Fact Check: Is affirmative action the main reason Black people are accepted into colleges?

THE CLAIM: Affirmative action is the main reason why Black people enter higher education, not because of their own merit. The majority of Black students do not meet the standard academic criteria required to earn acceptance into college. Black people are admitted to colleges because of their race to help institutions meet quotas.

OUR RATING: False

The Supreme Court has effectively banned affirmative action policies in college admissions. The SFFA v. Harvard and SFFA v. UNC ruling happened in summer 2023, but the historic decision has left many colleges scrambling to reconfigure their program strategies to maintain campus diversity. A new chapter in addressing historical and systemic inequalities has been ignited. For higher education, affirmative action policies were aimed at increasing opportunities for racial minorities and women — groups who are underrepresented on campus and leading professional roles.

Before its ending, the language used to uphold the use of affirmative action programs clearly includes “qualified minority applicants.” This literally references programs deciding between candidates who have already met or exceeded academic requirements. Race or gender can only be considered a factor after being part of a qualified applicant pool. For Black people, while affirmative action has expanded access to predominantly white institutions (PWI), it has also been referenced by others to minimize academic merit. Black students accepted to colleges are often perceived to be there because of the law and not because of earned individual effort. Even when the law clearly states otherwise. As Justice Lewis Powell Jr. explained, “…race or ethnic background may be deemed a ‘plus’ in a particular applicant’s file, yet it does not insulate the individual from comparison with all other candidates for the available seats.”

Affirmative action policies were meant to hold institutions like colleges accountable. A qualified candidate for college admission could not be rejected or ignored due to race or gender because PWIs were expected to increase campus diversity by law through programs not quotas. In addition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the legal landscape surrounding race-conscious admissions has been shaped by several landmark Supreme Court cases like Bakke v. University of California (1978), Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), and Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (2016). All have upheld the legitimacy of affirmative action, emphasizing the importance of diversity in education. However, none of these historic Supreme Court cases have ever supported the idea that your race is enough to be the sole qualifier of college admission. In fact, setting racial quotas is explicitly illegal. To avoid confusion, the Supreme Court clearly outlined five reasons why an affirmative action program is considered unconstitutional. Including if “an unqualified person receives benefits over a qualified one” and “the numerical goals bear no relationship to the available pool of qualified candidates and could therefore become quotas.”

Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), the group that took Harvard University and UNC to the Supreme Court in 2023, was led by Edward Blum — a conservative strategist. Since the 1990s, Blum has filed more than 20 lawsuits and raised millions, attempting to remove affirmative action policies (race-based) from colleges and remake voting rights.

Though Blum has succeeded with the erasure of affirmative action, the need for students to prove achievements will not change. Accepted applicants must always be able to meet overall academic requirements. Much like legacy status, race or gender preferences can be considered a factor (when affirmative action was legal). But, it cannot become the main qualifier for college acceptance. Before, during, and after the era of affirmative action, Black students are often unfairly characterized as less deserving of admission. Even after excelling past application standards and joining a student body, Black people are stereotyped as academically inferior, perpetuating the myth of lower intelligence when college enrollment rates prove otherwise. Since 1976, attendance for Black students has increased by 125.5 percent. This includes both public and private four-year institutions.

As of fall 2021, over 15 million students in the U.S. are enrolled in undergraduate programs. Using the latest data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the graph below showcases how total college enrollment rates (relative to population demographics) for 18- to 24-year-olds were similar between races, except Asian students who exceed all other groups.

Colleges consider a variety of factors to ensure a diverse incoming class. Preferences like geolocation, extracurriculars, or whether the applicant is a legacy candidate can all play a role in gaining acceptance. According to a study by Inside Higher Ed, 42 percent of admissions directors at private colleges admitted that legacy status is a factor in helping determine admissions decisions. Of course, not all universities have the same admission standards. Over 56,000 people sent applications to be accepted into Harvard University’s class of 2027. Of these, only 1,966 were accepted, maintaining an acceptance rate of roughly 3 percent, But no matter how exclusive the institute, by law, racial preference does not begin to play a role — or be considered a “factor” — until the number of applicants has been filtered down to those who are similarly qualified.

There is a common misconception that academic criteria is lowered according to race so more minorities (Black, brown, and Indigenous groups) can attend. But this belief promotes tokenism. It assumes that PWI admission teams at places like Harvard are only recruiting qualified candidates when they are white or Asian. It is a myth that Black minority applicants only gain entry because they are matched somehow to a lower intellectual standard not in place for the predominant racial majority. Black candidates still have to meet academic qualifications.

In order to make their school appear more exclusive, a college recruitment program encourages an increase in applications while maintaining their acceptance rate. They also must showcase diversity in the type of people applying, essentially, adopting a “Recruiting to Reject” philosophy. Even when admissions teams know the final result will likely be an acceptance of more elite, legacy applicants than (first-generation) Black or brown attendees, this recruitment style is maintained. In 2021, 15.5 percent of Harvard’s freshman class were legacy students (class of 2025). Of all white students, 18.8 percent were legacy applicants; 15.7 percent of the total freshman class surveyed were Black. The annual survey also pointed out that 30.9 percent of legacy students reported a combined parental income of more than $500,000.

So just because a school may cast a wider net at the recruitment stage, it doesn’t necessarily mean their acceptance rate of Black students will increase. Institutions have to prove that they are making the effort to maintain equality without making racial quotas because it is illegal. For example, a 2022 study via the Economics of Education Review noted, “Harvard encourages applications from many students who effectively have no chance of being admitted, and that this is particularly true for African Americans. After a 28-year period where the African American share of applicants to Harvard was roughly stable, the African American share of applicants grew by almost 57 percent over four years. Yet, there was little change in the share of admits who were African American.”

A school can encourage historically marginalized racial groups to apply, but that doesn’t mean they will be catered to and accepted over other qualified or legacy applicants. PWIs or Ivy League universities like Harvard advertise a larger diversity pool, encouraging Black applicants, but those same students still have to prove their qualifications to swim. Merely showing up and stating/checking off your race or gender has never guaranteed admission. Academic excellence is still the foundation of any person’s application with or without affirmative action.

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