The Supreme Court will hear two affirmative action cases this month.
The majority of Americans (63%) support doing away with racial considerations in college admissions, according to a recent Washington Post survey.
A poll asking about efforts to promote racial harmony on college campuses was commissioned by The Washington Post and George Mason University.
When asked if they would or would not support a ban on colleges and universities using race and ethnicity as factors in admissions decisions, the vast majority said they would, while a smaller percentage said they would not. While 36% of people said they thought the practice should be allowed to carry on, 63% said they would support a ban on it.
Whereas over half (57%) of White, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Hispanic respondents support outlawing racial consideration in college admissions, just 47% of Black respondents share this position.
The polling comes as the Supreme Court prepares to hear two cases on October 31 involving the practice of race-based affirmative action: Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina.
More than two-thirds of those polled saw programs designed to increase racial and cultural diversity on college campuses as positive rather than negative.
Sixty-four percent of college students agreed that efforts to increase ethnic diversity are a “good thing” in a recent study, while 36 percent disagreed.
According to George Mason University associate professor of policy and government Justin Gest, who spoke to the Washington Post about the findings, institutions promote diversity without racial prejudice.
That schools should “cultivate and support variety without discriminating by color and ethnicity” is the lesson to be learned, according to Gest.
Survey data collected between October 7 and 10 were released to the public on Saturday.
Chloe Teachey, a student, and reporter for Campus Reform at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill whose mother fled Vietnam during the war have stated her dissatisfaction with UNC.
Teachey, whose parents emigrated from Asia, is outraged that her alma university, UNC-Chapel Hill, “hypocritically professes to champion diversity” while limiting access to resources for Asian Americans. We regret to inform you that UNC has been actively excluding hardworking students in the name of diversity.
Teachey agrees with Gest’s assessment of the survey findings by saying that it is possible to be opposed to affirmative action while yet supporting diversity.
“Eliminating affirmative action is not anti-diversity. A student’s academic record and extracurricular activities, not their skin color, should be taken into account in admissions decisions. There is room for innovation within the merit system to increase diversity “, Teachey remarked. “Affirmative action programs in higher education are often misunderstood for what they really are: discrimination. To hide its discriminatory actions, the word invokes diversity.”
A Harvard Board of Overseers member named Ketanji Brown Jackson has said that she would not participate in the case Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.