The gatekeepers of UNC-Chapel Hill consider race and ethnicity, among many factors, when they sift tens of thousands of applications a year to decide who will get in. Now a plaintiff is urging the high court to declare the method unconstitutional.
, the plaintiff in both cases, alleges in court filings that Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill “award mammoth racial preferences” to African American and Hispanic applicants, to the detriment of White and Asian American applicants, and ignore “race-neutral” alternatives that might preserve student diversity. These practices, the plaintiff alleges, amount to “basic and blatant” violations of civil rights law. Both universities deny the allegations, and both won victories in federal trial courts.
Julia S. Clark, a senior majoring in political science and African, African American and diaspora studies, said race should not be ignored in admissions when it affects so many other aspects of educational opportunity. The 21-year-old from Falls Church, Va., identifies as Afro-Latina and is president of the Black Student Movement at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Affirmative action based on race is “antiquated,” James said, and “particularly egregious” at public universities. “Effectively what it’s saying is, ‘You’re not good enough to get in on your own merit, so we have to help you,’ ” he said. California banned affirmative action in public universities through a voter-approved initiative in 1996, and voters resoundingly defeated a proposal to repeal the ban in 2020. The others that ban consideration of race in admissions: Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington state.
But Oklahoma’s attorney general, John O’Connor , argued in an amicus brief that racial diversity did not suffer at the University of Oklahoma after the state banned affirmative action in 2012. Universities, he wrote, “can remain both diverse and academically competitive without resorting to racial discrimination.”
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