24
ANTI–AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
A perennial Republican plaint is that appointed judges often impose decisions which have the scope of laws. In so acting, they usurp the province of elected legislators. Among much cited cases are the Roe ruling on abortion and Obergefell on same-sex marriage. This chapter will focus on another area where Republicans feel aggrieved. This is affirmative action. As the party construes such programs, they give special attention to individuals based on race, ethnicity or attributes like physical disabilities.
Affirmative action has long been combated terrain. Yet the most troubling issues remain beneath the surface, because they abrade sensitivities on all sides. The pages that follow will show why Republicans feel so vehemently about these policies. The contention generally centers on how admissions are decided at selective colleges and universities. It can also highlight employment practices, although this is not as high on the GOP’s agenda.
The most recent decision was handed down in June 2016, as Fisher v. University of Texas. By a 4–3 vote, it rebuffed yet another Republican effort to end preferential programs. The case was also significant for the fervor of the dissents, which expounded on how minority admissions affect white candidates.
Abigail Fisher had been rejected by the University of Texas. She argued that this only occurred because she was white. The same claim had been made in earlier cases by plaintiffs Marco DeFunis (1974), Allan Bakke (1978), Barbara Grutter (2003), and Jennifer Gratz (also 2003). All their suits ended with ambiguous findings, which tentatively upheld affirmative action and lengthened its life. Fisher’s attorneys contended that she had a better academic record than most of the black and Hispanic students whom Texas had admitted. The university conceded it had lowered some bars, but cited “the educational benefits of diversity” as a greater benefit.
Fisher’s appeal was sponsored, as had been prior cases, by Republican lawyers, with generous funding from donors linked to the party. So it’s germane to ask why these pleas gained so much attention. After all, the admissions practices of selective colleges do not head most ideological or policy agendas. Clearly, more is involved than whether some teenaged applicants didn’t get their first choice.
Fisher’s petition was supported by Justice Samuel Alito, along with John Roberts and Clarence Thomas.1 Their position was that white persons also have civil rights, and Fisher’s had been abridged due to her race. Alito opened by citing as precedent a venerable dictum that “distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people.” He went on to argue that the use of “race-based admissions” by the university, by itself, created “systematic racial discrimination.”2 Fisher had been refused her earned place because of an ancestry, which in her case was white, over which she had no control. The decision of the admissions office to “favor” (Alito’s term) blacks and Hispanic applicants was what took away her college seat.3
When Fisher applied in 2008, Texas chose to admit approximately seven thousand of its white applicants for the year’s entering class. The sheer size of that white intake suggests that she did not rank high on their “white list.” (Of course, Texas and other colleges use such compilations.) Defunis, Bakke, Grutter, and Gratz also rated low among white applicants where they applied.
This explains why the GOP is devoting so much time and energy to battling programs that favor other-than-white candidates. In doing so, it is staging itself as a champion for whites who lack stellar credentials. America is probably the most competitive nation on earth, where the vying never ceases. Needless to say, not everyone can make the winners’ circle. But what is even more demeaning is to open rejection letters, when you know there was a time when individuals of your ancestry were less likely to receive them.
As the table below shows, a generation ago, in 1980, white students filled fully 87 percent of the undergraduate seats at the University of Texas. By 2016, the year the Supreme Court ruled, their share was down to 48 percent. By a year later, as the table also notes, they had sunk to 42 percent, less than half their 1980 ratio. (Of course, the general population has been changing. But not as much as the college configurations.)
Whites on the Austin campus are now a minority, outnumbered by the other ethnicities taken together. Indeed, it is highly likely that more than a few white parents who themselves had been readily accepted by Texas were seeing their offspring turned down.
Of course, these sensations of deprivation are not mentioned in the affirmative action debate, by Justice Alito or anyone on either side. The table below shows how far places once reserved for whites are being accorded to two other groups. One combines black and Hispanic applicants, who are the chief beneficiaries of affirmative action. The other group consists of Asians, who rarely get or need such preferences, if only because they tend to have strong academic records.
A problem white applicants and their parents face is that they can’t openly protest that more places are now being given to high-scoring competitors with names like Chan and Kim and Singh. In the past, it might be murmured that Asians fell short on athletics or fraternity affiliations, or that they spent more of their time studying. But such ripostes are unseemly in a meritocratic age. (Michigan’s percentages differ because a 2006 referendum banned affirmative action in the state.)
So the one way left to regain places whites have lost is to target black and Hispanic students, who are often let in with less prepossessing credentials. And there’s another factor in college admissions, which involves an issue that whites prefer to keep under wraps. It’s telling that suits akin to Fisher’s have not been filed against preferences given to whites who are not academic stars, such as those whose parents had attended the college, commonly called “legacies.” Or others who are adept in sports like tennis, hockey, and golf, where proficiency is honed in well-endowed suburban and private schools. Nor is it surprising that Republicans haven’t filed such cases. Such suits would bring a spectacle of whites suing whites.
A related and equally undiscussed issue is downward mobility.Given white rejections attendant to affirmation action, it is a hazard haunting even professional households. Fisher’s suit catered to white Texans, a strong GOP cadre, who were seeing diminished prospects for their children. It’s as if the data on our table is never far from their minds. Some other figures supplement the story.
One touches on Princeton applicants whose parents previously attended. Currently, only about one in three of these putative legacies is being accepted. So for a substantial pool of mothers and fathers who themselves had been deemed of Princeton quality, two-thirds of their progeny aren’t getting that nod. Of course, not all children measure up to their parents. (It would be a genetic oddity if they did.) Nor will it be the end of the world for those who were turned down. They will doubtless end up at respectable schools like Hamilton or Macalester. By objective measures, such places are perfectly fine. Yet in the competitive maelstrom, their degrees carry less weight. The sociological bottom line is that these and children like them will enter adulthood a step below their Ivied parents.
A Brookings Institution study examined young people who were raised in households with incomes in the top 20 percent of all earners. (For a comparison, in 2018, such families had incomes of at least $126,855.)4 We may presume that as children, they attended good schools and had other advantages money can buy. Researchers tracked these youngsters into their adult years to see how they ended up. Given how parents invest in their children, it’s apposite to inquire about the payoff. Of these offspring who began with a strong start, only 37 percent ended in the top fifth themselves. All the rest, a considerable majority, had moved down the social scale. Insofar as America purports to laud opportunity, mobility is a stern mistress. The top quintile can’t take in more than a fifth. It decrees that for each person who moves up, another will have to stumble or tumble, including many who started with silver spoons.
Liberals are elitist. Republicans are better at protecting America. (Kansas)
My religion tells me that Republicanism is the only correct political party. (Utah)
I believe all LGBT people are sinners and do not deserve the same rights as any normal person. (Arkansas)
I believe in a strong unified America with a strong military presence around the world. (California)
Climate is always changing. It’s being used as a Trojan horse for a global agenda. (Georgia)