The Effectiveness of race-based affirmative action in U.S. university admissions and other comparative proposals.

Abstract

One of U.S. politics’ great debates in recent decades has been the presence of race-based affirmative action in the admissions processes of their universities, with June 2023’s landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which banned this policy, a culmination of this debate. It has been suggested that educational race-based affirmative action is a necessary response to the historical injustices that existed for members of minority racial groups in the U.S. education system, as well as the ongoing consequences of these injustices. Similar issues regarding the reconciliation of past injustices perpetuated against racial minority groups have emerged as a prominent issue on a global level. Resolving this issue is complicated by the variety of perspectives on how these conflicts should be resolved as well as accurately determining the ongoing implications of historic injustices. Using the research question “To what extent can the presence of race-based affirmative action in admissions processes of U.S. universities be considered the most effective method of addressing historical racial injustices in education?” to focus the investigation, this paper contends that combining class-based affirmative action in the short-term with a long-term goal of following a method named ‘the communitarian proposal’ is the most effective way of addressing the aforementioned historical injustices in education.