Race in Admissions, in Education & in America

As everyone is aware, the Supreme Court is due to soon issue its decision on the two cases challenging the use of race in admissions in higher education, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. UNC and SFFA v. Harvard. In advance of that decision, four thoughts have occupied my mind.

I. Chilling Effect

The first is rather simple. Ostensibly, these cases are about just a single mechanism in the higher education machinery–namely, admissions. Many in and around higher education have begun to caution the field, philanthropic organizations, and others to resist artificially or prematurely exaggerating the locus of control of the decision and to support maintaining appropriate boundaries. I myself began the year worried about a range of issues from the continuation of programs on college campuses that are designed to specifically address the systemic issues that disproportionately impact Black, Latino and Indigenous students to institutions’ moving away from a willingness to disaggregate data based on race for fear of some unknown repercussions. This chilling effect–the scaling back beyond the pale of what is truly required– is referenced in the presentation, and it will be induced even among those who are advocates of activities like the above. I would call this voluntary, preemptive contraction even by those who support equity efforts, a self-inflicted chilling effect.

There is what I might call an compelled chilling effect as well. For those actively looking to curtail equity work far beyond admissions, an opinion that limits the use of race in admissions (which is indeed what is expected) becomes a tool for doing so, for inciting a reduction in equity work in areas where maintaining the course is in fact entirely defensible. Both the self-inflicted and the compelled chilling effects are most certainly desired outcomes by those opposing this work. It will be important for us to heed the caution to resist both, to stay engaged in and supportive of the work that is not directly implicated by the opinions rendered. 

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II. The Pushback against Race

Second, these cases are part of a much more expansive apparatus pushing back against the idea that race remains a consequential factor in education (and beyond). Disparities in outcomes such as degree attainment along racial lines are straightforward enough to not be argued. However, the idea that race is an essential factor in why those disparities exist; who should be responsible for remedies (and the often accompanying proclamations of who is “at fault”); and how to define fair and just targets and how to then achieve those results, is what incites opposition and debate.

There are excellent summaries about race-conscious admissions. Amidst any comprehensive treatment are the arguments purporting that consideration of race is a form of racism; claiming a lack of evidence that diversity has value (even using the success of HBCUs to help make this case); and positing there is no evidence supporting that consideration of race leads to positive outcomes.

To see the SFFA cases as somehow serendipitous is to miss the extent to which these efforts are incredibly carefully chosen to foreground these arguments. Ed Blum's work as leader of SFFA is to do just this, but beyond his individual orchestration of these cases, it is important to recognize these cases part of a much larger richly-resourced and coordinated effort, with resources from general funding and individual funders. 

And this kind of coordinated opposition has deep historical roots. Compare this resistance to the United Daughters of the Confederacy’s efforts to reshape textbooks in schools all across the South, for example. The current fight takes a page out of the UDC’s textbook work (and the equally successful objective to install monuments celebrating Confederate “heroes”). Each sought/seeks to deny race as a historical underpinning driving a need for justice. More specifically, these efforts look to erase that part of the need to continue to consider race is the very real and persistent ways that our history with race still manifests in systems and structures. The arguments made in the late nineteenth century, with impacts felt well past the midpoint of the twentieth, are very much ancestral to the arguments being made today.  

In short, these efforts are (sometimes deceivingly) sophisticated. Combatting this backlash will require an equally or more sophisticated strategy.

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III. Identity, Race & Belonging

The larger third point I would make builds on this seemingly incongruous notion that we need to think about this case as narrowly as possible, and yet there is a much more expansive context to consider. In the point above, the more expansive context was centered on the pushback and how the opposition’s efforts go far beyond the SCOTUS case. I would argue that there is an equally expansive context around race itself.

Notably, race is a critical component of identity for the vast majority of people living in America, and indeed the world. There are those who would argue this, but I believe this to be a fairly evident statement supported by any number of data points–everything from health outcomes to economic mobility to the patterns of social intentional congregation and induced segregation. These all point to race playing an impactful role and being a still important component of identity.

One of the arguments that has grown in popularity in many places wrestling with matters of diversity and equity is that diversity of identity ought to be replaced with diversity of thought, with claims that the latter is far more important and meaningful than the former. Regardless of where one lands on which is more important, it seems undeniable that identity, and race in particular, remain of critical importance.

I have found myself recently returning to the notion of stereotype threat, a concept that is now over 25 years old. It is still the case that equally prepared individuals operating in domains that they care deeply about can be primed to different levels of performance by simply activating stereotypes associated with race. The primary author of this well-evidenced idea, Claude Steele, talks about needing to cultivate what he calls “identity safety,” what I would argue we might today say is a version of belonging. 

Even after accounting for other factors, including level of preparedness, race still needs to be considered for its broad function and influence if we are going to work toward helping every student reach their fullest potential.

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IV.

This brings me to my final point. I have found myself thinking a great deal about expectations and the role high expectations plays in outcomes. It seems to me a point that we don't spend enough time engaging. One of the maxims that holds power in this domain comes from Howard Thurman, something I first encountered during my time at Morehouse College:

We hold a crown above the heads of every student,

challenging them to grow tall enough to wear it.

In that short dictum is a powerfully asset-based ethos, a set of grand expectations, and an expression of belief in the ability to achieve those expectations when coupled with the right effort. I recall reading this for the first time and feeling that I was being instructed that this is an institution that believes its students are bursting with distinction and that it is prepared to help them manifest that greatness.

Research shows that expectations indeed have a tremendous impact on performance–both positively and negatively, as evidenced in inanely disproportionate suspensions of preschoolers! Those who study such phenomena link implicit biases, including those around race, to differences in expectations (that then lead to differences in outcomes).

A big part of the magic that is woven into the fabric of HBCUs, TCUs and HSIs, those institutions mission-driven to serve Black, Indigenous, and Latinx populations, is the way that they establish a new set of expectations. And that becomes part of what allows those institutions to outperform many others if one holds other factors constant. I certainly hope that at some point, we will be able to share across more of higher education the special ways that some institutions, to paraphrase my former colleague, David Wall Rice,

…think differently,

fundamentally differently,

about [Black, Latino, Indigenous students

and students from low income backgrounds]—

their potential, their strengths, and the possibilities.

And engage in practices that

 …help [their students] hear

the sound of the genuine;

not to see them as deficient or broken in need of being fixed,

but to see [them] as

full of potential and gifts and genius,

waiting to be discovered, engaged and amplified.

This is about shifting expectations, the potentially lowest cost, most scalable, but unmistakably challenging effort, especially when considered across race.

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