Professor Pruitt discusses the struggle of low-income white students to gain access to an elite university education in her 2015 article “The False Choice Between Race and Class and Other Affirmative Action Myths.” The stats are alarming. A 1997 study found that lower-class blacks had an 87% likelihood of being admitted to elite private colleges, while lower-income whites had only an 8% likelihood.
Scholars have traditionally argued that affirmative action is a zero-sum game that may promote either racial diversity or socioeconomic diversity, but not both. Professor Pruitt argues that affirmative action policies can and should promote both racial and socioeconomic diversity.
Although I do not support affirmative action as a matter of policy, I do agree that existing affirmative action programs should be broadened to include both racial and socioeconomic diversity. Professor Pruitt points out in a Legal Ruralism post that Ree Dolly (the heroine of “Winter’s Bone”) is similarly disadvantaged to minority students, and should be a beneficiary of affirmative action, just like a similarly disadvantaged urban minority student.
I believe that accounting for socioeconomic diversity would align with the intent behind affirmative action programs. While most of the responsibility for reformation will fall on state and university administrators, the Supreme Court can help enact change by returning to a constitutional standard for affirmative action similar to that announced in 1978’s Regents of the Univ. of Cal. V. Bakke.
Writing for the court in Bakke, Justice Powell stressed the importance of what Professor Pruitt coins the “content” of diversity. Justice Powell wrote that diversity which “furthers a compelling state interest encompasses a far broader array of qualifications and characteristics” than an “interest in simple ethnic diversity[.]” He concluded that the UC Davis School of Medicine’s affirmative action program, which focused solely on ethnic diversity, would actually “hinder rather than further attainment of genuine diversity.”
Although Justice Powell criticized the UC Davis affirmative action program for its rigid focus on ethnicity, he endorsed affirmative actions programs such as Harvard’s that “expanded the concept of diversity to include students from disadvantaged economic, racial and ethnic groups.” Justice Powell pointed out that a farm boy from Idaho can bring a perspective to Harvard that a Bostonian could not, just like a black, inner city student can bring something that a suburban, white student could not.
Recent Supreme Court decisions have strayed from Justice Powell’s focus on a broad definition of diversity in affirmative action admissions programs to limit the definition to ethnic and racial minorities. In 2003 the Court heard the companion cases of Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger regarding the University of Michigan’s undergraduate and law school affirmative action programs respectively. In both cases the Court avoided any discussion of the validity of including socioeconomic factors in university admissions diversity programs. Likewise, in 2013’s Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the Court declined to opine on the inclusion of socioeconomic considerations in the definition of diversity.
Although the Court’s majorities have gone radio silent on the definition of diversity, Justice Souter’s dissent in Gratz supports a broader definition of diversity. The Gratz majority invalidated Michigan’s undergraduate affirmative action program because it was too rigidly focused on race. Justice Souter argued that the program was constitutional because it did not suffer from the same defects as the invalidated program in Bakke. According to Justice Souter, one of the factors that Michigan’s program included that differentiated it from Davis Medicine’s is its consideration of socioeconomic disadvantage.
Professor Pruitt argues this is a reprisal of Justice Powell’s treatment of “socioeconomic disadvantage as on par with racial/ethnic disadvantage.” I believe this equivalency is critical to promoting the benefits of diversity that affirmative action is supposed to generate.
In Bakke, Justice Powell wrote that the only constitutionally legitimate rationale for affirmative action programs is obtaining the benefits that flow from a diverse student body. The Court approvingly quotes Harvard’s Dean of Admissions who defended his school’s affirmative action program by explaining that “[t]he effectiveness of our students' educational experience has seemed to the Committee to be affected as importantly by a wide variety of interests, talents, backgrounds and career goals as it is by a fine faculty and our libraries, laboratories and housing arrangements.”
Justice Powell held that Davis Medicine’s program was unconstitutional because it was too narrowly focused on racial diversity. The benefits that flow from diversity is the diversity of viewpoints in the student body. While admitting racially diverse students helps widen the diversity of viewpoints, it is only one viewpoint. A farm boy from Idaho would bring a different and unique viewpoint. As would a military member, retired athlete, immigrant, or single mother.
A 2013 study found that socioeconomic diversity on college campuses enhances racial interaction. If socioeconomic diversity both enhances racial interaction and provides the benefits of viewpoint diversity that affirmative action programs are supposed to promote, why are so many of them narrowly focused on racial diversity?
Justice Thomas has postulated that universities are more concerned with “racial aesthetics” than the benefits that flow from viewpoint diversity. I tend to agree with his conclusion. It is difficult to signal socioeconomic diversity in the pages of the booklets and websites that administrators fill with tokens from every race.
Virtue signaling to the progressive world of academia is not the only motivation for the narrow emphasis on racial diversity. The all important university rankings consider racial diversity but ignore socioeconomic diversity. The Law School Admissions Council tracks the race of candidates with 32 subcategories but completely ignores socioeconomic status. University evaluators have reinforced the Supreme Court’s recent holdings by considering racial statistics but excluding socioeconomic ones. They have essentially told administrators that socioeconomic diversity does not matter.
University administrators are more than happy to ignore low-income whites because of their poor perception of them. Professor Pruitt points out that coastal elites associate working class whites with “bad taste, conservative politics and racism.” She quotes New York Times columnist Charles Blow who in 2010 described the left’s perception of the white working class as “hollow, dim and mean.” Instead of engaging with low-income whites and their viewpoints, university administrators have elected to isolate and exclude them.
University administrators have resorted to devaluing achievements stereotypically associated with the white working class. Part-time jobs and career-oriented clubs such as Future Farmers of America are considered evidence of a lack of academic ambition.
Placing a greater value on a liberal arts club over a professional club is misguided and frankly stupid. Devaluing a part-time job is straight up discrimination against low-income folks. It’s amazing to me that university administrators never stopped to think that the student with a job after school everyday might have liked to be in the Drama Club but had to work to put food on the table. By valuing the French Club over holding down a part-time job it’s almost like admissions officers want to produce unemployable alumni with Mickey Mouse majors and enhance the student debt crisis.
According to a 2016 Gallup poll, 70 percent of Americans believe that universities should base admissions decisions solely on merit. The pollsters defined “merit” as evaluating students for admission without any consideration of an applicant’s racial or ethnic background. According the same poll, only 26 percent of respondents believe that diversity should be promoted by the consideration of race and ethnicity in college admissions. Professor Pruitt cites a similar poll from 2013, which found that only 29% of respondents believed blacks and other minorities should receive preference in college admissions to make up for past inequalities.
Not only does a narrow focus on racial ethnicity not makes sense, it is extremely unpopular. Eight states, including California, have already banned affirmative action in public universities. Five of them have done so through direct democracy on ballot measures. Considering affirmative action’s growing unpopularity, more will likely do so in the coming years.
If affirmative action advocates want it to survive, they might want to consider broadening their view.
To read more of Justice Powell’s analysis see Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978). For Professor Pruitt’s take on the 1997 survey that found low-class blacks had a ten times higher likelihood of gaining admission to elite private colleges than low-class whites and some of the criticism that followed click here. For an international perspective, see this blog post by a former student who argued for a form of rural affirmative action in China.
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