Race Matters
By Phoebe Schlanger
April 25, 2014
I wish I had been sitting in the gallery of the Supreme Court earlier this week. Justice Sonia Sotomayor called most of her fellow justices “out of touch with reality.” This is not a usual occurrence at the Court.
Michigan voters had adopted what is now Art. I, §26 of the Michigan State Constitution. The relevant part is that it prohibits the use of race-based preferences as part of the admissions process for state universities. The Section was challenged, with the case eventually ending up in the United States Supreme Court: Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and Immigration Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN).
The Court handed down its opinion and Justice Sotomayor disagreed with the ruling, vociferously and poetically. As the justices sometimes do, Justice Sotomayor read aloud part of her 58-page dissent. Here are some passages that resonated with me:
Race matters. Race matters in part because of the long history of racial minorities’ being denied access to the political process….
Race also matters because of persistent racial inequality in society—inequality that cannot be ignored and that has produced stark socioeconomic disparities….
And race matters for reasons that really are only skin deep, that cannot be discussed any other way, and that cannot be wished away. Race matters to a young man’s view of society when he spends his teenage years watching others tense up as he passes, no matter the neighborhood where he grew up. Race matters to a young woman’s sense of self when she states her hometown, and then is pressed, “No, where are you really from?”, regardless of how many generations her family has been in the country. Race matters to a young person addressed by a stranger in a foreign language, which he does not understand because only English was spoken at home. Race matters because of the slights, the snickers, the silent judgments that reinforce that most crippling of thoughts: “I do not belong here.”
In my colleagues’ view, examining the racial impact of legislation only perpetuates racial discrimination. This refusal to accept the stark reality that race matters is regrettable. The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination. As members of the judiciary tasked with intervening to carry out the guarantee of equal protection, we ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society. It is this view that works harm, by perpetuating the facile notion that what makes race matter is acknowledging the simple truth that race does matter.
And then her opinion starts citing statistics.
In 2006 (before the Michigan change), underrepresented minorities made up 12.15 % of U. Michigan’s freshman class. In 2012, it was down to 9.54%. Conversely, the percentage of Michigan underrepresented minorities who were college-aged rose.
Justice Sotomayor also described the experience in California after its ban on race-conscious admissions policies took effect. Admission rates for underrepresented minorities plummeted from 52.4% in 1995 to 24% in 1998. Her opinion is rife with data on the effects of these policies.
Her words resonated with me and the work we do here at MAEC. We work at the primary and secondary level. But we aim to build a foundation to get all kids to be prepared for and have the opportunity to attend college. The Court’s decision today seems to make that possibility seem more remote. But I am buoyed by Justice Sotomayor’s comments near the end of her opinion:
…[R]ace-sensitive admissions policies are necessary to achieve a diverse student body when race-neutral alternatives have failed. More fundamentally, it ignores the importance of diversity in institutions of higher education and reveals how little my colleagues understand about the reality of race in America. This Court has recognized that diversity in education is paramount. With good reason. Diversity ensures that the next generation moves beyond the stereotypes, the assumptions, and the superficial perceptions that students coming from less-heterogeneous communities may harbor, consciously or not, about people who do not look like them. Recognizing the need for diversity acknowledges that, “[j]ust as growing up in a particular region or having particular professional experiences is likely to affect an individual’s views, so too is one’s own, unique experience of being a racial minority in a society, like our own, in which race unfortunately still matters.” …And it acknowledges that “to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity.”
Colleges and universities must be free to prioritize the goal of diversity. They must be free to immerse their students in a multiracial environment that fosters frequent and meaningful interactions with students of other races, and thereby pushes such students to transcend any assumptions they may hold on the basis of skin color. Without race-sensitive admissions policies, this might well be impossible. The statistics I have described make that fact glaringly obvious. We should not turn a blind eye to something we cannot help but see.
Agreed.
