Emily, Greg, Lakisha, Jamal

I was used to having the minority viewpoint at my high school. Not many people aligned with my political views, especially within my constitutional law class where we were always discussing current events. When it came to the issue of affirmative action, even the handful of liberal-leaning students left me to defend affirmative action all by myself. It was about 30 to one. No matter what argument I offered, someone would always respond with something about how fairness requires choosing the “most qualified” student or job applicant.

Maybe I’m writing this because I’m still a little miffed that I couldn’t convince anyone four years ago, but chip on my shoulder aside, the topic of affirmative action is even more relevant today than it was then. Last month the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments for the Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin case, which could limit the future use of affirmative action in admissions, depending on how the court rules in the spring. Curtailing affirmative action would be a step backwards.

Identically equal qualifications don’t lead to equal outcomes, thanks to both purposeful and subconscious discrimination. In 2003, economists from MIT and the University of Chicago conducted an experiment submitting equally qualified resumes, but randomized the name on top to be either “White sounding” or “African American sounding.” In the study, “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination,” the researchers found that despite equal qualifications, more White sounding names received 50 percent more callbacks for interviews than black sounding names. These results held up even for companies that identified themselves as “equal opportunity” employers. At the average number of years of experience, the economists estimated the benefit of a white name to be equivalent to about eight additional years of experience. A recent study conducted by Yale researchers found a similar premium on having a male name on an application, compared to an identical one with a female name. The fictional candidates in this experiment were senior undergraduate students applying to a laboratory job and evaluated by 200 academic science faculty. Both men and women faculty were not only more likely to hire the male, but they also ranked him higher in competency and were willing to pay him $4000 more than the woman. These faculty members were also more willing to mentor the male student than the female student.

These types of discrimination remind us that identity markers still matter, and that’s before any discussion of structural inequalities that have built up through past and current discrimination—gender roles, lack of mentors, correlation between race and socioeconomic status, etc. Trying to understand how all of these issues intersect and affect us is extremely complex, but that’s why any talk of solutions must also be about nuanced policies.

The way I see it, in an ideal world where discrimination and structural inequality did not exist, we would need to base our policies only on socioeconomic status, and the rationale behind that would be differential resource access. Two people with equal potential for achievement will most likely perform very differently if one person has access to a laptop, SAT books and private schooling and the other person does not. It sounds strange but, at least in our capitalist system, this is the ideal situation. Only socioeconomic status (via resource access) inhibits equality of opportunity, so it is the only thing that would need correcting. Given that this is our long-term goal, current policies must factor in other minority attributes in addition to socioeconomic status. This is to account for issues like discrimination and structural inequality, and policies should be nuanced to reflect different institutional features. For example, taking gender into account would look different for undergraduate applications than it would for graduate-level sciences. This is an imperfect system: There is no realistic way to actually know how an individual has been affected by his or her identity markers, so we have to use features like race and gender as proxies for experiences because there isn’t a more feasible option that captures systematic discrimination and inequality.

In the end we all benefit from affirmative action. It’s not a zero sum game. As a South Asian woman, I’ve heard people tell me that affirmative action is hurting me, but that could not be further from the truth. There are very few South Asian women in powerful positions, and to break that ceiling I need a diverse environment during my time at Duke. I need to hear perspectives, be challenged, find my voice and think in a way that transcends our society’s inequality. That’s something only diversity can breed.

Rajlakshmi De is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every other Tuesday. You can follow Rajlakshmi on Twitter @RajDe4.