FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Tuesday, August 2, 2017
CONTACT: Roger Clegg (703) 442-0066
CEO Praises Justice Department’s Announcement
Affirmative action in college admissions should be examined
(Falls Church, VA) The Center for Equal Opportunity praises yesterday’s announcement on affirmative action in college admissions by the Justice Department. It is a welcome and overdue development that the administration will be taking a hard look at schools that insist on weighing skin color and national origin in deciding who gets admitted. Such discrimination is lamentable, although, unfortunately, the Supreme Court has not shut the door on it. However, the Court has made clear that the exception it has carved out for legal racial discrimination is a very narrow one.
Unfortunately, the evidence is that many schools use racial preferences sloppily and don’t follow the constraints the Court has set out. By using race and ethnicity rather than actual social and economic disadvantage, racial preferences harm many low-income Asians as well as whites. But it also places many black and Hispanic beneficiaries at a disadvantage, too. Students admitted with lower test scores and GPAs often struggle at institutions where their preparation isn’t sufficient, resulting in higher drop-out rates, lower college GPAs, and failure to graduate in a timely manner, increasing their debt. These same students might well have succeeded at schools where their grades and test scores were the same as those admitted without regard to race or ethnicity.
We welcome the scrutiny of the Justice Department and the Education Department as appropriate and necessary to root out all forms of discrimination and move toward a truly colorblind society.
The Center for Equal Opportunity is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and educational organization that studies issues relating to race and ethnicity nationwide.
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