On June 24, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision on Fisher v. Texas, remanding the affirmative action case back to the 5th Circuit and maintaining the status quo for the time being.

The current affirmative action policies using limited considerations of race are necessary and should be maintained because of the continuing negative correlation between race, education level and social mobility in this country today.

“Affirmative action policies are continuing to improve the lives of all students. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg said in her dissent in a recent case regarding the Voting Rights act, abandoning these affirmative action policies too soon would be like “…throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” 

The Fisher case specifically concerned the fate of the admissions policy at the University of Texas at Austin. The admissions policy, enacted in 1997, guarantees admission to Texas high school students who graduated in the top 10 percent of their classes. UT-Austin employs a second admissions policy for students in the bottom 90 percent. This admissions policy examines, among other factors, an applicant’s race, and is similar to the policies used by most colleges around the country.

The plaintiff in the Fisher case is a white woman named Abigail Fisher who was denied admission to UT-Austin. Fisher did not graduate in the top 10 percent of her high school class.

She filed a suit against UT-Austin alleging the school discriminated against her because of her race. She claimed the UT-Austin admissions policy violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

But sadly, even in the United States today, upward social mobility is statistically almost impossible for children of minority parents.

The most recent research supporting this comes from a 2006 study from the Center for American Progress. The study found that “African American children who are born in the bottom [socio-economic] quartile are nearly twice as likely to remain there as adults than are white children whose parents had identical incomes, and are four times less likely to attain the top quartile.”

The study also found that upward social mobility is even more impossible for those raised in the West South Central and Mountain regions. A 2007 study from the National Center for Education Statistics found that African-American and Latino children are more likely to attend high-poverty grade schools than are Asian-Americans and Caucasians.

Syracuse and Ithaca city school superintendents, along with leaders from Syracuse University and Ithaca College, filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of UT-Austin. Both city school districts have close relationships with their respective colleges. For example, SU has Say Yes to Education, a program that supports the local grade schools in the Syracuse city community.

Seventy-two other parties filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of UT-Austin. In one brief filed by 37 small liberal arts colleges, college officials argue that racial diversity on college campuses is necessary for the betterment of all students.

The authors assert that given their small number of minority applicants, without racial consideration in their admissions policies, the colleges’ student bodies would almost exclusively be composed of Caucasian students.

A college education is more than simply an academic education. A complete education involves learning about and interacting with people who look, speak and think differently from others. Without diversity on college campuses, there would be something lacking in all of our college experiences.

In 2003, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor stated that the issue of affirmative action should be reassessed in 25 years. O’Connor was right.

We should wait another 15 years before revisiting the issue because the current policies, like the one used at UT-Austin, are continuing to help solve the divide between race and higher education. They are providing students of all racial backgrounds a more complete education.

Michael Hacker is a senior political science major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at mahacker@syr.edu. 

Published on July 4, 2013 at 10:43 pm