By Tat Bellamy-Walker -
NBC News
Experts point out that black and Latino students would suffer disproportionately if the Supreme Court decides to reverse positive discrimination in the United States, a government policy that seeks to guarantee equal opportunities to all without distinction of race, sex, age, religion or orientation. sexual.
On Monday, the Supreme Court said it will hear two cases challenging race-based admissions at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.
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If the court rules against affirmative action it could have a huge effect on Black and Latino college students.
One of the most comprehensive studies on the question, published in 2020, found that Black and Latino students suffered after California public universities banned affirmative action in a 1996 ballot initiative.
After the ban, more students of color enrolled in less selective institutions and, as a result, were less likely to earn college degrees, graduate degrees, or jobs in STEM fields.
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"When black and Hispanic students lost access to California's most selective colleges, they lost access to this public investment," study author Zachary Bleemer told our sister network NBC News.
The results also revealed that the ban discouraged thousands of students of color from applying to the University of California system, although most still met the requirements to enroll.
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Bleemer, a postdoctoral fellow at Opportunity Insights, a Harvard University research group, added that these losses were also being felt in the job market.
“Young black and Hispanic workers ended up in relatively lower-paying jobs in the state for the next at least 15 years,” he said.
Cara McClellan, an associate attorney with the NAACP Educational and Legal Defense Fund, said it would be unusual for the court to go against years of discrimination defense. positive.
The campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images
“Any ruling challenging the legality of race-based admissions would be a huge setback to more than 40 years of Supreme Court precedent,” McClellan said.
“It would be quite a radical act if that were the result,” he added.
Such an outcome, McClellan said, would dramatically reduce racial diversity at private and public universities.
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“The end of holistic admissions would lead to a severe reduction in the number of Black and Latino students at Harvard and, if the ruling is broader, at other universities.
Race-conscious admissions has been key to providing diversity on campus,” McClellan said.
Natasha Warikoo, a sociology professor at Tufts University and author of the book
The Diversity Bargain
, noted that black and Latino students who get into the most selective schools would also be hurt by the change.
“They will have a much smaller community of same-race peers, and they are more likely to be the only underrepresented minority in a class and have less access to social media that we know are important to students of color on their college campuses.” Warikoo said.
"I really see it as this dual impact on Black and Latino students."
The lawsuits were brought on behalf of the students by Edward Blum, a conservative legal strategist and longtime opponent of affirmative action.
They claim that Harvard's admissions system discriminates against Asian-American students and that UNC's system discriminates against both Asian-American and white students.
In 2003, the landmark Supreme Court decision Grutter v. Bollinger upheld the use of affirmative action admissions policies at the University of Michigan Law School.
Blum wants the courts to overturn that decision.
In 2016, the courts upheld the constitutionality of affirmative action in Fisher v. University of Texas.
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Although the Supreme Court has rejected similar challenges to affirmative action, the addition of Trump appointees Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett as justices could change that.
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Marshall Anthony Jr., associate director for higher education policy and advocacy at the Center for American Progress, a left-wing think tank, said he worries about how the court might rule in light of the judge's conservative leanings.
He also raised concerns about the court's willingness to hear cases that could dismantle precedent, such as a case the court is currently weighing regarding access to abortion, and the court's 2013 decision to weaken bans on voting practices. discriminatory.
“Sadly, with a more conservative-leaning court, we are seeing many of the policies intended to promote civil and human rights come under attack,” Anthony opined.
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"We need a higher education system that is accessible to all and affordable to all... and affirmative action is one of those political vehicles to ensure that actually happens," he concluded.