Justice Scalia: Minorities better off in ‘less-advanced’ schools

But Wednesday evening, a source familiar with the case clarified that Scalia was summarizing arguments from other cases, as opposed to candidly providing his own commentary on affirmative action. At one point, he wondered if the case should be remanded to a district court to gather more evidence, but as his questions continued, he seemed to doubt that anything new would come out of such a move.

Hearings began yesterday in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas, brought on by one-time UT applicant Abigail Fisher. This is actually a return to the court for the case. That court again ruled in favor of the school and Fisher again appealed. The case was first heard in federal district court in 2009 and made its way to the Supreme Court for the first time in 2013.

“Graduated in four years while being an academic tutor, resident assistant, peer mentor, and involved in many on campus organizations including Texas Orange Jackets”, she told me. At issue is whether the school can use race as a factor in admitting freshmen.

That’s partly because those flagships compete with private universities that can consider race, said Kahlenberg. So a generous interpretation of Roberts’s question is whether the presence of minority students still makes a difference to everyone, since that’s the test an affirmative action program has to meet.

“And, frankly”, Garre said, “I don’t think the solution to the problems with student body diversity can be to set up a system in which not only are minorities going to separate schools, they’re going to inferior schools”.

Supporters though say that Scalia’s comments were taken out of context and he has been wrongly painted as racist when he bumbled and invoked mismatch theory, which in itself has been controversial. “Maybe it ought to have fewer”.

While not posing a question directly, Scalia said he questioned whether admitting more black students would benefit them or the university. Scalia suggested they might be better off attending less academically rigorous schools.

California voters voted to end race-based admission practices nearly two decades ago, but that hasn’t stopped the debate in another state from reaching the Supreme Court. Many outstanding students choose these institutions because they are welcoming for students of color, while many predominantly white institutions are not.

A 2008 report from the National Science Foundation found numerous undergraduate programs that produced the most African-American PhDs in science and engineering were historically black colleges and universities, such as Howard and Spellman.

However, some of the studies cited by Taylor and other opponents of affirmative action have been challenged. He said that the getting rid of a racial factor in college admissions would cause diversity in universities to “plummet”. “Like so many, Justice Scalia mistakes African American as a proxy for low readiness, when in fact minority students in more selective colleges and universities not only graduate at relatively higher rates, but also secure high-paying jobs thereafter”.