After 25 years of ambiguity following the Supreme Court's 1978 Bakke decision, the nation on Monday received a new mandate on affirmative action. Quantitative bonuses based on race alone are unconstitutional, but such an identifier may still warrant a "plus" in university admissions. The Court's message is clear, but nothing radical. The academic and legal worlds had known for years that point systems like the University of Michigan's were indefensible. But even now, the crux of the issue -- the persisting social inequalities present in American society -- continues to go unaddressed. While points have been declared passe, the road has been paved for other, equally impotent systems to take their place. Perhaps now, "holistic consideration" of the individual will prevail, but this just dodges the problem. The infrastructure is broken: too many of those who benefit are not poor, underrepresented minorities from broken homes and struggling schools. Instead, they are victims of another sort -- furthering the university's larger goal of creating what they see as academic utopia, one where sterile demographics count and not individual character and merit.
Another serious oversight this time around: the Court was careful to stress that affirmative action is to remain above all a temporary solution -- it suggested that the system last for approximately another 25 years. However, the nine justices can only dictate how today's society functions, not tomorrow's. While America waited for a clarification of the Bakke decision, a generation grew up. At a certain point, race-based affirmative action ceases to compensate for disadvantage and begins to perpetuate unjustified discrimination based on supposed racial identity rather than any substantive marker.
One thing that is sure to continue, though, is poverty and the disadvantages associated with growing up with its burdens. That financial hardship will remain disproportionately tied to minority groups is uncertain, although we hope that this will not be true. It's to everyone's benefit that admissions offices become cognizant of the applicant as an individual unit and not just as a part of some arbitrary racial jigsaw. A serious consideration of a candidate's background and upbringing, with socioeconomic factors taking precedence, should take race's place in admissions as a tool for creating a diverse student body.
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The reaction on the part of university officials has been resoundingly positive. Presidents and administrators seem to have breathed a collective sigh of relief that what they've been doing all along -- or at least since the Bakke decision -- is constitutional. But such reactions have failed to examine the underlying assumption that racial diversity for its own sake should be an inherent aim of admissions offices. They fail to acknowledge that race does not operate in a vacuum. If a person's racial identity adds a unique perspective to the school it is because of other factors -- ones that surface on their own.
Robinson Hall is the byline of The Dartmouth's summer editorial board.
