The minister’s daughter from Tennessee. A black American who converted to Islam. An American Jewess who had just finished her military service in Israel. A Palestinian refugee. A Caucasian brunette from a village in North Carolina.
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
And me, the daughter of Lévis.
All six of us lived together in what could have been a tower of Babel, but which, miraculously, was not. We weren’t 20 years old and we lived together in the same wing – exclusively female – of a student residence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
While the 1990s of the Clinton presidency were in full swing and the divide between white and black students was evident in the rest of this leafy campus in the southern United States, we lived in a parallel world.
With about thirty other students from heterogeneous backgrounds, we were part of Unitas, a “multicultural learning and living together experience”.
In addition to taking our regular courses to obtain our baccalaureate, we met every Wednesday evening, in the presence of two professors of sociology and anthropology, to explore all the facets of diversity, whether religious, racial, cultural , economic, sexual or ideological. To read black feminist author bell hooks or Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor. Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi and Malcolm X.
It was often brewing, but we had to listen to each other and find a way to resolve the conflicts. Our daily well-being depended on it: 36 of us shared a single kitchen!
Memories of this formative, if not to say transformative, year within Unitas came to the surface this week. On Monday, the United States Supreme Court announced that it would hear a challenge to the admissions policies of the University of North Carolina (UNC) as well as those of Harvard University, where I also studied.
In both cases, Students for Fair Admissions is asking the highest US court to end the “affirmative action” policy. At Harvard, a private university. At UNC, a public university.
In both cases, universities choose their students using a so-called “holistic” approach. They take into account both the grades, extracurricular involvement and the personality of the candidates before making an offer of admission.
According to the complainants, who are students whose application has been rejected by one or other of the universities, the personality criterion – particularly subjective – is used to make room for marginalized minorities and becomes a barrier to admission of many more “deserving” white and Asian students.
The lawsuit argues that this approach violates the country’s Constitution and civil rights law. “If we win, it will end this practice across the country. At hundreds of universities,” Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) boss Edward Blum told me over the phone.
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It’s no secret. If SFFA prevails before the predominantly conservative Supreme Court justices, Black Americans, Native Americans and Latinos — all underrepresented in the nation’s higher education — will have an even harder time getting into a top university.
And the effect could be felt for decades. For many, attending a reputable institution is directly linked to prospects for upward social mobility and professional success. Even lucky to have a weight on American society.
At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the crown jewel of a state still recovering from the legacy of 200 years of slavery, the end of affirmative action policies would be a disaster.
During the Unitas era, all black Americans who took part in the program were the first in their families to go to college. Without exception. They were proud of this status, but also carried on their shoulders the immense responsibility of not disappointing both their loved ones and the large black community in the state.
Many had found their arrival on the benches of the university difficult. Coming from underprivileged neighborhoods, they had too often had access to poor quality primary and secondary schools and had to take double bites.
In a university more than 200 years old – where the first black student was admitted only in 1951 – they felt too much and stuck together.
On our graduation day, I saw many crying with joy and relief in the arms of their parents.
Two decades later, black Americans are still underrepresented on campus. If they form 20% of the population of the State which finances the university, they are only 8% of the students.
We observe the same thing at Harvard. There are only 6% of black students there despite a national percentage reaching 13%, according to the last census.
We will come back for the magic effect of positive discrimination! There is still a long way to go to talk about true fairness.
Besides, these days at UNC, many are decrying the fact that two-thirds of the university’s board of trustees are white men. The glaring lack of teachers from diverse backgrounds has also caused a lot of ink to flow.
If the Supreme Court agrees with the plaintiffs when it hears the case in the fall, I fear that the Unitas experience will no longer strike me as a happy memory, but rather a broken promise.