Segregated dormitories, programs, and graduations are proliferating on college campuses. That fact undermines, if not vitiates, the “compelling state interest” of educational benefits that are purportedly derived from colleges’ having a diverse student body, and which gives colleges legal permission to maintain racially discriminatory admissions policies.
Ironically, the racial preferences accorded to black and Hispanic applicants in admissions may be the very reason for the trend toward segregation.
Professor Richard Sander, who has studied affirmative action for decades, notes in his amicus brief in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard an interesting study by Duke University economists showing the evolution of students’ social interaction over four years of attendance. The study found the following:
Freshmen arriving on campus developed a significant number of interracial relationships—a good outcome. But over time, friendships became stratified by academic achievement; “A” students tended to maintain friendships with the “A” students, and “B-” students tended to maintain friendships with other “B-” students. These patterns developed independent of race, but (entirely) because of large admissions preferences, academic performance was also strongly stratified by race. The result was that friendships Duke students left college with were racially stratified—indeed, student networks were, on average, more racially stratified at the end of college than the students’ friendship networks had been in high school. In other words, large preferences counteracted a key purpose of the preference: they led to performance differences that pulled students apart rather than fostering close interracial exchange and understanding. [Emphasis added.]
You don’t need a degree from Harvard to figure out that racial discrimination might well lead to racial segregation. Indeed, the degree might be an impediment to clear-eyed analysis, if not just common sense.