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posted by janrinok on Wednesday April 23 2014, @09:39PM   Printer-friendly

CNN reports that the Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS) by a vote of 6 - 2 has upheld a Michigan law banning the use of racial criteria in college admissions, finding that a lower court did not have the authority to set aside the measure approved in a 2006 referendum supported by 58% of voters. "This case is not about how the debate about racial preferences should be resolved. It is about who may resolve it," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy. "Michigan voters used the initiative system to bypass public officials who were deemed not responsive to the concerns of a majority of the voters with respect to a policy of granting race-based preferences that raises difficult and delicate issues." Kennedy's core opinion in the Michigan case seems to exalt referenda as a kind of direct democracy that the courts should be particularly reluctant to disturb. This might be a problem for same-sex marriage opponents if a future Supreme Court challenge involves a state law or constitutional amendment enacted by voters. Justice Sonia Sotomayor reacted sharply in disagreeing with the decision in a 58 page dissent. "For members of historically marginalized groups, which rely on the federal courts to protect their constitutional rights, the decision can hardly bolster hope for a vision of democracy (PDF) that preserves for all the right to participate meaningfully and equally in self-government."

The decision was the latest step in a legal and political battle over whether state colleges can use race and gender as a factor in choosing what students to admit. Michigan has said minority enrollment at its flagship university, the University of Michigan, has not gone down since the measure was passed. Civil rights groups dispute those figures and say other states have seen fewer African-American and Hispanic students attending highly competitive schools, especially in graduate level fields like law, medicine, and science. "Today's decision turns back our nation's commitment to racial equality and equal treatment under the law by sanctioning separate and unequal political processes that put undue burdens on students," National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel said in a statement. "The Supreme Court has made it harder to advocate and, ultimately, achieve equal educational opportunity."

 
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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 24 2014, @12:49AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 24 2014, @12:49AM (#35276)

    According to the data from the U.S. Department of Education cited by Justice Sotomayor, the proportion of African-American freshmen at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor dropped by about one-third after the ban on race-conscious admissions went into effect.

    In the four years before the ban, black students made up 6.1 percent of first-year students, on average. In the four years after the ban, they composed 4.5 percent of first-time, full-time students.

    http://chronicle.com/blogs/data/2014/04/23/how-has -mich-s-ban-on-affirmative-action-affected-minorit y-enrollment/ [chronicle.com]

    Who thinks this is an acceptable trend?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 24 2014, @02:15AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 24 2014, @02:15AM (#35316)

    It depends.

    I spent high school hearing about all of the things I needed to do to get accepted to college and I was told that if I didn't do them I would lose out to other people who had done them. These were things my parents had learned from their parents and their social peers for the sake of propagating their social status to me. These are memes.

    I believe that a large part of why disadvantaged people are disadvantaged, is that these memes haven't propagated to them yet. They're actually being tested fairly when people like me are investing in a facade to inflate our scores.

    Affirmative action can compensate for this but it also adds to the arms race element. With affirmative action ending in Michigan, minority applicants have lost a key advantage in the arms race. So there are some questions about what happens now:

    With the loss of affirmative action, will minority applicants exhibit more advantageous-meme-seeking behavior to close the gap?
    Will white applicants be less aggressive in their application of their memes following a reduction in the weaponry they face?

    Both of these possible effects should take time to develop. There may not be enough data to decide if this change has permanently altered the equilibrium in an adverse fashion.

    • (Score: 1) by cybro on Thursday April 24 2014, @03:33AM

      by cybro (1144) on Thursday April 24 2014, @03:33AM (#35343)

      Will white applicants be less aggressive in their application of their memes following a reduction in the weaponry they face?

      Give us an example of these memes.

  • (Score: 1) by FakeBeldin on Thursday April 24 2014, @08:25AM

    by FakeBeldin (3360) on Thursday April 24 2014, @08:25AM (#35405) Journal

    Math Nazi: percentages are relative values, not absolutes.
    Case in point: the minority admissions might well have doubled in that period, but still give these figures if even more other students enrolled.

    The balance was affected, but given these numbers (not made clear in the linked article either) it's not clear whether that is because less minority students are enrolling, or because more majority students are enrolling. Maybe 100s of majority freshmen thought "no affirmative action = greater chances for me to get in".

    tl;dr: lower percentage is not equivalent to less.