“If I told you that a flower bloomed in a dark room, would you trust it?” — Kendrick Lamar [1]
I disagree with the 2023 Supreme Court decision to end affirmative action in higher education. That decision was framed as a defense of “meritocracy” as though merit exists in a vacuum, untouched by our constrained agency given the conditions we are born in. A meritocracy is a social system or society where an individual’s success or power is granted based on their demonstrated abilities or merit, not money or social position [2]. As any sociologist would argue, merit isn’t neutral. It is produced, cultivated, curated, and ultimately rewarded in social institutions, marked by hues of a more exclusionary past. Affirmative action doesn’t undermine meritocracy; it exposes the myth of neutrality. And in doing so, it fulfills the democratic promise of equal opportunity.
Sociologist Ruth Frankenberg writes about “the mirage of an unmarked whiteness.” It’s the idea that what’s presented as “normal,” “neutral,” or “objective” is often just whiteness in disguise [3]. In higher education, what counts as “merit,” often reflects access to resources that have historically been distributed unequally.
Difference in test scores, extracurriculars, internships, language proficiency, and leadership roles become indicative of child being born into the “wrong” neighborhood. For many students of color, rural residents, and women, these opportunities are not missing because of a demonstrated incapability. They’re missing because of systemic barriers that privilege some and not others.
Affirmative action is not about lowering standards; it’s about naming the conditions under which those standards are met. It operationalizes the promise of equal opportunity by ensuring that the classroom reflects the promise of America to the world of being a land of opportunity for all.
Research by Claude Steele in Whistling Vivaldi shows how stereotypes shape performance. When students from underrepresented groups enter spaces where they are implicitly told they don’t belong, they carry a psychological weight that others never have to shoulder [4]. Affirmative action interrupts this cycle by ostensibly marking social institutions as places of belonging, acknowledging a harsher past be rectified by structural correction.
Moreover, affirmative action is also about redistributive justice. Sociologist William Julius Wilson, in The Truly Disadvantaged, explains how structural racism concentrates disadvantage, limiting mobility long before a college application is even submitted [5]. If inequality is structurally curated, then so too must be its rectification.
What role then, should government play in this?
Critics from libertarian argue that government should be “colorblind” and that justice lies in equal treatment, not state-managed outcomes. However, this assumes that society itself operates on a level playing field. In reality, when the state withdraws from the work of equity, it tacitly sanctions inequality. Thus, neutrality quickly becomes complicity.
Furthermore, Rousseau’s social contract teaches that governments exist to guarantee both freedom and equality [6]. When inequality is built into the starting line, equality becomes unattainable. An idea to be theorized about but never attained.
Affirmative action exists to allow states to honor the contract by ensuring that opportunity is a right, not a privilege. Taken as such, states fulfill their duty to create a space in which the conditions merit proper freedom to be exercised.
Many critics additionally posit affirmative action to be no longer needed, often citing studies that demonstrate more women are attending colleges than men amongst others [7]. However, what this argument overlooks is what Frankenberg described as “power evasive race cognizance,” which acknowledges historical wrongs committed based on race, but disregard the persisting power structures that perpetuate these inequalities.
This is particularly relevant as it demonstrates that what critics claim of affirmative action’s nonnecessity is illustrative of a misunderstanding of how identity, power, and politics interest.
Affirmative action doesn’t violate meritocracy. It exposes the lie that merit was ever purely individual. It ensures that the starting line isn’t predetermined by race, class, or neighborhood. It is, in many ways, a form of poetic justice, embroidering the rite to education with a returning opportunity to those who have long been denied it.
