Affirmative Action Essay

Submitted By 15kumara
Words: 376
Pages: 2

After almost a half century, American higher education’s use of racial preferences in admissions to selective colleges may well be coming to an end.2 Race-based affirmative action, which was always meant to be temporary, has come under tremendous political and legal pressure in recent years. Seven states, with more than one-quarter of American high school students, have abandoned racial and ethnic preferences at state universities as a result of voter referendum, executive order, or legislative action. And, in a new legal challenge, Fisher v. University of Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court may very well curtail, or even eliminate, the ability of both public and private colleges and universities to employ racial and ethnic preferences in admissions. The good news for people concerned about racial and economic justice is that, in those states which have banned racial affirmative action, legislators and university officials have not given up on pursuing diversity. To the contrary, as this report outlines, they have invented new systems of affirmative action that in many respects are superior to the ones being replaced as they are attentive to both economic and racial diversity. Producing racial and ethnic diversity without using the criteria of race is hard work and far less “efficient” than simply providing an admissions preference based on skin color. Constructing race-neutral alternatives requires universities to take a number of steps that advocates of social equality have long championed, but that universities, fixated on prestige and rankings in U.S News & World Report, are not eager to pursue. Where