The case for race-neutral admissions criteria at a Virginia magnet school shows what is at stake in the Supreme Court’s pending decision on affirmative action.
Francis Chung/POLITICO
As the 4th Circuit put it, under the old system of admissions TJ’s incoming classes “were drawn principally from a limited group of ‘feeder’ middle schools in Fairfax County.” TJ’s entering classes also included very few low-income students, English-language learners, special education, Black, Hispanic or multiracial students. But TJ is one of 19 specialized Virginia Governor’s Schools that receives state funding. In other words, TJ is subsidized by taxpayers who do not live in high-opportunity Fairfax, and it is supposed to be a public resource for an entire region.
Meanwhile a 2020 report produced by Virginia Commonwealth School of Education and its partners shows that school segregation by race and poverty is accelerating in Virginia. Researchers attribute much of rising segregation to “school district and attendance boundary lines that wall-off communities with highly differentiated wealth.” In Northern Virginia, boundaries between schools in the same school district contribute to 63 percent of school segregation.
School district administrators can choose to draw attendance zones in ways that encourage integration or encourage segregation. As parents and homeowners well know, there are marked differences in resources and teacher quality between schools in wealthy residential areas and those with large populations of low-income students. A key predictor of achievement gaps between white and Asian as opposed to Black and Hispanic students is the latter’s much higher exposure to low-income peers and unequal schools. In Virginia and throughout the country, Black and Hispanic public school students are more likely than their white and Asian counterparts to be relegated to schools with higher rates of leader and teacher turnover, fewer opportunities for advanced courses and inadequate funding compared to student need.
Yet adherents of colorblindness are asking governments and institutions to willfully blind themselves to the pervasive reality of racial disparities and the economic and social systems that produce them. They ask federal judges to pretend they don’t exist and deny any legitimacy to efforts to redress past and present practices that result in racial and economic exclusion. Taken to its illogical conclusion, a decision to redraw student attendance lines to produce more racial integration among students would not be allowed under the Pacific Legal Foundation’s colorblind absolutism. This defies the holding and spirit of Brown v. Board of Education.
The 4th Circuit found no evidence of discriminatory intent, which must be proved under the Fourteenth Amendment when challenging race-neutral practices. It noted that Asians still faired best under TJ’s new admissions criteria that everyone had to meet, and that low-income Asians were now much better represented, as were Blacks, Hispanics and low-income students of all colors.
An ideological demand for colorblindness should not be allowed to freeze in place systems of exclusion. It should not prevent employers from diversifying their workplaces and boards and trying to create a shared culture where everyone feels welcomed and no one endures discrimination or harassment. It should not prevent selective colleges or high schools from choosing to value characteristics that social science shows are more predictive of student success than test scores. Judging how well students achieve, measured against the educational opportunities available to them, is fair. Accepting high achievers from every middle school does this. It enables children who are not handed perfection, who have had to overcome systemic inequality, a fighting chance at high opportunity. It also recognizes that overcoming obstacles like poverty is itself a form of merit.
Opposing such efforts suggests an investment in the status quo, or possibly fear of the loss of dominance or entrenched advantage. “Anti-woke” is code, a dog whistle, a whipping up of hysteria about trying to make education and economic opportunity more available and inclusive, for everyone.
The TJ case is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court. If the Roberts Court outlaws affirmative action this year and later uses the TJ case to embrace colorblind absolutism, we will be back to the fictions of Plessy v. Ferguson, in which the Court pretended that separate was equal and states were encouraged to erect and reify boundaries of exclusion. We will continue to be a land not of opportunity but of opportunity hoarding, in which elites win and The TJ case is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court. If the Roberts Court outlaws affirmative action this year and later uses the TJ case to embrace colorblind absolutism, we will be back to the fictions of Plessy v. Ferguson, in which the Court pretended that separate was equal and states were encouraged to erect and reify boundaries of exclusion. We will continue to be a land not of opportunity but of opportunity hoarding, in which elites win and all others struggle.