THE CLASS of 2011 was touted as the most diverse class at the University. But this year, the University saw two major developments in the makeup of its first-year class, the Class of 2012. Despite relatively little change in the total number of enrolled students, the number of African American students in the class of 2012 dropped by 83 students, from 354 to 271 — a drop of nearly 25 percent. This is not the first time the University has experienced a drop in numbers of this kind. In 1996, the first year class enrolled 335 black students. Since then, the numbers have declined steadily, reaching a low of 238 in 2006 when blacks made up only 7.2 percent of the undergraduate student body. African American students are not the only group affected by the University’s inconsistency: the number of Latino/as in the first year class of 2012 also declined from 156 to 119, or by approximately 23 percent.
It can be argued that comparing the exceptionally diverse Class of 2011 to the Class of 2012 is unfair. The fluctuation, however, reflects inconsistency in minority student recruitment efforts. In addition to admitting more qualified students of color, the University needs to make itself more attractive to these students, who often must choose among a number of acceptances. On the side of enrollment, resources must be allocated accordingly to ensure a high yield of applicants. On the side of admission, the University should depend on a strong affirmative action policy — an issue that has been debated on these pages.
Critics of affirmative action argue that race is an arbitrary marker by which to base any decision and that socioeconomic status would be a better marker for identifying those affected by the legacy of racism. This reasoning, however, assumes that the University and the country are essentially fair — that aside from the isolated racists and the legacy of racist acts committed in the past, the United States is a level playing field. However, America in many senses continues to be a place of unequal opportunity for people of color as exemplified by the low number of people of color in upper-level management in virtually every industry.
Although special consideration should certainly be paid to students from low-income backgrounds, socioeconomic factors alone do not account for educational inequalities. Imposing affirmative action policies strictly on the basis of socioeconomic status assumes that discrimination is no longer a reality of American education. In fact, black and Latino students only represent 17 percent of high-scoring, low-income youth as found in a 2003 study. When socioeconomic status was kept constant as a factor — Bowen and Bok in their seminal work, “The Shape of the River” — found that black students still had lower median SAT scores than their white counterparts. Even at the university level, schools like the University of Virginia, where the number of low-income students is very low, find that black students continue to graduate at lower rates and with lower GPAs than their white counterparts.
In sum, socioeconomic diversity, though important, will not ensure racial diversity. In addition to the discrepancy of GPAs and SAT scores, which carry with them the structural legacy of white supremacy, other measures of merit are not objective. Society and people in positions of power value particular writing styles, forms of speech, dress, and certain social etiquettes which render non-white communities immediately at a cultural and structural disadvantage. These practices are legitimatized using a type of circular argument: A certain writing style is the standard because it is a necessary skill for success, it is a “necessary” skill because it is used by people in positions of power — positions which people of color still struggle to achieve due to discrimination that lingers even now. Affirmative action fights to correct this unequal access to power.
One thing that affirmative action does not do, however, is criticize the educational systems that are in place today which continue to perpetuate the problem. Perhaps the debates on these pages would be better served by a discussion concerning the structural and systemic reasons behind racial and socioeconomic disparities, such as legacy preferences.
Carlos Oronce and Bernice Ramirez are co-chairs of the Minority Rights Coalition.
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