Although the Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled it is unconstitutional to consider race as a determining factor in college admissions, they still left a path for colleges to accomplish their racial balancing goals, according to author and social commentator Heather Mac Donald.
“I’m too familiar with colleges to believe that this is going to be the radical change in college admissions and academic standards,” Ms. Mac Donald, who is known for exposing the radical leftist agenda in America’s higher education system, said in an interview on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders: NOW.”
In what Ms. Mac Donald describes as a “wide loophole,” the Supreme Court’s majority opinion states that college admission officials may still consider an applicant’s experience on race—as opposed to their race itself.
“Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote near the end of the majority opinion.
“This is a very, very significant loophole,” Ms. Mac Donald told host Jan Jekielek.
“Nothing prevents a college from taking account of a student’s essay that discusses how his race affects his character and life experiences. It basically simply institutionalizes what’s already going on,” she continued. “This is a practice known as ‘holistic admissions,’ which is one of the many fictional ideas that pervade college admissions infrastructure.”
“And we’re supposed to believe that colleges are being very individualized and are really assessing each applicant on a highly specific and holistic basis. That just somehow always ends up by admitting black students on a holistic basis with test scores that would be automatically disqualifying if presented by whites and Asians.”
Colleges Pledge no Change of Course
Colleges are seizing upon this perceived permission to consider an applicant’s experience on race to continue pushing for a racially diverse student population, even after the Supreme Court declared that racial diversity isn’t in itself any kind of educational benefit.For example, Harvard University—one of the two institutions involved in the Supreme Court’s ruling on “race-conscious” admissions policies—has assured future students that its commitment to the “educational benefits of diversity” remains unchanged, with a hint that they can discuss their race in application essays.
“We will comply with the Court’s decision, but it does not change our values. We continue to believe, deeply, that a thriving, diverse intellectual community is essential to academic excellence and critical to shaping the next generation of leaders,” Harvard Law School Dean and President-Elect Claudine Gay said in a video message in response to last week’s ruling.
“Our students have the chance to put their ideas into conversation with other points of view, experiences, and perspectives,” she added.
This didn’t surprise Ms. Mac Donald, who is actually expecting institutions like Harvard to double down on their “holistic” admissions practices.
Ruling’s Real Effect
In her impassioned 69-page dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor painted a grim picture of the future of racial equality in the United States, expressing frustration that her conservative colleagues cemented “a superficial rule of colorblindness” as a constitutional principle in an “endemically segregated society.”“The Court subverts the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society,” the progressive justice wrote.
The idea that the decision would end or setback the country’s racial progress is an overstatement, according to Ms. Mac Donald, who argued that the decision—if it were to be faithfully abided by—would simply “rearrange” the existing population of black college students to schools where they’re qualified based on factors other than race.
“It doesn’t mean that any black students who otherwise want to go to college cannot go to college. It merely says they would go to college on the same conditions as their non-racially preferred peers,” Ms. Mac Donald explained.
“To be sure, there will be fewer students at the very upper reaches of selective colleges. But to say that equals the end of educational opportunity is unbelievably elitist and snobbish,” she continued. “It basically says that the only way that you can get a decent college education is if you go to Harvard.”
Ms. Mac Donald also addressed companies that have fears that their racial preference hiring could be the next target of constitutional challenges. Dozens of large employers, including American Airlines, General Electric, Meta, Google, and Apple, filed a brief in support of the “race-conscious” college admissions, arguing that ending those practices “would undermine businesses’ efforts to build diverse workforces.”
“You have the same population of black college-going students as before, they’re simply rearranged to schools for which they are qualified,” she said, referring to companies who claim to care about hiring black college graduates.
“If these corporations are insistent on hiring by race, here’s all they have to do—hold their noses, apparently, and go to a school that many people maybe have never heard of before, but where black students are attending. That is not the end of the world.”
