For most Americans, the title of this post would have been the big news in Pew Research Center’s report on its survey of Americans this past spring on the college admissions process. Instead, the reader has to scroll to the last graph to find the relevant data buried under the diversionary heading “Black, Hispanic, and Asian American adults more likely than White adults to say race or ethnicity, legacy, first-generation status should be factors in college” (emphasis added):
As this graph shows, 59% of blacks and 68% of Hispanics believe that race or ethnicity should not play a role in college admissions. Yes, those figures are somewhat lower than the 79% figure for whites, but the fact that substantial majorities of blacks and Hispanics oppose racial preferences would be big news to many people.
Not that it should be big news. In fact, a Pew Research Center article back in 2019 on the same survey question reported that “majorities across racial and ethnic groups agree that race should not be a factor in college admissions” and included a well-titled graph with numbers very similar to the 2022 survey—62% of blacks and 65% of Hispanics said that race or ethnicity should not be a factor.
In 2016, the Court in Fisher v. University of Texas ruled by a vote of 4-3 that the University of Texas’s race-conscious admissions program did not violate the Equal Protection Clause. A Gallup poll conducted in the immediate aftermath of that ruling showed that 65% of Americans—including 63% of blacks and 65% of Hispanics disapproved of the ruling. Further, 57% of blacks said that race or ethnicity should not be a factor at all in college admissions decisions, as did a strong plurality—47%—of Hispanics.
Gallup’s article on that poll also showed that Americans’ strong opposition to racial preferences in college admissions has “held steady” since Gallup first posed the question in 2003:
