Latinx Files: Affirmative action is dead. What’s next?

Last Thursday, the Supreme Court overturned decades of legal precedent and banned the use of race-based affirmative action policies at institutions of higher learning.

The court’s conservative majority sided with plaintiffs Students for Fair Admissions in separate cases against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, ruling that the schools’ affirmative action policies were in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.

Among those who ruled against affirmative action was Justice Clarence Thomas, himself a past beneficiary of the policies he helped dismantle.

Make no mistake about it, the cases brought in front of the Supreme Court were rooted in white grievance. The organization behind the legal challenges, Students for Fair Admissions, is the brainchild of Edward Blum, a conservative activist who had previously tried but failed to dismantle race-based affirmative action programs. Remember Abigail Fisher, the woman who sued the University of Texas at Austin because she claimed the prestigious school had discriminated against her? Blum was behind that Supreme Court case as well. (I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that UT said Fisher’s grades and SAT scores weren’t good enough to admit her.)

Nonetheless, Blum persisted and changed his approach.

“I needed Asian plaintiffs,” he said in 2015 to the Houston Chinese Alliance. And find them, he did — the Supreme Court found that Harvard’s admissions policy specifically discriminated against Asian American students.

News of the end of race-based affirmative action was met with mixed responses from the Asian American community. While some championed the ruling, others, like my colleague Frank Shyong, decried it.

“It was a flawed policy with many valid criticisms,” Shyong wrote in his must-read column, “but affirmative action represented the federal government’s primary recognition that the wrongs of racism should be corrected.”

“That’s what we lost,” he later added.

Now that the policy is effectively dead, what comes next?

It’s hard to say. The Supreme Court decision killed race-based affirmative action — except for military academies— but didn’t provide a replacement. The lack of clarity has higher education leaders angsty, according to Times reporters Teresa Watanabe and Debbie Truong.

One concern they raised is that the decision could discourage Black, Latinx and other students of color from applying to certain schools.

“We’re really worried about private colleges and universities and what it means for representation,” Christopher Nellum, executive director of the Education Trust-West, told my colleagues. “Young people, particularly young people of color … are going to receive this as a message that they don’t belong.”

In light of last week’s Supreme Court decision, some have turned to California as a potential model to emulate. In 1996, voters approved Proposition 209, which banned affirmative action in state schools.

If that’s the case, expect the number of Black and Latinx students on campus to drop just as they did after Prop 209 was implemented — per my colleagues, “the number of California Black and Latino first-year students plunged by nearly half at UCLA and UC Berkeley.”

These schools eventually recovered and improved on the number of first-year Black and Latinx students, but not without cost.

“If we learned anything from California, state institutions have to invest a lot of money to meet some of their diversity goals,” Angel B. Pérez, chief executive of the National Assn. for College Admission Counseling, told The Times.

“But California is an outlier. There’s just not the same kind of resources or political will in other places that there is in California. The admissions officers are feeling like, ‘Well, what resources will I be given to do this work?’ There’s a lot of nervousness with a lot of unknowns.”

He’s right. Not every state is as committed to creating diverse campuses as California. In states like Missouri and Wisconsin, Republican state politicians have already set their sights on scholarships for racial and/or ethnic minorities.

It’s hard to find a silver lining in all of this, though if pressed to offer one, I’d point to the fact that the ruling on this particular type of affirmative action appears to have endangered another more egregious type.

On Monday, three Boston-area groups filed a complaint with the Education Department demanding that it review Harvard’s policy of giving preferential treatment to the children of alumni and donors.

“Why are we rewarding children for privileges and advantages accrued by prior generations?” said Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, executive director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, one of the groups involved.

“Your family’s last name and the size of your bank account are not a measure of merit, and should have no bearing on the college admissions process.”

More coverage from the Los Angeles Times:

• ‘Are you two the token Black kids of the department?’ The snubs and insults that accompanied affirmative action
• A lot of what you’ve heard about affirmative action is wrong
• California banned affirmative action in 1996. Inside the UC struggle for diversity
• ‘We’re really worried’: What do colleges do now after affirmative action ruling?
• Decades after California’s affirmative action ban, legal debate stalls funding for Black students

Things we read this week that we think you should read

— In his latest column, Gustavo Arellano wrote about the 180-year-old Adobe Flores in South Pasadena, which played a crucial role in ending the Mexican-American War. The home is one of the last few buildings still standing from the time Mexico ruled California.

— Columnist Jean Guerrero interviews Héctor Tobar on his new book, “Our Migrant Souls.” Tobar, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and professor, tackles the issue of Latinx misrepresentation in media and culture and addresses his book directly to young Latinxs. The Q&A tackles subjects including state-sanctioned violence at the border and how the term “Latino” is imperfect.

— Reporter Jack Herrera spent time talking with Normal Pimentel, “the pope’s favorite nun.” Pimentel has forged an unlikely alliance with the conservative governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, helping vet and assist migrants being transported from Texas to places like California. Herrera’s reporting adds nuance to a very polarized topic.

— The federal sentencing of the individual who killed 23 people at an El Paso Wal-Mart in 2019 began Wednesday. The mass shooting was one of the deadliest attacks on Latinxs in modern history.

— Just when you think that the state of Mexican soccer has hit rock bottom, something so horrific happens it reminds you there’s still room to descend. A Mexico fan was stabbed by another after a brawl broke out in the stands of Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara during the Mexico-Qatar CONCACAF Gold Cup match Sunday. Videos of the incident circulated on social media on Sunday night and Monday. According to NBC Bay Area, the suspect, a 29-year-old Sacramento man, was arrested without incident at his home and will be charged with attempted murder. Thankfully, Emmanuel Díaz Leal, the victim, is stable and is expected to make a full recovery.