The Supreme Court of the United States put an end, Thursday, June 29, to the programs of positive discrimination at the university. African-American students fear the consequences of such a reversal with less possibility for them to have access to certain studies. Esther Cyna, lecturer in American civilization at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, answers questions from RFI.
RFI: Following the Supreme Court’s decision to abolish positive discrimination at university, will non-white students now be much less numerous in American universities?
Esther Cyna : Yes, that’s my opinion too, at least that’s what I’m afraid. There, the two programs that were targeted, thus Harvard and at the University of North Carolina, had made it possible to diversify the student body of these two universities, so we can of course fear that. Then, it must be said that the door is not quite closed since the judgment still mentions the possibility of taking into account the ethno-racial affiliation of candidates in, for example, letters of motivation. So that is still possible. It’s just that there can’t be a checkbox that is taken into account by an algorithm for college admission.
In any case, this decision comes when for sixty years, positive discrimination has worked rather well in the United States…
It was not mandatory so it worked. Remember, however, that most universities are private, so they can decide for themselves how they admit their students. In French, we speak of positive discrimination, but in English, it is ” affirmative action “. There is no such idea of discrimination. The idea is rather to help people who have been disadvantaged by the country, by its institutions, and to compensate for this economic and social disadvantage, through access to higher education.
This policy had opponents, the conservatives in particular. They are now in the majority in the Supreme Court, and they are the ones who decided to make this decision after several failed attempts…
Exactly, recent attempts. But, here, we see, once again, that these conservative judges really have a power with their majority and it is interesting to see in addition in this judgment an almost personal exchange between two black judges of the Supreme Court: on the one coast, Clarence Thomaswith the Conservatives, who is really attacking these programs, and on the other side, Ketanji Brown Jacksonthe new Supreme Court justice, who defends theaffirmative action. And, both have benefited from it at some point in their lives.
Joe Biden immediately expressed his ” strong disagreement with the Supreme Court decision. What means does he now have to oppose it?
Indeed, he was very clear: he said that this Court was not ” normal and he confirmed that there is still racial discrimination in the United States. Because that is also the question: the conservatives consider that there is no longer any need for positive discrimination today. He doesn’t really have a way. What he can do is encourage his government to issue guidelines that would help universities change their admissions mechanism to always take into account ethno-racial background, but in the student’s experience, and not just as a checkbox on a form.
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