Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-2022
Journal Title
South Carolina Law Review
ISSN
0038-3104
Abstract
As the United States Supreme Court considers the future of affirmative action in higher education, this Article reflects on a 2003 essay by Professor Derrick Bell, which provocatively argued that diversity is a distraction from other pressing problems of access to a bachelor’s degree. The Article evaluates his claims with a focus on Latinx students, a rapidly growing segment of the college-going population. Bell believed that diversity is a less compelling justification for the use of race in admissions than corrective justice is. As a result, he predicted persistent litigation over the constitutionality of affirmative action programs. That prediction certainly proved accurate, but there still is reason to doubt that a corrective justice rationale would successfully dispel the controversy. The racial and ethnic make-up of America’s youth has changed dramatically, and the growth in immigrant, mixed-race, and Latinx students complicates any understanding of corrective justice.
In addition, Bell concluded that affirmative action programs are largely irrelevant to most students because they do not attend elite colleges and universities. This Article shows that despite widening access to a college degree, stratification and privatization perpetuate the comparative advantages of students from privileged backgrounds. As more students enter college, advantaged students attend institutions with significantly greater resources and prestige, thus preserving inequality. Moreover, less affluent students incur substantial debt to obtain degrees with lower earning power. Latinx students exemplify the phenomenon. They are concentrated at less selective colleges and universities, and they receive lower levels of scholarship aid than other students do. Even as Latinx college-going rates rise, these challenges allow the college completion gap to persist. The Court’s affirmative action jurisprudence also has shaped higher education policy in largely unappreciated ways. A principle of colorblindness constrains federal efforts to define and support Minority-Serving Institutions. Latinx students are heavily concentrated in Hispanic-Serving Institutions, but grants to these schools frequently support general programs and facilities instead of targeting Latinx students’ needs.
The Article concludes with suggestions to address ongoing policy challenges through, among other things, improved support for the less prestigious educational workhorses of higher education, greater transparency in the college application process, enhanced need-based aid, and explicit recognition that Minority-Serving Institutions are laboratories for experimentation in serving a transforming student body.
First Page
579
Last Page
641
Num Pages
63
Volume Number
73
Issue Number
3
Publisher
University of South Carolina School of Law
Recommended Citation
Rachel F. Moran,
Diversity’s Distractions Revisited: The Case of Latinx in Higher Education,
73
S. C. L. Rev.
579
(2022).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/1890
File Type
Included in
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