Affirmative Action Exposes the Secret Meaning of Equity

That’s no accident. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines equity as “a situation in which everyone is treated equally”—precisely opposite to how it is used by the modern American university. There it is used to justify unequal treatment of individual applicants to achieve specific racial outcomes.

This promises to be among the Roberts court’s most momentous decisions. If the justices do what the chief once alluded to in an earlier case—get America out of this “sordid business, this divvying us up by race”—the political earthquake may be even more disruptive than the Dobbs v. Jackson Woman’s Health Organization decision returning abortion to the democratic process.

Now, there is no shortage of briefs laying out the statutory and constitutional arguments for giving Grutter the old heave-ho. But it’s worth focusing on the underlying principle of equity, not only for the disingenuous way it has been substituted for equal treatment but for the corruption it encourages.

To begin with, its use is almost always disingenuous because its champions are betting that when the public hears the word “equity,” they’ll hear it in the dictionary sense as fair and equal treatment for all. But within the progressive world, everyone understands it as a way to push some races to the head of the line while shoving others back—primarily higher-achieving Asian-Americans, in the case of college admissions.

Vice President

Kamala Harris

let this particular cat out of the bag recently when she invoked “equity” for how the administration will allocate resources to deal with extreme weather conditions. When pressed on what exactly she meant, the White House was vague, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency quickly tried to clean up her mess by saying that all in need would be helped.

Which points to another defining feature of equity. Its advocates hate having to define in public what it really means. That is also true of Harvard and North Carolina, which are manifestly uncomfortable spelling out just how equity operates in their admissions decisions.

Moreover, Americans are typically assured equity’s use will be limited and temporary. Grutter is typical in that sense. In oral argument Justice

Amy Coney Barrett

brought up Justice

Sandra Day O’Connor’s

majority opinion in Grutter, which declared the use of race in admissions must be limited in time.

“We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today,” Justice O’Connor wrote. Well, it’s now 19 years later, and the universities are arguing the continued use of race preferences is more necessary than ever.

“How do you know when you’re done?” Justice Barrett asked.

It’s still a key question.

Evan Thomas,

in a 2019 article for the Atlantic, asked the retired Justice O’Connor about the deadline she laid out in Grutter. Her answer: “That may have been a misjudgment.”

Some might say it’s worse than that. It was deliberately deceptive. Justice

Clarence Thomas

suggested as much in his Grutter dissent. And he pointed to another problem.

Simply admitting students with lower scores because they belonged to a preferred racial minority did not, as expected, do much to close the achievement gap. Justice Thomas noted that “nowhere in any of the filings in this Court is any evidence that the purported ‘beneficiaries’ of this racial discrimination prove themselves by performing at (or even near) the same level as those students who receive no preferences.”

You could say much the same today. So what’s the progressive answer?

It never is to look to see if race preferences are actually working for the people they are intended to help. Rather, too often the answer is to cover up failure. This is the bitter fruit of equity, and it works two ways: First, stop requiring measures that expose the failure, such as the SATs—as many colleges and universities are doing; and if that doesn’t work, classify Asian-Americans as “white” or “white adjacent” so their achievement doesn’t disturb the racial-equity narrative.

“Equity is now the enemy of equality,” says

Edward Blum,

president of Students for Fair Admissions. “The vast majority of Americans of all races hope that the Supreme Court will use these cases to return the law to the ideal of equal treatment for all.”

Write to mcgurn@wsj.com.