My local print newspaper published eighteen essays on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision prohibiting the use of race in college admissions. The collection was titled Affirmative or Negative? The stated purpose was to showcase “university presidents and a range of other essayists [who share] their perspectives on the end of affirmative action in college admissions — and what might take its place.”
Of the 18 essays, only one stood firmly with the Supreme Court. We might think both the court and that one essay were out of touch with Californians.
However, the 2020 election showed Californians soundly defeating the attempt to undo the statewide ban on affirmative action. Fifty seven percent is a major statement by Californians that reaffirmed their 1996 vote that said no to affirmative action. No to the use of race in college admissions, nor in public employment nor public contracting.
Nationally, Gallup, Pew and other polls that also asked about whether race should be considered in college admissions consistently found more than 60% against it. Only when the question used the more diffuse term diversity did public opinion lean into skewing the admissions process.
So, what are we to think about the newspaper’s collection of essays on affirmative action? Could it, and should it, have incorporated the majority’s sentiment in the state and national communities?
Let us take a closer look at the existing collection of essays. If I were seeking a representative survey on this issue, I would not have chosen five from the same community college district, three from the same state university system or two from the same research university system. That suffers from redundancy and leads to statistical bias. Ten higher education essays would become three. This nitpicking is part of finding a representative sample across institutional and community viewpoints ─ without creating a bias in one or the other groups.
The community group viewpoints, except for one, are likewise redundant. In effect, any newspaper’s collection of essays on this Supreme Court decision would be a challenging endeavor.
Is there a more informed strategy in a highly polarized arena? What could be included instead?
I would have included the missing pieces that question why race preferencing is needed. Some consider it an “important tool” and that, without it, schools would need to “work harder.”
That sentiment was expressed in the essay by the Michale Drake, the president of the University of California.
Barring the consideration of race as an admissions tool means colleges and universities outside of California will need to work harder and more creatively to achieve true representation on their campuses. The University of California has been at this for decades, acting as a living laboratory for what’s effective. This work isn’t simple or easy, but progress is possible.
Drake was likely thinking of California’s vote in 1996 that barred that very tool in public education. The University of California adjusted and turned, in part, to other community organizations that fed minority students into the UC system. That proxy approach may suffer problems similar to affirmative action. However, the privately funded group San Diego Squared essay by H. Puentes seeks to address the competencies for those racial groups outside the public institutional sphere:
“We work to create change and build a diverse talent pool using a race conscious approach. We are a nonprofit organization with support from the region’s best companies and mentors from the best of San Diego’s STEM industry that allow us to uplift students, interns, fellows and scholars whose racial experiences demand recognition.”
But is race-consciousness necessary? Is color blindness unable to provide for an equally competent college admissions pool? The higher education essayists think no. They hope to fix the perceived inequity at their institutions of higher education.
And here we find the missing piece. Actually two missing pieces.
Several charter school systems have demonstrated how the education gap can be eliminated. The existing failure for these students ─ the one that the higher educational leaders seek to fix ─ are primarily in the district schools. Perhaps these higher education leaders have given up on K-12 schools and hope they can fix the problem. However, there’s a second problem that they fail to address explicitly, namely, the mismatch of student actual competencies to the school or the career path they seek.
The mismatch problem was partially solved at the University of California following the passage of Proposition 209. Racial minorities, after several years, were able to increase their initial decline in enrollment by attending the less prestigious campuses that fit their actual competencies. This aspect of the mismatch problem was minimized. Competencies in STEM may also lead to mismatch along racial lines, acknowledging that mismatches can occur in other ways. Doing away with testing simply blinds one to the hard work that lies before us.
With these missing pieces in mind, the collection of essays could have drilled down to solutions at the K-12 level and to the importance of correctly matching students to their actual competencies. My imagined essays would have included parent organizations and charter school leaders. Such newspaper essays would have included more focus on their aspirations that have often been dashed by school districts concerned more about collective victim mindsets than on merit and skills.
Joe Nalven is an adviser to the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation and a former associate director of the Institute for Regional Studies of the Californias at San Diego State University.
