Latest news: Rich white people pay millions in bribes to get their children into prestigious colleges. Outrage ensues!

The trouble is that this latest “scandal” is just a more direct and crass way of doing what has always been done: the “best” schools have always been for the children of the upper classes, and their student body, like their faculty and administrators, have always been overwhelmingly white.

Rich people buy their way in to colleges in other ways than just bribery. For example, completely ‘legitimate’ college counseling services charge up to $1.5 million to prep a child from 8^th grade so that they will be “ready” when they apply to college.

It’s not just that rich people will do whatever it takes to get their kids into elite colleges: selective colleges also want to admit the children of the rich. Most selective schools take into account whether the candidates are the children of alumni, whether they are children of donors, and whether they are children of just….rich people. At a recent trial over bias in admissions (unfortunately brought by a right-wing billionaire attempting to end affirmative action), Harvard officials revealed that some 33% of its admissions  were “legacy” students (i.e. children of alumni, faculty and donors), and that legacy candidates were admitted at five times the rate of the rest of the applicants. The Harvard Dean of Admissions also revealed that he maintains a “Z-list” of students who would not otherwise be admitted who were from wealthy or famous families.

College admissions officers have been particularly self-righteous about the current scandal and have gone to lengths to assure the public that the selection process is fair and guided by objective standards. Colleges do select students based on grades, SAT scores, extra-curricular activities and interviews, they point out. Those they admit, they claim, are “the best and the brightest,” not the richest and whitest.

The problem is that these so-called “objective” measures of hard work and intelligence are actually very good measures of race and class privileges. And those with the highest grades and test scores and “interesting” extracurricular activities are most often the richest and whitest.

The SATs, in particular, do not predict in any way the likelihood of a high school senior succeeding in college. (The most common definition of success is graduating college within six years). In fact, students with SAT scores of 1500 are no more likely to succeed than students with SAT scores of 850. So, why are they used? Well, SATs are very sensitive to three factors: parents’ income, parents’ education and race. If colleges want a device to filter out poor and non-white candidates, the SAT is as good as it gets.

What about extra-curricular activities? Students with prestigious internships have a real leg up on the competition. But how does one get such an internship? Well, having connections is the best way in, since the large majority of these internships have no formal acceptance criteria. And those with connections are likeliest to be from privileged families. Yet colleges treat internships as measures of “interest” and “experience” as if they had nothing to do with privilege.

And what about grades? Grades allegedly measure how much a student has learned in a given course, and the cumulative GPA is supposed to be a good measure of how hard the student has worked and how intelligent they are. But grades are also a measure of something else: how much the student’s cultural understandings correspond with the culture of the teacher, the course content, and the school. Given the history of racism in education, white and wealthy students with parents who went to college have a much higher chance of sharing the same culture as the school teaches. And, of course, students who are not distracted from school by their family’s struggles with poverty, racism and immigration status (and who, conversely, have small class sizes, highly trained and motivated teachers, extracurricular activities at their beck and call) have a far greater likelihood of achieving higher grades.

And of course, there are interviews. Students who are successful often impress the interviewer (usually white and privileged themselves) with their personal characteristics that “fit in” with the college’s ethos. In colleges with majority white and upper-class student bodies, the interview often becomes a powerful filter for privilege.

Most selective colleges, responding to decades of pressure from civil rights activists, now pride themselves on the growing diversity of their student body. But far too often, this diversity is achieved by admitting upper class students of color, many of whom are international students. And, only a very few selective colleges are willing to admit enough students of color to be more than a small percentage of their overall student body.

In 2019, fifty years after the civil rights movement, many selective colleges are talking about the need to do more than admit more students of color. They regularly hire ‘consultants’ who tell them that they the need to diversify their curriculum, to hire faculty of color, to create an inclusive environment, etc. Yet somehow these changes don’t happen. Schools don’t want to “lower their standards,” be “politically correct,” hire “less qualified” instructors, etc. Most faculty in particular refuse to look at their own teaching styles and academic content to see if they are creating barriers to learning for their own students. (And, if they refuse to be self-aware, they most certainly are creating those barriers).

So, why do colleges and universities resist the changes that would make them more diverse, equitable and just?  Part of the answer lies in the race for college rankings by U.S. News. This ranking system primarily rewards schools for having the most successful (i.e. highest paid) alumni. The best way of assuring that alumni are high-income earners is simple:  admit the children of high-income earners! Colleges are terrified that if they turn away the children of the privileged, they will lose their standing. And, the college ranking system assures that the content of higher education and the delivery of it to students continues to be tailored to the most privileged people in society.

The real issue is not the advantages the rich have getting their kids into college. It is that colleges don’t want to confront racism and class privilege and want to welcome privileged students at the expense of everyone else.

The irony is that the claim that selective colleges admit the “best” students or produce the “best” graduates cannot stand scrutiny. Institutional practices of race and class privilege reject highly motivated and brilliant students of color and working-class whites, confine intellectual inquiry and the production of new ideas, and greatly limit the pool of people qualified to do important work. The real harm done by racism in higher education is to us all: we land up poorly equipped to deal with the world because we do everything in our power to keep the world out. And not just in admissions. These practices of exclusion have kept the ideas of the world out of higher education and have made them into self-referential temples of Western (i.e. white and upper class) thought. Now that is a scandal worth getting mad about!

The recent furor over Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s comments about AIPAC’s influence in Washington offer an early insight into the challenges and opportunities progressives face in forging a left-center coalition within the Democratic Party. First, the opportunities. The 2018 election brought a new “class” into the House of Representatives. Much has been made of the record number of women who were first elected in 2018, and their racial and ethnic diversity. The changing demographics of the House of Representatives is in part due to the political activation of women in the Women’s Marches held across the U.S. in response to Trump’s ascendancy to power in January 2016. It is also due to the slow but real progress Democrats have made organizing communities of color into the electoral process over the last decade.

The challenge of this moment is whether and how these new voices will be welcomed into the Democratic Party. And now, with Ilhan Omar’s comments, the Democrats face their first real test. Because the issue now is no longer whether these voices will be allowed. The new and young Democratic Representatives, exemplified by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s bold leadership, have made it clear that they will be heard. The issue now is whether the Democrats will redefine their political goals and methods in a way that recognizes the importance of those who have until now have been genuinely included, especially women of color.

Rep. Omar has been attacked because she criticized AIPAC’s outsized influence over American foreign policy in the Mideast, which it has achieved in part by its enormous lobbying coffers. Omar was called out for anti-Semitism because she worried that Zionists had too much influence and that some American Jews were blindly supportive of Israeli policies no matter what.

You can read a full transcript of her remarks here: https://ips-dc.org/what-did-ilhan-omar-say-heres-the-full-transcript-of-her–to-a-question-about-anti-semitism/.

Many in Congress, some of whom have made anti-Semitic comments themselves, loudly proclaimed that Omar owes Jews an apology for having accused them of wielding money for influence and having a dual allegiance to another nation. But Omar and her defenders, including Ocasio-Cortez and members of the Congressional Black Caucus, responded by asking when would those offended by her remarks condemn Israel’s expansionist ambitions and the violent oppression of Palestinians. By holding her ground, Omar broke open the silence in Washington, the almost universal unwillingness to confront Israeli policies, that AIPAC had enabled. Because Ilhan Omar spoke her truth as a Muslim woman and could not be silenced, the Democrats were forced to change the wording of a resolution condemning anti-Semitism into a resolution specifically condemning anti-Muslim and white supremacist hate speech as well. While the House has condemned anti-Semitism many times, this was the first time it has ever condemned anti-Muslim hate speech and violence.

HERE is the text of the Resolution:https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-resolution/257/text?r=56

The debate over Ilhan Omar’s remarks became a moment for women of color to claim their place in the Democratic Party in a new way. In the 2018 elections, Stacey Abrams proved that a Black woman could run a viable campaign that centered women of color’s experiences without alienating white men and women. In this debate, Omar provided the Democrats with an opportunity to become more inclusive of Muslims without alienating Jews. Many Jews who had demanded an apology supported the House Resolution. And Omar did apologize for inadvertently making comments that echoed anti-Semitic tropes. Indeed, many Republicans, who had been licking their chops at the opportunity to vilify a Muslim, voted for the resolution , which passed 403-27. This debate showed that it is possible to center the concerns of Muslims and Jews, of Blacks and whites, calling out their specific issues in a way that brought people together. In so doing, this Resolution offers a road map for the Democrats. Now that women of color have a seat at the table, they have put the Democratic Party on notice that their interests can no longer be ignored or swept over. And, by compelling the Party leadership to listen to their concerns, these new voices are advancing social justice by showing us how to embrace multiple interests with the firm understanding that our common humanity gives us the capacity to face difference without fear.