The Supreme Court’s recent ruling on race-conscious admissions was an attempt to reinstate white supremacy in American academic institutions. Last June, the majority conservative court delivered a ruling prohibiting race-conscious admissions programs in universities and colleges, arguing that such programs provided an unfair advantage to students of color in the admissions process. This ruling stemmed from a worldview deeply entrenched among both conservatives and centrists: that our current systems, including our laws and culture, have already become post-racial and color-blind. According to this view, any attempt at rectifying racial injustice is racist and oppressive, especially against white or East Asian Americans.
Though the current conservative discourse is largely focused on education, similar accusations of “reverse-racism” have been leveled against increased representation of people of color in media and progressive welfare policies, despite the main beneficiaries of government safety net programs being working class white people, according to the Washington Post. These stances are comforting to those who benefit from the status quo, allowing white and East Asian Americans to ignore their privilege, but in doing so, they wildly mischaracterize reality. The college admissions process, with or without race-conscious admissions, still fails to meet this standard of color-blindness, assuming this ostensibly egalitarian ideal should even be the target. Major causes of the enduring racial disparity in admissions are legacy preferences and athletic recruitment for overwhelmingly white sports, such as lacrosse.
Even according to its proponents, the chief goal of leg These programs are a threat to diversity in our educational institutions and, given the increasing significance of higher education, reinforce racial stratification and uneven distribution of wealth.
Although there has been growing resistance and backlash to legacy admissions programs, it is unlikely that they will attract the same attention as conservative vitriol against race-conscious admissions. Still, these programs should be discarded, as they perpetuate the racial and economic inequity entrenched in our educational institutions and wider system.