrounds with test creators. From their experiences, many gain additional advantages over students who learn and live differently. People cannot help the circumstances in which they are born.
So what does the Texas case have to do with HBCUs? Since HBCUs were created when America denied equal access to quality life, academic decisions should always be monitored.
Knowing our history can save us from repeating it, and while America has many strong points, it has not always erred on the side of morality and merit.
While the Supreme Court did not decide to review HBCU policies specifically, unwanted mergers of our schools have been suggested just in the last two years.
Mississippi governor Haley Babour proposed that Alcorn State and Mississippi Valley merge into Jackson State.
Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal wanted to merge Southern University with majority institution University of New Orleans, authoring legislation for the effort before its death in state legislature in the face of national opposition from HBCU enthusiasts.
The United States is a purported ideological marketplace, yet choice is constantly undermined. Without diverse routes of attracting and selecting diverse students, American institutions will suffocate in their homogeneity.
Consideration of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, religion, physical and mental ability and other factors make society that much closer to improving the human condition, by way of exposure.
Seeking differences is not automatically akin to handouts and denial of opportunity for members of the American majority.
In actuality, student and societal diversity keeps America’s worldview closer to an actual view of the modern world. It is projected that people of color will be the majority in the United States by 2040.
But, society should work to create balance until that time and beyond it. As people of color have risen to positions of prominence in this country, voices on the fringes have become louder.
They seem to think that affirmative action is one big come-up for undeserving Black people, even though preferential consideration helps people from many walks of life, including women, minorities and veterans.
In ‘When Affirmative Action Was White,’ Ira Katzneslon wrote, “Affirmative action performs acts of ‘corrective justice.’ Public policy is used to compensate members of a deprived group for prior losses and gains unfairly achieved by others that resulted from prior governmental action.”
Slavery and Jim Crow much? Denying people equal access in this country created an uneven playing field, which necessitates attempts to help it become level.
In a 1965 commencement address at Howard University president Lyndon Johnson said, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”
He continued.
“Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.”
We have not yet arrived at the ideals touted by our leaders.
Education universally helps people become self-actualized, while improving their lives and the lives of their loved ones. With widening wealth gaps and Obama administration goals of leading the world with college graduates by 2020, colleges and universities must be free to pick from a pool of potential.
The first woman Supreme Court justice, Sandra O’Connor, articulated the necessity of race conscious admissions. In 2003 she wrote the majority opinion in favor of affirmative action.
In it she said, “It is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity.”
Let us hope the current justices concur.
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