Worrying about the end of affirmative action
According to a recent Gallup poll, how Americans feel about the end of affirmative action in college admissions depends not just on their race but also on their age. Mount Holyoke College President Danielle R. Holley spoke about why.
According to a recent Gallup poll, how Americans feel about the end of affirmative action in college admissions depends not just on their race but also on their age.
News site The 19th reviewed the racial and gender breakdowns of a poll about last summer’s Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. The findings revealed that 68% of overall respondents saw the decision to stop race-conscious college admissions as “mostly a good thing,” with 52% of Black Americans sharing this sentiment. However, 56% of Black Americans aged 40 and older view the end of race-conscious admissions as “mostly a bad thing.” In contrast, only 38% of Black Americans aged 18 to 39 felt similarly.
President Danielle Holley said that this could partially be true because Black baby boomers grew up in the Jim Crow South and remember segregated higher education, whereas younger Americans never lived in a country without affirmative action.
“So many of the things that [younger Americans] experienced they think of as the norm, and they’re not the norm,” Holley said. “The norm was the hundreds of years of racial segregation that kept Black and Brown people out of higher ed. They only see what they’ve experienced, which is a world that’s open to opportunity because of affirmative action.”
