NEP Response to SCOTUS Affirmative Action Decision
June 30, 2023
Systems produce the outcomes they are designed to produce; the American education system was not designed to support a multiracial population to learn, collaborate, and thrive - but Affirmative Action in higher education has served as the most effective structural intervention to increase pathways to opportunity and economic mobility for Black and Brown communities for half a century. When Affirmative Action was enacted in 1978, our country recognized that increasing diversity in higher education was necessary to prepare all students to lead and contribute to our diverse and increasingly pluralistic world.
Today, America’s schools are more racially segregated than when Affirmative Action was put in place 45 years ago. In 2021, more than a third of students (18.5 million) attended a predominantly same-race/ethnicity school, and 14% of students attended schools where almost all of the student body was of a single race/ethnicity. For these students, higher education may be their first experience participating in a racially diverse learning community. The ability to listen to, consider and benefit from diverse perspectives, and to effectively collaborate across differences are critical skills in our multiracial society; they can’t be theorized but must be learned through real life experience and discourse. The relationships and social connections established in higher education not only forge pathways to economic and social opportunities, they create bridges across racial and social identity that are so needed in these times of increasing division.
As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stated in her dissent, “deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.” Race-neutral policies in college admissions have shown to decimate enrollment for African American, Native American, and Latinx populations. In ruling against Affirmative Action, SCOTUS has hindered the ability of colleges and universities to enact effective anti-racist policies toward building and maintaining more diverse institutions.
Our country, our communities, and our lives are better when everyone has access to educational opportunities. Our fates are linked, we are all connected as a human ecosystem on this planet. If we don’t defend education as a public good for all - and especially for those communities who have been historically barred access - then we resign ourselves to the consequences of living in an increasingly unequal and unsustainable society.
This ruling is undoubtedly connected to broader efforts at the state level to suppress diverse perspectives and limit the educational experiences of students. Just as book bans seek to censor content that facilitates critical thinking, dialogue, and true understanding of American history, race-neutral or “color-blindness for all” policies promote erasure and ignorance over healing, repair, and reconciliation of the generational legacies of structural racism.
We are sadly not surprised by the SCOTUS decision, and are prepared for more potentially regressive decisions in the future. This decision doesn't reflect what the majority of Americans believe or know is right for our country. Now is the time to connect with others who believe in education as a public good.
At the National Equity Project, we join in solidarity with all young people and families reeling from this decision and we continue to wade in the water of these turbulent times; to relentlessly support leaders to create equitable pathways to higher education and opportunities for all young people. As the Schott Foundation for Public Education shared in their statement, “this decision reinforces a larger historical lesson: the courts are only one part of the terrain upon which progress occurs and movements can act, grow, and win.” Our systems and structures can be reimagined and redesigned in service of greater equity; we knew this 50+ years ago and we know it today.
“In order to emerge from the existential crises we face and to birth a far more humane civilization, we now need to look deeply at ourselves and our social structures to overcome the separations that have been inculcated into us for so long and rediscover our fundamental connection to each other and the entire web of life.”