Race still matters in educational opportunity. The Supreme Court should not pretend otherwise | Opinion

According to Google Maps, the distance between my old high school in Liberty City and the University of Miami is just under 10 miles. But for me, it felt a world away.

Though I excelled in school, worked hard in several extracurricular activities and volunteered in my community, college didn’t seem like a real possibility. No one in my house had graduated from college. They worked hard — as domestic workers, bank clerks, warehouse employees, operators and telephone company technicians.

While my family is incredibly bright, higher education was out of reach for most of them, as it had been for many Black people just beyond the grasp of Jim Crow. And I also knew that college was expensive. College — even a university 30 minutes away — seemed remote.

So, I did my work and hoped to take a few community-college classes. But a teacher helped me imagine a shorter path between the city and the U. And though I didn’t understand it at the time, affirmative action would be key to my opportunity for an education. That is why I am so concerned about Monday’s oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court. The two cases, Students for Fair Admissions (“SFFA”) v. Harvard, and SFFA v. University of North Carolina, place diversity initiatives such as the ones that helped me squarely on the docket.

These lawsuits, advanced by Students for Fair Admissions, an anti-affirmative action group, assert that Harvard and UNC allegedly discriminate against Asian Americans and white students, respectively. With the new conservative court, most experts fear that the court’s decision will deal a hard blow to diversity efforts in higher education.

Race-conscious admissions practices in higher education could be banned or severely limited. In practical terms, the court could prevent hundreds of colleges and universities from taking an individual’s race into account in any way in the admissions process. The potential to eliminate diversity initiatives in higher education would be devastating. And for people like me, it would be life-altering.

In high school, when I shared my goal of working at a local Burger King and taking a few classes at community college, a teacher insisted that I apply to the University of Miami. He encouraged me to apply for a competitive, merit-based scholarship the university had implemented to recruit outstanding Black students. At 16, however, I was reluctant to pursue anything conscious of race. I wanted to enter through the “front door” and not come in through a minority-recruitment effort.

This faulty reasoning infects some people today; some erroneously believe that race-conscious initiatives taint applicants from diverse communities with the presumption of incompetence. But I was reminded that legacy applicants, who are often white, are not saddled with the same concerns.

My legacy was tenacity in the face of widespread structural racism. My mother had broken barriers at her job. My great-aunt had shared stories about her journey from a former plantation in Georgia to a tiny house in Overtown to her work as a domestic worker on Miami Beach. My uncle had braved battles on and off the field as a Black soldier in the Vietnam War. Race mattered to them.

Race still matters — especially in educational opportunities. In our own back yard, structural inequities create persistent achievement gaps between Black and Hispanic students and their white counterparts. Race-conscious admissions practices take these structural barriers into account. The consideration of race as one of many factors enables admissions teams to conduct a more robust holistic assessment of applicants. It does not create quotas or lower admissions criteria. Instead, it allows admissions teams to consider academic achievements, extracurricular activities, life experiences and race.

I am thankful that my alma mater was able to admit a talented, qualified and diverse student body. Its efforts to recruit and support diverse students set me on the path to exploring different careers and engaging with many amazing people. Other students deserve the same opportunity. Liberty City and Coral Gables are closer than we think.

Olympia Duhart is professor of law at Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad College of Law, and the co-president of the Society of American Law Teachers.