Should college essays touch on race? Some feel the affirmative action ruling leaves them no choice
CHICAGO — When she started writing her college essay, Hillary Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. About being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana and growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. About hardship and struggle.
Then she deleted it all.
“I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18-year-old senior at Lincoln Park High School in Chicago. “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.”
Hillary Amofa listens to other members of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school March 8 in Chicago. This year’s senior class is the first in decades to navigate college admissions without affirmative action.
When the Supreme Court ended affirmative action[1] in higher education, it left the college essay as one of few places where race can play a role in admissions decisions. For many students of color, instantly more was riding on the already high-stakes writing assignment. Some say they felt pressure to exploit their hardships as they competed for a spot on campus.
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Amofa was just starting to think about her essay when the court issued its decision, and it left her with a wave of questions. Could she still write about her race? Could she be penalized for it? She wanted to tell colleges about her heritage but she didn’t want to be defined by it.
In English class, Amofa and her classmates read sample essays that all seemed to focus on some trauma or hardship. It left her with the impression she had to write about her life’s hardest moments to show how far she’d come. But she and some classmates wondered if their lives had been hard enough to catch the attention of admissions offices.
This year’s senior class is the first in decades to navigate college admissions without affirmative action[2]. The Supreme Court upheld the practice in decisions going back to the 1970s, but this court’s conservative supermajority found it is unconstitutional[3] for colleges to give students extra weight because of their race alone.
Still, the decision left room for race to play an indirect role: Chief Justice John Roberts wrote universities can still consider how an applicant’s life was shaped by their race, “so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability.”
Scores of colleges responded with new essay prompts asking about students’ backgrounds.
When Darrian Merritt started writing his essay, his first instinct was to write about events that led to him going to live with his grandmother as a child. Those were painful memories, but he thought they might play well at schools like Yale, Stanford and Vanderbilt.
“I feel like the admissions committee might expect a sob story or a tragic story,” said Merritt, a senior in Cleveland. “I wrestled with that a lot.”
Demonstrators protest June 29 outside of the Supreme Court in Washington after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions.
Eventually he abandoned the idea and aimed for an essay that would stand out for its positivity.
Merritt wrote about a summer camp where he started to feel more comfortable in his own skin. He described embracing his personality and defying his tendency to please others. But the essay also reflects on his feelings of not being “Black enough” and getting made fun of for listening to “white people music.”
Like many students, Max Decker of Portland, Oregon, had drafted a college essay on one topic, only to change direction after the Supreme Court ruling in June.
Decker initially wrote about his love for video games. In a childhood surrounded by constant change, navigating his parents’ divorce, the games he took from place to place on his Nintendo DS were a source of comfort.
But the essay he submitted to colleges focused on the community he found through Word is Bond, a leadership group for young Black men in Portland.
Max Decker, a senior at Lincoln High School in Portland, Ore., sits for a portrait March 20 in the school library, where he often worked on writing his college essays. Decker had drafted a college essay on one topic, only to change direction after the Supreme Court ruling in June.
As the only biracial, Jewish kid with divorced parents in a predominantly white, Christian community, Decker wrote he felt like the odd one out. On a trip with Word is Bond to Capitol Hill, he and friends who looked just like him shook hands with lawmakers. The experience, he wrote, changed how he saw himself.
“It’s because I’m different that I provide something precious to the world, not the other way around,” wrote Decker, whose top college choice is Tulane, in New Orleans, because of the region’s diversity.
Amofa used to think affirmative action was only a factor[4] at schools like Harvard and Yale. After the court’s ruling, she was surprised to find that race was taken into account even at public universities she was applying to.
Now, without affirmative action, she wondered if mostly white schools will become even whiter.
It’s been on her mind as she chooses between Indiana University and the University of Dayton, both of which have relatively few Black students. When she was one of the only Black students in her grade school, she could fall back on her family and Ghanaian friends at church. At college, she worries about loneliness.
“That’s what I’m nervous about,” she said. “Going and just feeling so isolated, even though I’m constantly around people.”
The first drafts of her essay didn’t tell colleges about who she is now, she said.
Her final essay describes how she came to embrace her natural hair. She wrote about going to a mostly white grade school where classmates made jokes about her afro.
Over time, she ignored their insults and found beauty in the styles worn by women in her life. She now runs a business doing braids and other hairstyles in her neighborhood.
“Criticism will persist,” she wrote “but it loses its power when you know there’s a crown on your head!”
History of affirmative action in higher education
History of affirmative action in higher education
Schools across the country still deal with racial segregation today, even though the systematic separation of students by race in American schools legally ended in 1954 with the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. A 2019 EdBuild study[5] of high schools across the country found more than half of students in the United States attend schools in predominantly segregated districts—which are often a result of gerrymandering—with these school systems consisting of 75% white or 75% non-white students. Colleges face similar issues with enrollment diversity. While a 2020 report by nonprofit research organization The Urban Institute[6] found that nonwhite student attendance has increased 191% since 1976, it also reported that currently, about 54% of college students enrolled in four-year institutions are white.
Still, affirmative action[7] in higher education—or a set of procedures designed to eliminate unlawful discrimination among university applicants—has been hotly debated since its inception. From when it became common practice to today, it still faces scrutiny on whether or not it should be instituted.
A 2016 Gallup poll[8] found 70% of adult Americans surveyed believed college applicants should be judged solely on merit, even if doing so means fewer people of color are admitted. A more recent 2021 Gallup poll[9] saw a shift in mindset: Public support for affirmative action is at an all-time high, although Gallup notes support is for the general concept of affirmative action across the country, including the workforce.
The story of affirmative action in higher education covers a complex history of push and pull spanning seven decades, 12 presidential administrations, and countless college students. Best Universities[10] outlined a timeline of affirmative action in higher education, compiling historic court dockets, executive orders, and news reports.
1946: 85% of Black college students attended poorly funded Black schools
In 1946, President Harry S. Truman and his administration commissioned the report “Higher Education For American Democracy.”[11] The report, which was authored by former United States Commissioner of Education George F. Zook, aimed to analyze the state of education in the United States.
Among other discoveries, 85% of the 75,000 Black college students in the report attended poorly funded schools. “The outstanding example of these barriers to equal opportunity, of course, is the disadvantages suffered by our Negro citizens,” the report states. The report drives this point home further as it found 11% of the white population over 20 years of age had completed at least one year of college, where only 3% of non-white students had.
“The low educational attainments of Negro adults reflect the cumulative effects of a long period of unequal opportunity,” Zook said.
1961: JFK signs an executive using the phrase affirmative action for the first time in its modern context
Today, the term affirmative action has come to refer most readily to higher education, but its origin is rooted in employment law. When President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925 on March 6, 1961, it was the first time the phrase “affirmative action” was used in the fashion it’s used today. To take an “affirmative action” was something literal, “to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color or national origin.” Legally, employers who allowed the unequal status quo to remain were now required to take an active role in treating all of their employees fairly. This became the basis for affirmative action in higher education.
Late 1960s: Civil Rights Movement prompts elite universities to prioritize greater diversity in admissions
The Civil Rights Movement caused the nation to face how Black Americans were treated in day-to-day life, and it also sparked significant change in how laws dealt with discrimination in education. In the late 1960s, elite universities began to prioritize admitting more students of color, with Columbia University admitting about 50 Black students[12], more than double the previous year’s enrollment. With the rise in these students’ admission came quick and fervent opposition, with lawsuits and protests intensifying after more colleges began emphasizing diversity on their campuses.
1972: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act amended to include educational institutions
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act initially restricted discrimination on the basis of race, religion, and nationality, but in 1972 it was amended to include educational institutions. The amendment restricted the use of federal funding for discriminatory programs—for instance, restricting the budget of schools that favored admitting white students—which strengthened the goal of affirmative action in the law.
The United States later passed the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974, which made it illegal to segregate based on race, color, and national origin, strengthening the goals of the Title VII amendment.
1978: Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
Allan Bakke, a 35-year-old white man and hopeful medical school student, applied to the University of California Medical School at Davis twice and was rejected both times. Although Bakke had higher grades than any of the minority students who had been accepted, UC Davis admissions reserved 16 spaces for minority students as part of their affirmative action efforts. In response, Bakke sued in 1978, claiming he was discriminated against on the basis of his race.
After making its way through the California courts, his case reached the Supreme Court. The justices came to the conclusion that while quota systems did in fact violate the constitution, affirmative action itself did not. Bakke was admitted to UC Davis and graduated, later becoming an anesthesiologist.
1996: California and Texas ban affirmative action in college admissions
In 1996, two states rejected affirmative action, legally opposing the policy. In California, Proposition 209—a referendum aiming to prohibit state government institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity in employment and public education—passed with 55% of the vote. In Texas, four white applicants rejected from The University of Texas School of Law were successful in their lawsuit against the college’s affirmative action admissions policy. This case[13] effectively restricted its implementation for the law school and statewide. Further bans came after these two anti-affirmative-action victories, with Florida and Washington following suit.
2003: Grutter v. Bollinger
In 1997, white Michigan resident Barbara Grutter was rejected from admission at the University of Michigan Law School. Grutter applied, touting a 3.8 GPA and a 161 LSAT score, 19 points less than the highest score LSAT-takers can achieve. Citing the schools’ admission that they use race in deciding which students are admitted and which are not, the Michigan District Court overturned the use of affirmative action in the law school’s admissions process, effectively ending its practice in the state.
The Court of Appeals referenced Bakke’s case in the Supreme Court, citing the achievement of diversity by using affirmative action is actually legally binding on a federal level. This upheld the use of affirmative action in Michigan.
2016: Fisher v. University of Texas
In 2008, Abigail Fisher, a white high school student, applied to the University of Texas. By law, UT was required to accept all high school seniors who ranked in the top 10% of their high school classes, a criterion Fisher didn’t meet. Thus, Fisher was considered with the remaining pool of in-state applicants, of which race played a partial role, in addition to academics, personal achievement, leadership activities, family income, and other criteria.
Since Fisher and another white student, Rachel Multer Michalewicz, got rejected from UT as a result of this admissions process, they both filed suit against the university, claiming it discriminated against them by considering race in their undergraduate admissions decisions. They lost the case, and Fisher appealed and lost a second time, but successfully brought the case to the Supreme Court. Ultimately, Supreme Court justices ruled in favor of UT and their admissions policy was upheld.
2022: Supreme Court hears Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard
Affirmative action is still being challenged legally in headlines as well as the courts today. In 2019, Students for Fair Admissions (or SFFA) alleged Harvard University discriminates against Asian Americans by using a points system that gives greater chances to Black and Latino students in their admissions process. Harvard’s admissions methodology includes considering a combination of factors in addition to academics like geography, and ranking “personal qualities”[14] such as grit, integrity, humor, and kindness.
SFFA claims this ranking system is a thinly disguised—but intentional—attempt at admitting fewer Asian students, a claim Harvard denies. After this case lost in court as well as in the First Court of Appeals, as of 2022, it is now headed to the Supreme Court. The case has been consolidated with a case regarding a similar admissions process at the University of North Carolina.
This story originally appeared on Best Universities[15] and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.
History of affirmative action in higher education
On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court ruled in two cases—regarding Harvard and the University of North Carolina’s admissions practices—that using race as a factor for college admission violates the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause. This major decision, with the ruling falling along ideological lines, ends affirmative action in higher education.
Schools across the country still deal with racial segregation today, even though the systematic separation of students by race in American schools legally ended in 1954 with the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. A 2019 EdBuild study[16] of high schools across the country found more than half of students in the United States attend schools in predominantly segregated districts—which are often a result of gerrymandering—with these school systems consisting of 75% white or 75% non-white students. Colleges face similar issues with enrollment diversity. While a 2020 report by nonprofit research organization The Urban Institute[17] found that nonwhite student attendance has increased 191% since 1976, it also reported that currently, about 54% of college students enrolled in four-year institutions are white.
Still, affirmative action[18] in higher education—or a set of procedures designed to eliminate unlawful discrimination among university applicants—has been hotly debated since its inception. From when it became common practice to today, it still faces scrutiny on whether or not it should be instituted.
A 2016 Gallup poll[19] found 70% of adult Americans surveyed believed college applicants should be judged solely on merit, even if doing so means fewer people of color are admitted. A more recent 2021 Gallup poll[20] saw a shift in mindset: Public support for affirmative action is at an all-time high, although Gallup notes support is for the general concept of affirmative action across the country, including the workforce.
The story of affirmative action in higher education covers a complex history of push and pull spanning seven decades, 12 presidential administrations, and countless college students. Best Universities[21] outlined a timeline of affirmative action in higher education, compiling historic court dockets, executive orders, and news reports.
1946: 85% of Black college students attended poorly funded Black schools
In 1946, President Harry S. Truman and his administration commissioned the report “Higher Education For American Democracy.”[22] The report, which was authored by former United States Commissioner of Education George F. Zook, aimed to analyze the state of education in the United States.
Among other discoveries, 85% of the 75,000 Black college students in the report attended poorly funded schools. “The outstanding example of these barriers to equal opportunity, of course, is the disadvantages suffered by our Negro citizens,” the report states. The report drives this point home further as it found 11% of the white population over 20 years of age had completed at least one year of college, where only 3% of non-white students had.
“The low educational attainments of Negro adults reflect the cumulative effects of a long period of unequal opportunity,” Zook said.
1961: JFK signs an executive using the phrase affirmative action for the first time in its modern context
Today, the term affirmative action has come to refer most readily to higher education, but its origin is rooted in employment law. When President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925 on March 6, 1961, it was the first time the phrase “affirmative action” was used in the fashion it’s used today. To take an “affirmative action” was something literal, “to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color or national origin.” Legally, employers who allowed the unequal status quo to remain were now required to take an active role in treating all of their employees fairly. This became the basis for affirmative action in higher education.
Late 1960s: Civil Rights Movement prompts elite universities to prioritize greater diversity in admissions
The Civil Rights Movement caused the nation to face how Black Americans were treated in day-to-day life, and it also sparked significant change in how laws dealt with discrimination in education. In the late 1960s, elite universities began to prioritize admitting more students of color, with Columbia University admitting about 50 Black students[23], more than double the previous year’s enrollment. With the rise in these students’ admission came quick and fervent opposition, with lawsuits and protests intensifying after more colleges began emphasizing diversity on their campuses.
1978: Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
Allan Bakke, a 35-year-old white man and hopeful medical school student, applied to the University of California Medical School at Davis twice and was rejected both times. Although Bakke had higher grades than any of the minority students who had been accepted, UC Davis admissions reserved 16 spaces for minority students as part of their affirmative action efforts. In response, Bakke sued in 1978, claiming he was discriminated against on the basis of his race.
After making its way through the California courts, his case reached the Supreme Court. The justices came to the conclusion that while quota systems did in fact violate the constitution, affirmative action itself did not. Bakke was admitted to UC Davis and graduated, later becoming an anesthesiologist.
1996: California and Texas ban affirmative action in college admissions
In 1996, two states rejected affirmative action, legally opposing the policy. In California, Proposition 209—a referendum aiming to prohibit state government institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity in employment and public education—passed with 55% of the vote. In Texas, four white applicants rejected from The University of Texas School of Law were successful in their lawsuit against the college’s affirmative action admissions policy. This case[24] effectively restricted its implementation for the law school and statewide. Further bans came after these two anti-affirmative-action victories, with Florida and Washington following suit.
2003: Grutter v. Bollinger
In 1997, white Michigan resident Barbara Grutter was rejected from admission at the University of Michigan Law School. Grutter applied, touting a 3.8 GPA and a 161 LSAT score, 19 points less than the highest score LSAT-takers can achieve. Citing the schools’ admission that they use race in deciding which students are admitted and which are not, the Michigan District Court overturned the use of affirmative action in the law school’s admissions process, effectively ending its practice in the state.
The Court of Appeals referenced Bakke’s case in the Supreme Court, citing the achievement of diversity by using affirmative action is actually legally binding on a federal level. This upheld the use of affirmative action in Michigan.
2016: Fisher v. University of Texas
In 2008, Abigail Fisher, a white high school student, applied to the University of Texas. By law, UT was required to accept all high school seniors who ranked in the top 10% of their high school classes, a criterion Fisher didn’t meet. Thus, Fisher was considered with the remaining pool of in-state applicants, of which race played a partial role, in addition to academics, personal achievement, leadership activities, family income, and other criteria.
Since Fisher and another white student, Rachel Multer Michalewicz, got rejected from UT as a result of this admissions process, they both filed suit against the university, claiming it discriminated against them by considering race in their undergraduate admissions decisions. They lost the case, and Fisher appealed and lost a second time, but successfully brought the case to the Supreme Court. Ultimately, Supreme Court justices ruled in favor of UT and their admissions policy was upheld.
2022: Supreme Court hears Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard
Affirmative action is still being challenged legally in headlines as well as the courts today. In 2019, Students for Fair Admissions (or SFFA) alleged Harvard University discriminates against Asian Americans by using a points system that gives greater chances to Black and Latino students in their admissions process. Harvard’s admissions methodology includes considering a combination of factors in addition to academics like geography, and ranking “personal qualities”[25] such as grit, integrity, humor, and kindness.
SFFA claims this ranking system is a thinly disguised—but intentional—attempt at admitting fewer Asian students, a claim Harvard denies. After this case lost in court as well as in the First Court of Appeals, as of 2022, it is now headed to the Supreme Court. The case has been consolidated with a case regarding a similar admissions process at the University of North Carolina.
This story originally appeared on Best Universities and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.
1972: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act amended to include educational institutions
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act initially restricted discrimination on the basis of race, religion, nationality, and sex. In 1972 it was amended to include educational institutions. The amendment restricted the use of federal funding for discriminatory programs—for instance, restricting the budget of schools that favored admitting white students—which strengthened the goal of affirmative action in the law.
The United States later passed the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974, which made it illegal to segregate based on race, color, sex, and national origin, strengthening the goals of the Title VII amendment.
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References
- ^ ended affirmative action (apnews.com)
- ^ college admissions without affirmative action (apnews.com)
- ^ found it is unconstitutional (apnews.com)
- ^ affirmative action was only a factor (apnews.com)
- ^ 2019 EdBuild study (edbuild.org)
- ^ 2020 report by nonprofit research organization The Urban Institute (educationdata.org)
- ^ affirmative action (www.law.cornell.edu)
- ^ 2016 Gallup poll (www.npr.org)
- ^ 2021 Gallup poll (news.gallup.com)
- ^ Best Universities (best-universities.net)
- ^ Higher Education For American Democracy.” (archive.org)
- ^ about 50 Black students (www.nytimes.com)
- ^ This case (tarlton.law.utexas.edu)
- ^ ranking “personal qualities” (www.thecrimson.com)
- ^ Best Universities (best-universities.net)
- ^ 2019 EdBuild study (edbuild.org)
- ^ 2020 report by nonprofit research organization The Urban Institute (educationdata.org)
- ^ affirmative action (www.law.cornell.edu)
- ^ 2016 Gallup poll (www.npr.org)
- ^ 2021 Gallup poll (news.gallup.com)
- ^ Best Universities (best-universities.net)
- ^ Higher Education For American Democracy.” (archive.org)
- ^ about 50 Black students (www.nytimes.com)
- ^ This case (tarlton.law.utexas.edu)
- ^ ranking “personal qualities” (www.thecrimson.com)