Earlier this week, Education Reform Now & Democrats for Education Reform led a group of five nonprofit education advocacy organizations in defending colleges’ use of race in admissions.
In an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, we argued that when it comes to college admissions, a meaningful commitment to diversity requires explicit attention to the diversity within individual racial groups, otherwise known as “intraracial diversity.” Any policy that claims to be race-neutral in supporting diversity, but ignores those important interracial differences, in effect treats racial minorities as fungible and leads to superficial diversity. You can’t merely count groups.
Here’s more on our argument:
First, the University of Texas (UT) – and All Colleges – Have a Compelling Interest in Intraracial Diversity
The Supreme Court has long recognized the educational benefits from racial diversity. In Regents of the Univ. of California v. Bakke (1978) and Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), the Court established that colleges have a compelling interest in assembling racially diverse classes so that students can learn, live, and interact with students across different backgrounds, and thereby dismantle stereotypes and prepare for life and work in a broader world. These benefits, however, are only possible if colleges are able to consider race explicitly among other factors.
That’s because there is a wide diversity of geography, socioeconomic status, culture, and ancestries within any broad racial category. A college that wants to make a meaningful commitment to diversity and reap the benefits thereof, for example, would have to enroll Black students that come from urban, suburban, and rural environments; from racially integrated regions and segregated ones; from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds; and from ancestries that trace back to African slavery and more recent African and Caribbean lineages. The same applies to Latino students.
Second, the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment Compels, Not Condemns, a College’s Interest in Intraracial Diversity
From a legal standpoint, a race-conscious policy to advance intraracial diversity is actually constitutionally required based on the Court’s previous interpretations of the Equal Protection Clause under the 14th Amendment. It has been established, repeatedly over time, that equal protection belongs to individuals, not groups. As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor stated in Metro Broadcasting, Inc. vs. FCC (1990), “The Government must treat citizens ‘as individuals,’ not as simply components of a racial, religious, sexual, or national class.” And as established in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, “The rights created by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment are…guaranteed to the individual. The rights established are personal rights.”
Third, Race-Neutral Policies Treat Racial Minorities as Fungible
By definition, race-neutral plans are designed around proxies intended to capture the numerical diversity of groups, not individuals. In Texas, for example, the “Top Ten Percent Rule” guarantees the top 10 percent of students in each high school’s graduating class automatic admission to the state public institution of higher education of their choice. Let’s not escape the irony that this rule only works because of the de facto residential and school segregation that exists in Texas. But from a constitutional standpoint, because the policy leads to admission of Black and Latino students who mainly come from geographically compact, highly segregated regions and likely share similar backgrounds, interests, and cultures, the inevitable outcome is that colleges end up assembling minority populations on campus that promote stereotypes and recreate the segregation that’s already so prevalent in society at large.
That’s not a meaningful commitment to diversity. A meaningful commitment requires an individual assessment of each and every applicant and their unique characteristics. That, and a whole lot more. . .
Check back next week for our take on what more is required to demonstrate a meaningful commitment to diversity in higher education.
Read the full filing here.
Michael Dannenberg contributed to this post.