Top universities and colleges in the United States (US) would have to review admissions rules based on race considerations that have often benefited black international students, especially Nigerians, more than Native Americans for whom they were designed after the US Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the practice was unlawful.
According to the Institute for International Education, more than 13,000 students from Nigeria are enrolled at colleges and universities in the United States. Many were able to get into some of these universities through affirmative action.
The issue of black immigrants benefiting from affirmative action in the admissions process at selective colleges and universities was a sore subject in America. While some universities and colleges touted gains made in student body diversity, particularly with the increase in black student enrollment, native black Americans felt cheated.
“Although these colleges and universities would like to attribute this success to their affirmative action programs, data suggests that such gains in black student enrollment have resulted from the increasing enrollment of black immigrants and at the expense of native black students—the students for whom affirmative action was initially intended to benefit,” notes a study by the Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality.
The study argued that extending race-based preferences to black immigrants works against a fundamental rationale in the legal dispute that gave rise to the provision.
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Black immigrants overall have higher admissions metrics compared to native blacks; using race-based preference results in the admission of a disproportionate number of black immigrants compared to native blacks, particularly at the most elite institutions.
According to an op-ed by Robert Cherry, an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a descendant of slavery, Mariah Norman, in 2021, bemoaned how immigrants or children of immigrants dominate the black student environment at Harvard.
She pointed to the Nigerian Students Association, which claims 200 members, suggesting that one-third of Harvard’s black student body is in the club. More than 15 black affinity groups exist on campus, like the African Students Association and the Caribbean Club. And while the Black Students Association encompasses all, there wasn’t an organization solely for black students like Norman until students got together in 2021 and formed one. Norman believed that nothing would change until Harvard started reporting on the ethnic composition of its black student population.
“The large numbers of African immigrants on American college campuses, coupled with the remarkably small numbers of native blacks on those same campuses, calls into question the effectiveness of America’s affirmative action programs. While affirmative action started as a system to right the wrongs of slavery and institutional anti-black racism, helping wealthy immigrants who weren’t here for those struggles doesn’t serve any of the program’s original intentions, argued Cherry.
The bulk of the international students at these high-priced universities are the children of politicians, top business leaders, and company executives in Nigeria and other African and Caribbean nations.
The latest Supreme Court decision has ended this debate by putting an end to affirmative action. The Court consolidated two cases against Harvard and the University of Carolina.
In the case against the University of North Carolina, the plaintiffs argued that the school is bound by both the Constitution’s equal protection clause and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars race discrimination by institutions that receive federal money.
The plaintiffs, Students for Fair Admissions, said that the university discriminated against white and Asian applicants by giving preference to Black, Hispanic and Native American ones. The university responded that its admissions policies fostered educational diversity and were lawful under longstanding Supreme Court precedents.
The case against Harvard accused the university of discriminating against Asian American students by using a subjective standard to gauge traits like likability, courage, and kindness, and by effectively creating a ceiling for them in admissions.
Lawyers for Harvard said the challengers had relied on a flawed statistical analysis and denied that the university discriminated against Asian American applicants. More generally, they said race-conscious admissions policies are lawful.
Both cases were brought by Students for Fair Admissions, a group founded by Edward Blum, a legal activist who has organized many lawsuits challenging race-conscious admissions policies and voting rights laws, several of which have reached the Supreme Court.
The universities both won in federal trial courts, and the decision in Harvard’s favor was affirmed by a federal appeals court.
Outside the school, there are also concerns that the Supreme Court decision could complicate diversity efforts elsewhere, narrowing the pipeline of highly credentialed minority candidates and making it harder for employers to consider race in hiring.
The justices of the US Supreme Court voted 6 to 3, along ideological lines, with the liberal justices all in dissent.
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