Editorial: Affirmative action an unfair policy

Get ready for an interesting realization: Affirmative action might be on its last leg. Get ready for an interesting realization: Affirmative action might be on its last leg.

The New York Times reports that Abigail Fisher, a white student who says she didn’t get in to the University of Texas because of her race, is pushing her case to the Supreme Court. If the justices decide to hear it, they’d make a final decision by June. There’s not much time now before public education could drastically change right in front of us.

We hope it does.

Affirmative action, a policy that takes race and other factors into account in order to benefit underrepresented groups, allows public universities to sort students by race. This allowance is an interesting one. Government officials ordinarily cannot make decisions based on race because it is unconstitutional. And diversity is the compelling factor that, according to Grutter v. Bollinger, a 2003 Supreme Court decision, makes affirmative action constitutional.

A simple checkbox could not possibly be enough to assess whether someone comes from a disadvantaged background — or how well they would diversify a school.

What someone looks like doesn’t determine what’s going on in his or her head. The idea that the color of someone’s skin somehow stimulates intellectual and academic diversity on campus just doesn’t add up to us.

A student’s academic qualifications, character and drive to succeed are what should influence admissions staff decisions. And yes, those criteria include overcoming adversity, excelling in a school with limited resources and prioritizing education in an impoverished environment.

No “race” checkbox can indicate a student’s worth. If affirmative action is ruled illegal and those checkboxes disappear, public universities might see less physical diversity.

Vikram Amar, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, told The New York Times that diversity in his state’s universities has dwindled. California declined to take race into account in admissions when Grutter v. Bollinger allowed — but didn’t require — states to make that decision. He said the proportion of blacks dropped from five to seven percent to about three to four percent.

But we think a better way to combat that lack of diversity is for universities to assess socioeconomic status, a combination of variables such as income, wealth and place of residence. That way, students can represent their actual lives, and universities can increase diversity without racial judgment. Take the way a person looks out of the picture. Is he or she a good fit for the school? Okay. Is he or she at a genuine disadvantage? Got it. Done. Those in charge of admissions shouldn’t need to know what a student looks like in order to encourage diversity on campus.

Instead, they need to ask the tough questions, because one checkbox that doesn’t indicate character makes for an uneven playing field.

Students can use essay space to indicate to admissions committees that they have a passion for education and would be able to diversify a university’s campus with their unique views of the world. And students who might be more privileged have the same amount of space to show what they’d contribute as well.

It’s all about equality and fairness, and affirmative action is simply unfair to certain races. Why should colleges be able to group students by race and use this knowledge to decide which are better than others? At face value, the policy seems racist itself.

There’s institutionalized racism at every level of our society. But setting a preference for those who are historically disadvantaged — and by all means have hurdled the gap of inequality — only encourages the same, prejudiced mindset affirmative action tries to prevent.

The New York Times says that there’s pretty much no way for Fisher to know that she was denied admission because of her race. But we think students shouldn’t have to ponder their race’s weight on their admission in the first place.

A checkbox simply isn’t the best measure of academic qualification.