What the Supreme Court's Ruling on Race-Based Admissions Means to You

The Supreme Courts 5-to-4 ruling on the Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, a case involving Louisville, KY public schools and its suburbs, and the case of Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 dealt a stinging blow to schools and districts who are striving to maintain ethnically diverse student bodies. But, the decision was not exactly black and white.

The cases, argued in December 2006, involved voluntary race-based admission programs adopted by schools in Seattle and Louisville to assign students to high school and elementary schools. In both cases, the schools used race to allocate slots and make transfer decisions.

The Kentucky schools were previously legally segregated and operated under a court-ordered desegregation decree until the year 2000; the Seattle schools never operated as legally segregated schools, nor were they ever subject to court-ordered desegregation.

This is important because, in the eyes of the Court, neither school had a compelling reason to use race to make these determinations. Because of this, the Court agreed to hear and rule on the cases.

Previous cases brought before the Supreme Court involved schools that were subject to past racial desegregation (due to racial segregation and "Jim Crow" laws in the South), and/or schools that had previously been placed under court-ordered desegregation because they had been found in violation of laws established by Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark case that secured equality in education for all.

The Court has previously sanctioned race-based policies that were "narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government interest", namely remedying the effects of past intentional discrimination. The Court has also upheld policies that included race as part of admissions decisions in cases involving college admissions, so long as race was "considered as part of a broader effort to achieve exposure to widely diverse people, cultures, ideas and viewpoints".

In the Court's decision, decided on June 28, 2007, the Court equated the schools' policies to nothing more than "racial balancing", which the Court believes has no place in American society as it tends to promote “notions of racial inferiority and lead to a politics of racial hostility”.

Ultimately, the Court found that, while the schools, argued that their policies served the interests of equality in education, they offered no evidence that race-based decisions had any beneficial effects, and "failed to show that they considered methods other than explicit racial classifications to achieve their stated goals".

So, what does that mean to you?
Basically, it means that high schools cannot decide who to admit or transfer based solely on race. They can, however, use race as one of many factors considered, if they can show that their practices and policies actually ensure equality of education as demonstrated in some way other than by creating a racially balanced student body, increased test scores or other such factors. The schools cannot argue that having more or less of one race increases grade point averages or test scores.

On the face of it, this decision could be a good thing for a student who wants to attend a "good school" to which too many persons of the the student's race have already been admitted. In this scenario, the student will be admitted, if s/he he meets admissions criteria (and, of course, the school is not overbooked).

The problem comes when you examine the housing trends in this country. Middle-class and wealthy families have moved away from "bad school districts" (usually in poor urban and rural areas with a high percentage of ethnic minorities), while poor, mostly minority, families have remained in these districts. Consequently, many public schools, especially those that are considered poor-performing, are filled with poor and minority students whose parents cannot afford to pay for private school or homes in districts where the public schools are "good".

This means that we end up with racially desegregated schools just as we had in the 1970's--separate but unequal. And while the argument can be made that the public schools in the poor areas will have the same resources as those in the rich, the reality is that schools in the poorest areas will need more resources than their richer counterparts to even approach any sort of equality. Poorer, minority-heavy, schools will inevitably struggle, as they currently do, to attract quality teachers and to provide quality instruction. Students at those schools will not receive an education that is on par with those of their richer counterparts; They will be viewed by colleges as "less prepared". Even hard-working "straight-A" students from these schools will be looked upon as inferior because their academic programs were "less rigorous" than those offered in better school districts.


The result: College admissions officers will start to distinguish the applications from students who attended the "good" (less diverse) schools from those that did not. And, given a choice (and the best intentions) will likely choose the better prepared student who is "more likely to be successful in [our] environment".

Don't mistake the above scenario to mean that I believe students who are poor and minority are inferior or unable to compete in general. I believe every student, given equal preparation and opportunity, can be successful in college or the workplace. But, let's get real...

The reality is that MOST of the poor families in this country are ethnic minorities. MOST of the "bad schools" are in MOSTLY minority and poor areas. MOST of the student bodies in these "bad schools" are ethnic minorities and poor. MOST of these "bad schools" struggle to attract teachers from top colleges. MOST of these "bad schools" do not offer AP courses, college preparatory or other advanced courses. MOST poor and minority students from "bad schools" are less prepared for college than their "good school"--mostly White--counterparts.

All of the statistics provided by the U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Census Bureau and individual college admissions data bear this out.

So, while I would love to agree that it is time to put away "race" as a sole or significant admissions or placement factor, I cannot. The fact is, that some schools will need to adopt voluntary race-based admissions policies to ensure that all students learn in a diverse environment alongside a population that mirrors that in the real world, and that all students are availed of equal education.

I'm afraid that the Court's decision discourages schools that support diversity as key to a quality education from employing policies that consider race. Administrators may fear having to determine how much weight or consideration is too much, and simply avoid the situation altogether.

This could mean that really smart minority students whose parents cannot afford to move to better neighborhoods/school districts will be disadvantaged when applying to college or selecting a career.