On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court outlawed race-based affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. (SFFA) v. Harvard College and University of North Carolina, ending a cardinal sin of the admissions process that had been utilized since 1964. In SFFA, the Court held that Harvard and UNC’s admissions processes did not meet the strict scrutiny standard set out by Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, impermissibly relying on racial stereotyping in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. SFFA cites numerous instances of this occurring in the real world, with Harvard Admissions being quoted as stating that “‘race is a determinative tip for’ a significant percentage ‘of all admitted African American and Hispanic applicants.’” This consideration for race blatantly violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protections under the law” for all college applicants, giving an unjust boost to applicants based on extraneous factors. 

While SFFA is a step in the right direction, I go further, positing all forms of affirmative action should be abolished, not limited to but including religious, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, geographic, and legacy-based admissions.

One of affirmative action’s often-stated goals is to bolster opportunities for the underrepresented who face unique adversities to achieving higher education. If this is the case, the program woefully misidentifies its target population, with recent forms of race-based affirmative action overlooking the challenges faced by economically challenged students. At institutions where race-based affirmative action programs were implemented, they primarily benefited the middle and upper classes of those minorities, not the lower class. If affirmative action is truly about reducing barriers to education, shouldn’t it be based on one’s resources as opposed to the amount of melanin in your skin? Studies show that a lack of economic resources primarily hinders education within primary school, not race. While there is a correlation between race and socioeconomic status, race does not guarantee socioeconomic status, and as such is an inadequate factor in solely determining one’s level of adversity. Socioeconomic background gives a concrete picture as to the resources the candidate had, giving an individualized backdrop to compare what the applicant accomplished relative to their resources.

This being said, while studies show that socioeconomic status is the primary determinant of educational attainment, race plays a role as well; there is inherent stigmatization in society against these populations that disadvantage them. However, race does not affect everyone in the same way, making a single-word descriptor inauthentic to one’s lived experiences. For example, a gay man living in California would be affected by their sexuality in a staunchly different way than a gay man living in Alabama. Even within Alabama, a gay man living in a more progressive area would have a different experience than one living in a rural area; a gay student who has money to attend an accepting private school has a different experience than a poor one in the public school system. Minority status does not equally affect or give the same experiences to all who hold it, so why should colleges treat it as such? Essays in which applicants can highlight how their minority status has fundamentally shaped them as a person, and what they have done in response to their unique situation, do a far better job of describing applicants and their merit than vague single-word descriptors. Conveniently, SFFA maintained the legality of this practice as a merit-based way of assessing the impact of minority status on an applicant. Cornell has taken advantage of this method, adding an identity-based essay question to their undergraduate application. While some do cite efficacy concerns regarding the correlation between economic resources and essay quality, considering socioeconomic status in applications as mentioned earlier or providing essay-prep workshops can mitigate this concern. 

Another component of affirmative action is the desire to create a diverse class with a plethora of perspectives. Numerous studies show that exposure to a diverse array of viewpoints increases academic outcomes on college campuses by promoting critical thinking. For the same reasons mentioned in the previous paragraph, a checkbox descriptor system does not accurately capture one’s lived experiences in general or as they pertain to their minority status. Affirmative action fails to capture deep-level diversity, instead focusing on surface-level diversity. Assuming one’s life experiences based upon minority descriptors is stereotyping, a fundamental mechanism of racism, homophobia, and sexism that affirmative action reproduces. Furthermore, this identity-driven initiative reduces one’s sense of belonging, worsening imposter syndrome among those who believe themselves to have benefited from the unethical system.

What I am arguing for is not an invalidation of one’s identity; I am calling for the logical use of one’s identity to determine their merit. The primary goal of college applications should be to determine applicants’ merit based upon the resources within their control. Tangibly, socioeconomic status is the best indicator of this, and socially, qualitative descriptions of one’s struggle or experiences with one’s identity present much more information than a single-word descriptor. Colleges ought to follow and expand upon the ruling in Students for Fair Admission to create a more equitable and merit-based environment for all students.