It's official: Even a law aimed at treating everyone equally can violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Such was the ruling last week of a federal appeals court, which struck down Michigan's Proposal 2, a constitutional amendment that prohibited discrimination or preferential treatment on the basis of race in state institutions, including public university admissions. I'm no constitutional scholar, but I think the courts invalidated a perfectly reasonable way to implement affirmative action.
Before the civil rights activists on campus start defending the need for affirmative action to achieve diversity and social equality, it's worth noting that Proposal 2 still allowed for special treatment when it came to people with underprivileged socioeconomic backgrounds. This, however, was not enough to satisfy certain affirmative action groups. In fact, Reuters quoted one of the lawyers fighting against the law as saying that it is unfair that students from lower income families or from rural backgrounds are able to receive special consideration during college admissions, while such treatment cannot be extended on the basis of race alone. In essence, this legal battle is not about providing equal opportunity to people from historically disadvantaged backgrounds. It is about whether people of certain races should be entitled to preferential treatment solely due to the color of their skin.
The ruling in Michigan shows all too well that the debate over affirmative action is still fixated on the issue of race, even though race is no longer the root cause of social inequality. For example, the underlying disparities in access to higher education and achievement in college have more to do with a student's socioeconomic background than with the color of his or her skin. Half a century since segregation was banned, many minority families have successfully climbed the social ladder and no longer need any preferential treatment. In addition, there are many underprivileged white families who deserve just as much help in moving ahead in life.
For those seeking to address these inequalities, litigating racial affirmative action policies is not going to address the underlying problem. Black and Hispanic students on average have noticeably lower college GPAs and graduation rates, and making it easier for them to be admitted to rigorous universities is not going to help increase their likelihood of succeeding once they get in. The resources spent trying to shove as many underrepresented minorities as possible into competitive colleges can be better used to recognize the specific risk factors that make certain minority students less likely to succeed and provide a targeted advising system.
Since these risk factors ultimately have little to do with skin color alone, targeted advising would entail identifying students based on socioeconomic factors instead of lumping them together by race, as many colleges currently do. Here at Dartmouth, there are separate offices and advisors for black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American students, but there is no advisor for first-generation college students or an advisor for students from low-income families. Granted we have the Economic Equality Initiative and FYSEP, which are supposed to provide support for students with disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, but they are not as established as the racial advising offices. With a scattered staff consisting of the local service coordinator for the Tucker Foundation, the assistant provost and the advisor for Asian students whose primary responsibilities lie with other parts of the College support for socioeconomically disadvantaged students evidently takes second stage to advising along racial lines.
In Dartmouth's current system, advisors need to juggle students from all sorts of different backgrounds. Minorities from the Bronx share the same advisors as their peers from Westchester County, even though the problems facing these two groups can be very different. Underprivileged white students, on the other hand, have no established office that caters to their specific needs.
We may not yet live in a post-racial society, but race is becoming less and less the driving factor behind social inequality. With the groups that need help no longer being divided by racial lines, affirmative action policies should adapt as well.
