What Kamala Harris’ Rise Demonstrates About Affirmative Action
After the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. (SFFA) v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and SFFA v. University of North Carolina (2023), which ruled it unconstitutional to consider race in university admissions processes, recent reports have shown that black student enrollment at elite universities has declined. It is a mistake to characterize this as a catastrophe that threatens the futures of young black people who were not admitted to these institutions. To be clear, the idea of banning the consideration of race in college admissions is foolhardy because it harms the institutions, not because it eliminates the possibility of success for the black students who were rejected. Despite the dogged reluctance of people to believe in the value of diversity, there is a benefit to having both racial and intellectual varieties within the college environment.
The people who insist that race should be banned from consideration during college admissions and that only academic scores should be strictly taken into account fail to understand that having diverse perspectives and racial backgrounds ineluctably makes for a richer learning experience. Every college course is not in STEM where there are formulae and people either have the right answers or not. There are numerous college courses that require contending with competing philosophies, exchanging ideas, and engaging in critical thinking. Those who are majoring in mathematics or mechanical engineering, for example, also need to know how to think about the world from a multiplicity of perspectives. The notion that racial diversity does not matter in making for a richer learning experience in this regard is simply illogical. Also, expecting that genuine intellectual diversity can be achieved without an effort at creating racial/ethnic diversity makes little sense.
As I have written about previously, the incessant effort to push the narrative that black people benefit from playing institutional status games is irresponsible, especially considering that there is enough research to show that the benefits of elite institutional affiliations rarely accrue to black social climbers as compared to other races. The notion that black people who attend elite institutions will suddenly be considered capable and brilliant because they attended these institutions after affirmative action was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court is wishful thinking. The truth of the matter is that people will still consider black educational attainment to be a gift as opposed to an achievement.
Affirmative action in college admissions was an attempt to combat anti-black discrimination. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the end of affirmative action will quell concerns about inherent black inferiority because it was never a belief rooted in objectivity and rationality. Successful black graduates of elite institutions under affirmative action satisfactorily completed all the necessary work to graduate. It never made any sense to argue that they should be deemed lesser graduates because of how they got admitted. For example, if someone wins a tennis tournament, or even just has a deep run into the draw, despite the fact that they were admitted into the tournament via a wild card, we call that performance incredibly impressive because, much like graduation after an affirmative action admit, it still requires incredibly hard work.
Despite the evidence that black people do not benefit from elite affiliations the way other groups do, people will still continue to fallaciously posit that black people being denied entry into elite institutions produces significant harm. The truth of the matter is that educational decisions should be made on the basis of fiscal wisdom and the potential for the acquisition of knowledge and skills. Interestingly, after the affirmative action decision from the Supreme Court, historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have started to see a surge in applications from black students seeking admission.
Intriguingly, Kamala Harris, the current vice president of the United States and the Democratic nominee from president is a Howard University graduate. She also attended University of California, Hastings College of the Law (now called University of California College of the Law, San Francisco). At a time when a candidate for president on a major party ticket and the current vice president of the United States is of Jamaican and South Asian descent with HBCU and state school affiliations, the argument that there are many doors that are unalterably closed to black people who do not have name-brand schools on their resume no longer holds water.
Some would argue that Harris is an anomaly. However, it is important to note that people often use this “anomaly” counterargument to avoid dealing with the obvious fact that anomalies are often instructive. The case of Harris shows that having work ethic, acquiring skills, effectively networking, being career-focused, and having a spirit of excellence are the best ways to advance to the very top of one’s profession as a black person, even without having the elite credentials that some people volubly swear are absolutely necessary to reach such heights. Notice that people have had to use other lines of attack on Harris because the “you only got into Harvard Law because of affirmative action” barb that was used on Barack Obama does not apply to Kamala Harris. They have to be more creative (and crude) about the ways that they claim she “undeservedly” made it to the top.
In essence, diminishing diversity impoverishes educational institutions and denies enrolled students the benefits of learning in dynamic multicultural environments. Those who deny this reality have a reductive conception of education that makes it all about the memorization of facts, formulae, and “getting the right (quantitative) answer,” as opposed to possessing a holistic understanding of what education actually is, which racial diversity indisputably aids. With this said, selling the idea that black people are doomed to a life of failure by not getting admission into Harvard or MIT is not true or constructive, it gives these elite institutions entirely too much credit, and having a black woman capably running to become the Leader of the Free World without such a background is direct evidence of how manifestly archaic such thinking has become.