Devastating effects if Affirmative Action is eliminated, experts warned

By Jose Romero Mata.- Devastating effects that could undermine the opportunity and assistance of minority students in universities in the United States coincided in warning specialists, lawyers and activists after we are weeks away from the Supreme Court of Justice of the United States for issuing a ruling that could cancel that measure that has benefited thousands of Latino, African American and Asian students in more than four decades. Supreme Court decision season is in full swing.

In the coming weeks, judges will make major rulings on student debt relief, affirmative action and the Voting Rights Act, with opinions in the remaining 30 cases expected to be released by June 30.

Regarding the historic measure known as Affirmative Action, this has allowed for decades of programs in university admissions that unfortunately could soon come to an end.

The Supreme Court is considering challenging the admissions policies of both Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The rulings would have expansive impact nationwide. The review of the measure has explicitly asked judges to overturn a landmark 2003 decision that allowed race to be considered as one of many factors in college admissions. Affirmative Action survived another challenge before the judges in 2016, but the addition of former President Donald Trump’s appointees in the years since has skewed the court to the right and now makes the judges the most threat so far to Affirmative Action programs.

In oral argument, the court has noted its skepticism about upholding race-conscious admissions policies.

Many experts believe the conservative majority, which has a 6-3 advantage, will rule against the schools, possibly dismantling a 40-year-old legal precedent supporting consideration of race in college admissions. Depending on how the court rules, the impact on diversity in higher education could be significant. Many schools that, for the past 45 years, have considered race as a factor in evaluating applicants argue that this is essential to building a diverse campus.

States where affirmative action on college admissions has been banned, such as California, have tried other measures to open access to minority students, but say nothing works as well as race-based affirmative action.

Experts from some of the leading civil rights and college access organizations in the country recently participated in a talk organized by Ethnic Media Services where they explained the impact of the impending court ruling and discussed alternatives to achieve diversity without this important tool. In this forum carried out via zoom, the lawyer and activist Lisa Holder, president of the non-profit organization Society for Equal Justice based in Oakland California and former leader of the American Civil Liberties Union;

Thomas Saenz President of the Mexican American Legal and Educational Defense Fund (MALDEF) and former Secretary of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda (NHLA); John C. Yang President and CEO of the organization Advanced Justice for Asian Americans (AAJC); and Michelle Siqueiros, who heads the non-profit organization Campaign for Opportunity in Schools.

Saenz, who was a plaintiff and combatant decades ago against Proposition 187 that denied services to undocumented immigrants in California, warned that it would be devastating if Affirmative Action were struck down by the highest US court.

“Although many say that there is nothing written. The conservative tendency of the judges and due to other precedents oblige us to prepare measures that counteract an action of such magnitude that it would cancel a provision that prevailed for 45 years, ”he warned. “But despite the fact that this provision could be canceled, the fight will continue in the courts and in all possible instances, so it will not be a definitive defeat, although the resolution itself could leave devastating balances with the collapse of the number of minority students enrolled. in universities in the country and immediately there will be a direct increase in discrimination against this type of student,” he asserted.

Yang, for his part, pointed out that the Asian American community will continue to fight to defend the future of minorities as well as equity and racial diversity in order to continue having a successful democracy in this country.I believe that if the elimination of affirmative action advances, many minorities, especially Asian minorities, will be seriously affected and that is why they will reinforce actions to call for a solution beyond judicial decisions and generate empathy to assessments of the mental health of theaffected.

“We are seeing how a society that does not review its reality of racial diversity and with this is threatening and is promoting only a rhetoric of those who only want to see the Asian community in their political games to promote racial understanding and isolationism. He stated that at Harvard University the presence of Asian students has grown by 28 percent of its total number.

“If race were not considered, it would generate a decrease in the racial presence of students and there would be a decrease from 14 to 6 percent in African-American students and from 14 to 9 percent of Asians in total terms in the universities of the United States.

country,” I point out. Holder pointed out that dismantling a successful program that has been in place for nearly 50 years and that has given great opportunities to minorities in the country will force all of us to defend the current conditions and be prepared to confront them with great resistance and in all possible areas.

Siqueiros commented for his part that we will have to be prepared and fight with all means to prevent a return to those times of segregation and exclusion and a return to the era in which Hispanic, Asian, and Asian students were denied access to universities.

Afro-American or indigenous, something that had been successfully eradicated in higher education in this country. All these right-wing-driven attacks are attacks against the freedom we live in. A society that we cannot maintain in educational institutions without taking diversity into account is something that is not understandable in any way, she stated.