In spite of the most recent victory for diversity in higher education handed down by the Supreme ... more In spite of the most recent victory for diversity in higher education handed down by the Supreme Court in Fisher v. Texas, there seems to be no end in sight to the legal assault on race-conscious admissions plans. Rather than attempt to defend race-conscious admissions plans on the disputed legal terms, this article instead asks whether the opposition demand for race-neutral “meritocratic” admissions is itself legitimate. This article suggests that the insistence on “meritocracy” in admissions implicates an historical pattern and practice by certain advantaged racial groups of perpetuating the systemic educational disadvantages experienced by subordinate racial groups while further entrenching their own educational advantages. Recognizing this, the demand for race-neutral “meritocratic” admissions in higher education ought to be rejected as incompatible with the guarantee of equal educational opportunity first recognized in Brown v. Board of Education. At the same time, race-conscio...
School integration as a means of achieving educational equality has in many ways failed. Indeed, ... more School integration as a means of achieving educational equality has in many ways failed. Indeed, it is a great irony that the case most celebrated for the dismantling of our dual system of racialized education in America, Brown v. Board of Education, has wrought at best mixed results for true educational equality. One underutilized resource in the ongoing fight for educational equality is historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). In part this oversight is attributable to the success of Brown and the ensuing strategy of pursuing educational equality predominantly through the integration of black students into white schools. Worse yet, Brown may be partly to blame for relegating HBCUs to the margins of our system of higher education despite HBCUs playing an outsized role in the education of black students from their origins in the nineteenth century right up to the present. The little-known data on the success of HBCUs in educating black students deserves greater attention...
One of the panels at the 2014 University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law’s Symposiu... more One of the panels at the 2014 University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law’s Symposium on Educational Equity and the Constitution in the Twenty-First Century dealt with “Preferences, the Mismatch Question, and Improving the Racial Pipeline.” The four participants decided to skip the usual format of sequential presentations and instead have a conversation revolving around a series of questions. The result was so well received that we decided to adapt this approach into a joint contribution for the published Symposium. What follows is not a transcript or an adaptation of our January 2014 conversation, but rather a series of short essays on the questions discussed at the conference. For each of the twelve questions, one of us (in rotation) wrote a lead essay, and the rest of us made such responses and rejoinders as seemed fitting. We have edited the essays and added tables and charts to improve the flow of the exchanges and illustrate the content.
In our representative democracy we guarantee equal participation for all, but we fall short of th... more In our representative democracy we guarantee equal participation for all, but we fall short of this promise in so many domains of our civic life. From the schoolhouse, to the jailhouse, to the courthouse, racial minorities are underrepresented among key public decision-makers, such as judges, police officers, and teachers. This gap between our aspirations for representative democracy and the reality that our judges, police officers, and teachers are often woefully under-representative of the racially diverse communities they serve leaves many citizens of color wanting for the democratic guarantee of equal participation. This critical failure of our democracy threatens to undermine the legitimacy of these important civic institutions. It deepens mistrust between minority communities and the justice system and exacerbates the failures of a public education system already lacking accountability to minority students. But there is hope for rebuilding the trust, accountability and legitim...
Mismatch theory attempts to answer an important question — namely, are race-conscious admissions ... more Mismatch theory attempts to answer an important question — namely, are race-conscious admissions plans harmful to underrepresented minority students (URMS)? Mismatch theory purports to answer this question by demonstrating that URMS admitted under race-conscious admissions plans are more likely to have poor outcomes (both academic and professional) than their same-school peers and suggests these poor outcomes are the inevitable consequence of URMS' weaker academic credentials. The problem with mismatch theory is not its answer to these questions per se, but the fact that it attempts to answer these questions in a vacuum, isolated from a host of interdisciplinary research and scholarship that bears directly on these questions and offers important insights, for which mismatch theory does not account. This Article explores the interdisciplinary research and scholarship that mismatch theory ignores, draws important connections between these two bodies of research, and suggests that ...
In spite of the most recent victory for diversity in higher education handed down by the Supreme ... more In spite of the most recent victory for diversity in higher education handed down by the Supreme Court in Fisher v. Texas, there seems to be no end in sight to the legal assault on race-conscious admissions plans. Rather than attempt to defend race-conscious admissions plans on the disputed legal terms, this article instead asks whether the opposition demand for race-neutral “meritocratic” admissions is itself legitimate. This article suggests that the insistence on “meritocracy” in admissions implicates an historical pattern and practice by certain advantaged racial groups of perpetuating the systemic educational disadvantages experienced by subordinate racial groups while further entrenching their own educational advantages. Recognizing this, the demand for race-neutral “meritocratic” admissions in higher education ought to be rejected as incompatible with the guarantee of equal educational opportunity first recognized in Brown v. Board of Education. At the same time, race-conscio...
School integration as a means of achieving educational equality has in many ways failed. Indeed, ... more School integration as a means of achieving educational equality has in many ways failed. Indeed, it is a great irony that the case most celebrated for the dismantling of our dual system of racialized education in America, Brown v. Board of Education, has wrought at best mixed results for true educational equality. One underutilized resource in the ongoing fight for educational equality is historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). In part this oversight is attributable to the success of Brown and the ensuing strategy of pursuing educational equality predominantly through the integration of black students into white schools. Worse yet, Brown may be partly to blame for relegating HBCUs to the margins of our system of higher education despite HBCUs playing an outsized role in the education of black students from their origins in the nineteenth century right up to the present. The little-known data on the success of HBCUs in educating black students deserves greater attention...
One of the panels at the 2014 University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law’s Symposiu... more One of the panels at the 2014 University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law’s Symposium on Educational Equity and the Constitution in the Twenty-First Century dealt with “Preferences, the Mismatch Question, and Improving the Racial Pipeline.” The four participants decided to skip the usual format of sequential presentations and instead have a conversation revolving around a series of questions. The result was so well received that we decided to adapt this approach into a joint contribution for the published Symposium. What follows is not a transcript or an adaptation of our January 2014 conversation, but rather a series of short essays on the questions discussed at the conference. For each of the twelve questions, one of us (in rotation) wrote a lead essay, and the rest of us made such responses and rejoinders as seemed fitting. We have edited the essays and added tables and charts to improve the flow of the exchanges and illustrate the content.
In our representative democracy we guarantee equal participation for all, but we fall short of th... more In our representative democracy we guarantee equal participation for all, but we fall short of this promise in so many domains of our civic life. From the schoolhouse, to the jailhouse, to the courthouse, racial minorities are underrepresented among key public decision-makers, such as judges, police officers, and teachers. This gap between our aspirations for representative democracy and the reality that our judges, police officers, and teachers are often woefully under-representative of the racially diverse communities they serve leaves many citizens of color wanting for the democratic guarantee of equal participation. This critical failure of our democracy threatens to undermine the legitimacy of these important civic institutions. It deepens mistrust between minority communities and the justice system and exacerbates the failures of a public education system already lacking accountability to minority students. But there is hope for rebuilding the trust, accountability and legitim...
Mismatch theory attempts to answer an important question — namely, are race-conscious admissions ... more Mismatch theory attempts to answer an important question — namely, are race-conscious admissions plans harmful to underrepresented minority students (URMS)? Mismatch theory purports to answer this question by demonstrating that URMS admitted under race-conscious admissions plans are more likely to have poor outcomes (both academic and professional) than their same-school peers and suggests these poor outcomes are the inevitable consequence of URMS' weaker academic credentials. The problem with mismatch theory is not its answer to these questions per se, but the fact that it attempts to answer these questions in a vacuum, isolated from a host of interdisciplinary research and scholarship that bears directly on these questions and offers important insights, for which mismatch theory does not account. This Article explores the interdisciplinary research and scholarship that mismatch theory ignores, draws important connections between these two bodies of research, and suggests that ...
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Papers by Stacy Hawkins