US, No Racial Quotas for College: The Conservative Revolution's Latest Victory

The Supreme Court: “Our Constitution is color-blind.” But the justices are in disagreement with one another. The liberal Sotomayor: “ … long and lamentable record of stymieing the right of racial minorities to participate in the political process.”

Another pillar of affirmative action and the civil rights period collapses. The United States Supreme Court has decreed that Michigan voters have the right to change their constitution and ban racial and ethnic background as part of the selection criteria for universities and college. “Our Constitution is color-blind,” wrote two of the conservative justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, who have supported the court’s decision. In contrast, Sonia Sotomayor, the liberal justice, who along with the progressive Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is opposed to the ruling, stated, “To know the history of our nation is to understand its long and lamentable record of stymieing the right of racial minorities to participate in the political process.” What is known for certain is that the decision will have enormous consequences on the ways in which higher education shapes future ruling classes. Diversity, the right and duty of educational institutions to see themselves represented by students of all ethnic and racial backgrounds, is no longer a value in the U.S. of 2014.

This ruling, “Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action,” has come to pass over a long time and a gradual distancing from the equal opportunity policies that marked the civil rights period and President Lyndon Johnson’s legislation. With a historic ruling in 1978, the court agreed on the need to reserve a certain number of spots in universities for members of minority groups. Again in 2003, the justices reiterated the legality of ethnic and racial criteria as a selection tool. The “conservative revolution” that in the last 30 years has marked American culture and society has in the end, however, displaced even affirmative action. The disruptive actions of conservative groups, the latest being those of the tea party, have contributed to changing the very way in which a majority of the public sees “positive action”: from a tool to ensure equal opportunity to a hateful rule that unfairly helps members of minority groups — who are of no other value, if they do not belong to a minority group, according to this criticism.

American legal justice has wound up taking note of this evolution. A 2007 ruling limited the use of race as a criterion for university admissions for the first time. The recent ruling completes that process and gives states the opportunity to exclude it completely from the selection process. On the other hand, it was the majority of Michigan voters who voted in 2006 to reject affirmative action, demonstrating how equal opportunities laid down by law are no longer in sync with the mentality and position of the greater part of the American public. The conservative Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts summarizes this new course of action, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discrimination on the basis of race,” which completely overlooks the “quota” in schools and workplaces. An opinion strongly opposed to Justice Sotomayor’s, for whom “the Constitution does not protect racial minorities from political defeat, but neither does it give the majority free rein to erect selective barriers against racial minorities.”

To express her annoyance, Sotomayor, daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants, got up and read her dissent in court — an unusual act, which has shown the personal and moving implications of the ruling. Sotomayor has often recollected, in conversation and in her autobiography, how she was accepted into Princeton and then Yale law school thanks to the rule of affirmative action. It remains to be seen at this point what will happen in the American university and academic worlds. All available information shows that in all states where “positive action” is no longer respected — Florida, California and now Michigan — there is a significant decrease in Hispanic and African-American student registration in the majority of universities. It is widely believed that this latest ruling will therefore make research into an alternative to affirmative action necessary, so as not to exclude all members of disadvantaged groups from a high-level education. Muriel Howard, president of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, announced that a possible solution is to not base it on ethnic background, but rather on income. Preferential channels of admission into universities will no longer be reserved for members of minority groups, but rather for students with low-income, and often “first-generation” Americans.