Affirmative … Denial?
A few months ago, the Supreme Court overturned a long-standing position on affirmative action in higher education admissions.
Affirmative action has many associations. It is defined as “the practice or policy of favoring individuals belonging to groups regarded as disadvantaged or subject to discrimination.” One potential pitfall of this practice is that the achievements of a disadvantaged individual can be discounted. In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his memoir that he was “stigmatized” by receiving racial preference as an African-American in admissions to Yale Law in the 1970s.
“From the Black Codes, to discriminatory and destructive social welfare programs, to discrimination by individual government actors, bigotry has reared its ugly head time and again. Anyone who today thinks that some form of racial discrimination will prove ‘helpful’ should thus tread cautiously, lest racial discriminators succeed (as they once did) in using such language to disguise more invidious motives”
In my book and in workshops, I describe upstream investments versus downstream incentives. In an ideal world - in which we don’t have a traumatic history of displacement and enslavement of humans - all children would receive equal healthcare, education, broadband, and transportation to utilize for their development, regardless of how much money their caregivers had. Nourish children the same, let their decisions as they age affect outcomes. An ideal meritocracy we can strive for.
But we exist in the real world, where being White or having lighter skin remains a relative advantage. So we have to do something. But downstream changes like this always create collateral damage for individuals who were working from a set of assumptions about the “rulebook” and have been for some time. Downstream corrections are usually what we argue about, what meets resistance because the course correction creates immediate winners and losers: taxes, admissions, hiring. These perpetuate the false belief that if some win others must lose.
When I’m in all White conversations I’ll hear anecdotes about affirmative action or scholarships awarded. In my case, the general sentiment is “good for them using the system to their advantage.” The two examples I can think of pertained to multiracial students from affluent families leveraging racial minority status. The takeaway is a lingering focus on the cost-benefit analysis of racial identity.
We need something like affirmative action, but it’s no one’s first choice. It brings the conversation back to race and the realities of racism. It’s a construct with no basis in biology but plenty of measurable harm. That cost-benefit analysis still favors some. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a dissenting opinion that the ruling “fails to acknowledge the well-documented ‘intergenerational transmission of inequality’ that still plagues our citizenry.”
“For present purposes, it is significant that, in so excluding Black people, government policies affirmatively operated—one could say, affirmatively acted—to dole out preferences to those who, if nothing else, were not Black. Those
past preferences carried forward and are reinforced today ...”
Should I write about this? Risky … sensitive … Throughout the book, I did my best to filter out opinions and focus on revealing how money operates, not make proclamations about what you or I should do.
The Supreme Court decision did surprise me since affirmative action has been around for a long time, whereas the offer to cancel student loan debt reversal did not, as I wrote a few weeks ago. Easy come, easy go.
And kids from wealthy families, White or not, get de facto affirmative action anyway. They have done things that require family resources.
In a groundbreaking study by (go figure) Harvard economist Raj Chetty, he and colleagues controlled for equally competitive academics (SAT score, grades, coursework, etc.) and found that “Ivy-Plus” universities favored applications with one or more of three criteria: legacy admission 46%, elite athletics 24%, extracurricular enrichment or “non academic” criteria on application 30%. All of these require money and/or transportation to pursue. The researchers pulled IRS data and … lo and behold.
Maybe the simplest immediate response to the Supreme Court ruling is to call for an end to legacy admissions and free up 46% of tiebreakers … then again, maybe not … seems like every judge, politician, and CEO – Republican or Democrat – went to Harvard.
I appreciate Raj Chetty researching a touchy subject for his employer. I first heard about his work as Board President of Project Kindred ,a non-profit organization working to disrupt the cycle of segregation in Milwaukee.
Friendships across socioeconomic classes show that affirmative action does work, in the sense that it tends to enhance the student’s prospects through social capital. Project Kindred’s overnight youth programs are intentionally designed to build lasting friendships across lines of difference, including race and family socioeconomic status.
People are so subconsciously social, we just need someone we know and like to do/say/have a thing first and then tell us it’s alright. The study cites Inner City Weightlifting, a nonprofit gym, as a success story.
The Opportunity Atlas shows that proximity to and relationships across SES are strongly correlated with upward mobility.
In my book, there are many examples of how “bi-SES” relationships like mine broaden perspective. “Let’s Build a House Party” gave me an example of wealthy people that were kind. “I Don’t Have a Ride” showed me how growth is constrained by limited/no access to utilities like fast internet and transportation.
Name dropping Harvard seems to help a lot no matter what you look like, which is great news. We can break the cycle. Justice Thomas and the Obamas faced (and continue to face) racism, but Harvard still opens doors all else equal.
In those all White conversations, the unspoken tone shift hinges on whether that recipient was generally disadvantaged across multiple hardships, or if race seemed to be the only one. In other words, thinking about the Opportunity Atlas. If race was one relative disadvantage, but the individual had a relative advantage in family income, do they deserve a scholarship?
We all exist in a continuum of energy. If the applicant of color has a high family income because their parents managed to break free of the compounding effects of poverty and trauma across generations, then… should they get a break? They put in a ton of extra work overcoming prejudice, right? A scholarship is for the parents, too.
Upstream investments are ideal. Chetty and collaborators suggest a policy of affirmative action based on zip code. This often correlates with race, rooted in redlining real estate, but today it’s a more accurate measurement of how much opportunity is easily available to the best and brightest young people.
I was about to set up a playdate for our nine-year old, and his friend’s mother wrote back “let’s wait till after the state testing”. I was like, shit I didn’t even know there was testing, we’re not prepping our third grader at all. That wouldn’t have happened in our old neighborhood. Nor did we know anyone that “lives in a mansion” as he put it. The relative standards in your environment are key.
Fortunately, we are learning. Being in the right room is important. Justice Brown Jackson served on Harvard’s board of overseers. Justice Thomas seems to have received quite a few favors from a billionaire friend ... We all seem to agree upward mobility is the goal. Until our own opportunity is on the line.
So what do we do now?
I fail to see how legacy admissions can be more important than affirmative action on the basis of race. We can push for change there, opening more spots.
We can focus on upstream investment for ALL children, especially in equitable education, transit, healthcare and internet, which in theory would almost eliminate the disadvantage within a few generations.
You can support Project Kindred or Inner City Weightlifting so we can expand and share these research-backed models.
You can share this and other comments, including the book. I’m not a policy expert, but I have learned how people think about money. The first step, in your monthly spending or the world beyond, is to affirm the reality - not deny it - and then take action.