The End of Affirmative Action | CBS Reports

[Music] if the Supreme Court forbids the use of race and ethnicity in college admissions the opinion May begin the restoration of our nation's constitutional colorblind legal Covenant where would we be today if we didn't have affirmative action we would be in a lot worse position than we are in the summer of 2023 the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action and college admissions affirmative action really gave us an equal opportunity they don't understand how important that is for us to break out of the cycle that we've been in creating uncertainty for Black and Latino high school students chasing an opportunity that could change their lives I want them to have the opportunity that I never had I don't want them to be working 12 13 hours hours like their dad dead why do you think we needed affirmative action to try to help people catch up and get on a Level Playing Field I don't think it's a bad thing if poor whites now benefit from affirmative action same but your goal is diversity you're not going to get there I'm solid at obrian heckinger report and I teamed up with CBS reports to examine what the highest Court's Monumental decision means for the Next Generation [Music] [Music] since I was little I knew that college was the ticket to break this cycle that like our family has been in for generations and generations of not being educated and because of that having to work with their backs instead of their brains Emily Rodriguez the daughter of Mexican immigrants is a straight A student at Conrad School of Science a magnet school in Wilmington Delaware that specializes in stem education I've always wanted to be a veterinarian I loved helping people but most of all I love animals we would just need to add the5 to the hanging I can't see myself doing anything else and like to achieve that you need a degree in her senior year of high school Emily is taking AP classes and interning in her community to bolster her college applications but unlike her peers at school she sometimes doubles as both student and teacher raise your hands if you guys have heard of an Ivy League school in the past you know of them you know what they are Emily runs her school's first generation Scholars Club these are the 8 iag an organization she created with her older sister and now leads so you've just come from a meeting of the first generation Scholars Club what is it we talk everything from financial aid to College admission summer programs what classes to take now everything to get like the basis of how College admissions works and how they can navigate it as first generation students how old are you I'm 17 what's the goal of the club what were you hoping to do the goal is to increase understanding in my school and see more students that look like me that have the same background as me commit to these Elite institutions Emily is applying to Cornell an Ivy League school her sister Ashley who founded the first gen club with her is attending Emory University in Georgia for decades both of the elite schools have aggressively recruited kids from underrepresented groups considering the race and ethnicity of the applicants to combat discrimination and increase campus diversity but that may be about to change in a 6 to3 decision the justices ruled that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina violated the constitution in a historic ruling the US Supreme Court overturned 50 years of precedent and decided a student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual not on the basis of race effectively ending what's known as affirmative action what is affirmative action initially it was intended to help overcome years decades even centuries of anti-blackness of discrimination and the subjugation of people of color uh in this country David inosa defended the University of North Carolina's affirmative action practices before The Supreme Court over the years affirmative action is intended to provide universities the opportunity to have a holistic admissions plan which means that they consider various characteristics of students from extracurricular activities to grades to test scores but it also includes race because race remains relevant I think there are people would say so affirmative action is a way for people of color who are not qualified to get into jobs or maybe schools even during the trials there was Zero evidence that any of those students should not have gotten in on their own talents until 1976 the numbers of students of color in colleges were so low the US government didn't even count them today schools are more diverse but numbers are still low at the top colleges the ones that admit less than 25% of their applicants and produce a quarter of the US Senate three4 of the Supreme Court Justices and the majority of the nations's Fortune 500 CEOs even with affirmative action in Play Just 7% of students at top colleges are black even though twice that many 14% are of college age 15% are laat Ino even though their college age population is 23.4% the fastest growing youth demographic in the US McKenzie research on nonprofit colleges found that even with affirmative action it would take almost 70 years for these institutions student bodies to reflect the demographics of the US population in terms of the number of historically under represented students in each class we have so much history behind us as as people of color so much history like such a strong past so why would we be put at the same level as somebody whose family has been here for for centuries and have benefited off of the the harm done to communities of color affirmative action ends up helping a a relatively small number of students and yet there are you know tens of thousands of uh white men who feel like they've been wronged by affirmative action Richard collenberg A non-resident scholar at Georgetown University testified against continuing to allow affirmative action you wrote a a book in 1996 and uh the theory underlying that book was that race-based affirmative action had and this is a quote set back race relations by becoming a source of racial antagonism what does that mean well I think that in this country because affirmative action focused on Race rather than class uh there were a lot of Working Class People Who felt left behind by the policies and and alienated uh by those policies and it's something that a lot of people have recognized over the years where would we be today if we didn't have affirmative action historically we would be in a lot worse position than we are so as bad as things are today they're still better than what they were Margarita and Raphael Rodriguez immigrated from Mexico when they were teenagers Raphael makes a living as a truck driver and Margarita is a translator at a community clinic neither graduated from college I want them to have the opportunity that I never had and also because I know that um life after education will be a lot easier for them I don't want them to be working 12 14 hours like their dad did Margarita and Raphael are determined that all three of their daughters go to college Ashley is my quiet girl she's the shyest of all three Emily she has her own ideas she's always trying to do best for herself but she's also very very stubborn Brianna G is not into the teens yet so I'm trying to enjoy it as much as I can tortillas are ready yes do already so running late or what I always like to tell them that this is a team workor if one of them is doing good then we all happy and we all celebrate together their eldest Ashley is already there she was accepted to Emory University in Oxford Georgia in 2023 the last class admitted before affirmative of action was struck down it's a beautiful campus it is it is really nice I felt like I was right at home I felt very homy to me it felt like I belonged and everybody is so welcoming here Emory admitted no black students until the 1960s when affirmative action first began I try not to bother her a lot cuz I know she also needs her time but a dad likes to FaceTime her he needs to see her face what's up buddy what are you doing I'm lake house look a bonfire inside of the house and we're going to read poems oh wow so excited like I want to be there so bad yeah me too Ashley School Oxford College of Emory University is 11% black and 9% Latino while the state of Georgia is 33% black and 11% Latino to do a lot of political science psychology art now that the Supreme Court has made what I believe to be a regressive political decision we're really going to see some wide reaching effects Chelsea Holly used to council students at Emory now she's director of admissions at Spelman College one of the historically black colleges and universities created because black students were being kept out of higher education on the HBCU side we're expecting more interest applicant Behavior will likely change as well so if black high school seniors no longer feel like they are welcomed on predominantly white campuses they are less likely to apply and they're less likely to enroll even if they are offered admission we want to make sure that students are not only selecting an institution because it will look good on their resume for that first job but that you're finding somewhere that you can actually come alive people don't see you on an application Timothy Parker graduated from Hampton University and HBCU his son Hamza is applying to college the college admissions officers they just won't know the type of individual that he is they just won't be able to you know see him in his full light and his full capability and what he can accomplish and what he's already accomplished Hamza has a 3.5 GPA just about average for his first choice School Union College where he's applying early decision Union is under 9% black but they accept 50% of their applicants yeah I remember that one that's when we took it a dropped RS school I feel like f action really gave us an equal opportunity cuz United States has based off historical oppression from the start so it was unequal for us to get a job and education so I feel like affirmative action without affirmative action right now it'll probably be harder it if the Supreme Court forbids the use of race and ethnicity in College admission the opinion May begin the restoration of our nation's constitutional colorblind legal Covenant Edward bloom a conservative legal strategist has filed two dozen lawsuits since the 1960s against affirmative action and voting rights he founded students for fair admissions which spearheaded the litigation that ultimately led to the Supreme Court overturning affirmative action Richard cullenberg was an expert witness for bloom side I testified that racial diversity is very important to have on campus but that Harvard and the University of North Carolina could achieve robust levels of racial diversity using economic affirmative action rather than race-based affirmative action if you're looking at social class money really and we know that while poverty rates among blacks and Hispanics are are higher in pure numbers there are more poor white students so couldn't there be a scenario where looking at socioeconomic class actually just benefits more poor white students doesn't that literally undermine the strategy of trying to increase racial diversity well I would say three things quickly one is I don't think it's a bad thing if if poor whites now benefit from affirmative action I think that's a good same but I mean if your goal is diversity you're not going to get get there so that that would be the first point second point would be that you can expand the number of slots that go to Working Class People you don't have to say that uh we're going to keep the same number of affirmative action slots expand the number of slots in part by getting rid of Legacy preferences and all the preferences that benefit wealthy students third thing I would say is that it's extremely important to recognize that lowincome whites and lowincome Black and Hispanic people face different sets of obstacles and so one of them has to do with wealth in fact students from the richest 1% are more than twice as likely to attend the nation's Elite colleges than kids from middle class families with similar or even higher SAT scores Emily is applying early decision to Cornell but it's a big gamble for this workingclass family if she gets in early decision she must accept whether her family can pay or not you guys are leaders right like there's so many things that demand your leadership your intellect Your Excellence your Brilliance right now I don't want y'all to be on the sidelines Emily's parents persuaded a nonprofit program called teen sharp to work with their daughters its Founders Aton Ray Alene and his wife Tatiana padco work with about 500 Black and Latino students as early as the 8th grade Ashley went to Emory on a full ride and the Rodriguez say they're hoping Emily gets help as well for teen Shar it's not just going to college we're Relentless about making sure they're on the best financial terms possible if you had to put a price tag on the resources that you are giving to families what would it be it would probably cost the market value to get these kind of services $20,000 plus to get the wraparound support that our students get a teen sharp money plays a big role plays a big role in African American students going to college I went to school I didn't have any scholarship I found a way though I found a way and it took me some time even to I'm still paying student loans now I'm 55 following the Supreme Court decision conservative law firms are now going after scholarships based on race that could help reduce the need for student loans and they've set their SES on programs at less competitive colleges that benefit students of even though the focus has been on these Elite institutions will it impact students who are are going to a non- elite school it could potentially impact those universities if those universities end up overreacting to the decision and changing their policies to limit student access that absolutely should not happen after losing affirmative action at the state level the University of California increased its Outreach budget from 60 million to 120 million and the University of Texas automatically admitted a percentage of the state's top high school students yet both plans failed to reach the levels of diversity they saw with affirmative action the court did hold that students may still raise their own racial experiences in light of their application and that's incredibly important because many of our students testified about the importance of being able to tell about their story right A lot of these college are still very traditional in right looking at GPA right uh and so it's critical that your essay speaks to your story right teen sharp has been working with Hamza since he started High School their work with his older sister hasana helped her get into Elite Pomona College when affirmative action still existed I feel like even though they took away a family action you still have to talk about your race in some way race use your identity in my opinion depicts on where you came from and like how you react to certain things people put in put it into like a bad light but I feel like you should be proud of who you are David inosa saw firsthand what happens when colleges don't consider race when admitting students you're an Alum of the University of Texas law school and that state had banned affirmative action before The Supreme Court's most recent decision how did you see that impacting your graduating class when I got there there were only 26 Latinos in a class of over 400 and remember this is Texas uh two years before me there were 72 Latinos in the class there were over 40 black students in the class two years before me in my class there were four four African-Americans and that's just downright shameful was a short-term solution to a long-term problem even though we were historical oppressed in in the past we should have more opportunities to get in into these higher education platforms like the Ivy Leagues in general I'm mad about it but I feel like to a point I'm kind of numb to like the sensation of like consensually attacking us I feel like I'm used to it now for the six years I've been here but I feel like we should all should be mad about it when people debate affirmative action I always ask them you know the why why do you think we needed affirmative action because people were set back so far that they need need to put laws in place to try to help people catch up and get on a Level Playing Field how do you feel the admissions officers are taking this information are are are they nervous are they panicked are they restructuring all of that rolled into one frankly and it's because people like Ed Bloom have sent nasty grams to these universities threatening to bring another lawsuit if they don't go to completely race blind admissions so there's been been a lot of work that we've done ourselves as the Civil Rights Community to ensure that they understand how this decision can be appropriately limited so they don't overreact for colleges it's an Institutional choice right if they wanted to have more racial diversity they would have more racial diversity it's not magic it's kind of just math and strategy and so if you don't have racial diversity at the end of the day it's because that University is really not committed to it is that true I think that's basically true and if it's not providing the resources necessary to support uh working class Black and Hispanic students and and and white and Asian students then then it's it's making a choice that it doesn't want to invest in in these these students what are your hopes for Emily Rodriguez as we get closer to really the day she'll find out in December she's going to go to a wonderful school I'm confident about that um but I know from years of doing this work that whe if they get rejected at that early decision it's it's you know there's an emotional Dynamic it's a let down so my dream for her is that in a few uh weeks right we hear wonderful news for her just like Hamza and his sister the Rodriguez sisters find themselves on opposite sides of the historic Supreme Court decision on affirmative action Ashley got into Emory when it existed Emily's fate will be decided without it I think about December and I think about enjoying Christmas knowing what school I'm going to go to um hopefully my parents don't have to worry about the money and knowing that all the hard work that I've done it paid off I've been looking at this goal and being able to finish it early and do it right with no debt with none of that having to weigh over me it's it's a dream one two [Music] three [Music]

Channel: CBS News

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Keywords: affirmative action, affirmative action debate, cbs news, news, breaking news, affirmative action supreme court, Affirmative action explained, diversity, college admissions, affirmative action ruling, affirmative action overturned, students, administrators, supreme court, affirmative action in college admissions

Id: o_cS8sW6ewk

Length: 22min 46sec (1366 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 21 2023