Why affirmative action had to go

As America diversified, a policy designed to help Black people was turning into a complex, confusing racial spoils system.

As of this writing, the decision hasn’t been handed down yet, but everyone thinks that the Supreme Court is likely to strike down affirmative action — i.e., race-based admissions policies at selective colleges. The lawsuit in question alleges that these policies, which generally are set up to give an admissions boost to Black and Hispanic students, result in de facto discrimination against Asian Americans.

To be honest, the lawsuit is probably right. The way our university system is set up, admission to top schools is basically a zero-sum game — the number of spots is harshly limited in order to pump up the prestige of these schools and their expenditure per student. Putting racial preferences into that game makes it, to some degree, a zero-sum game between racial groups. Removing those racial preferences — along with legacy preferences (which pretty much everyone hates) and athlete preferences — would probably leave White admissions mostly unchanged, and boost Asian admissions at the expense of Hispanic and (especially) Black admissions:

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

These stats are wild slowboring.com/p/what-to-do-a…

A lot of people are very upset about this outcome, alleging that Black students in particular are still uniquely and severely disadvantaged. And to be honest, they’re probably right. But the affirmative action system probably couldn’t last in its current form — in a rapidly diversifying country, affirmative action as we know it was evolving away from a measure intended to address the Black-White divide, and toward a complex and opaque racial spoils system.

As for what will replace affirmative action, the answer is probably class-based preferences — focusing on admitting kids from poor families instead of kids from specific races. That system isn’t perfect either, though, and there are additional things we should do to improve college admissions — most importantly, expanding the student bodies at elite schools.

Why affirmative action can’t handle a highly diverse country