Americans, by a wide margin, do not want colleges to consider race when selecting students — polls suggest Americans would support the Supreme Court overriding affirmative action policy.
A YouGov poll found that 54 percent of US adults oppose universities considering race as a factor in selecting applicants — even as part of efforts to promote diversity on campus.
That far outweighs the 23 percent who wanted admissions tutors to use race to guide selection and similar numbers who weren’t sure. Democrats were much more supportive of affirmative action policies than Republicans.
The Supreme Court is weighing the legality of racially aware admissions rules in cases involving Harvard University and the University of North Carolina (UNC) that endanger statewide affirmative action programs.
These programs have boosted enrollment for Black and Hispanic students who have struggled in the past to secure college places, but to the detriment of white and Asian-American applicants, critics say.
Supporters of Affirmative Action rallied before the US Supreme Court this week as judges heard arguments about race-sensitive college admissions in Washington, DC
The case follows the right-wing court’s controversial decision in June, Roe v. to overthrow Wade, sparking state-level legislation to restrict access to abortion and protests by pro-choice and women’s groups and others.
Conservative judges, who hold a 6-3 majority in the chamber, expressed doubts that race should even be considered in college and university admissions decisions, saying such guidelines shouldn’t last forever.
“If the court removes affirmative action protection, it would likely be a decision that Americans would support,” YouGov said in a statement accompanying its recent polling results.
When asked about the long-debated issue, “most Americans say no,” she added.
In the poll of more than 1,000 American adults, nearly two-thirds of white Americans said they opposed affirmative action. Black and Hispanic Americans were evenly divided between for, against, and insecure.
When asked whether different racial groups had equal educational opportunities, respondents were less clear. Almost half said the current system was fair, with around a third saying it wasn’t.
The perennial debate raged on social media on Wednesday, with commentators arguing that racially conscious college selections leveled the playing field for the marginalized, while others called it unfair.
“Elite-College Affirmative Action focuses its discrimination on Asian applicants and white applicants whose parents are prone to Republican voting,” wrote Ross Douthat, a conservative analyst, blogger, and author.
Health entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy called affirmative action “a band-aid” that “hides real problems: broken schools, unstable families and a culture of victimization” that are preventing some black people from achieving higher education.
The Supreme Court, which has twice blessed racially aware college admissions programs in the past two decades, heard two cases Monday involving UNC and Harvard, the nation’s oldest public and private universities.
It heard tense arguments that lasted nearly five hours in appeals from a group set up by anti-affirmative action activist Edward Blum over lower court decisions upholding policies used by the two prestigious schools to encourage student diversity.
Students for Fair Admissions, Blum’s group, said UNC discriminates against white and Asian American applicants and Harvard discriminates against Asian American applicants. The schools have a different opinion.
Many schools place a strong emphasis on reaching a diverse student body, not only to eliminate racial inequality and exclusion in American life, but to bring a range of perspectives to campuses.
Harvard and UNC state that they use race as just one factor in a variety of tailored assessments for no-quota admissions — which court precedents allow — and that restricting their consideration will result in a significant drop in enrollment from underrepresented students groups would lead.
Judgments are due by the end of June.
Nine states already ban any consideration of race for admissions to public colleges and universities: Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington.
In California, the same electorate that gave President Joe Biden a 5 million vote lead over his predecessor Donald Trump in 2020 easily rejected a proposal to revive affirmative action.
Public opinion on the subject varies depending on how the question is asked. A 2021 Gallup poll found that 62 percent of Americans support ethnic minority programs.
But in a March poll by the Pew Research Center, 74 percent of Americans, including a majority of Black and Hispanic respondents, said race and ethnicity shouldn’t play a role in college admissions.