With the string of Supreme Court rulings that had come over the previous week, I knew that affirmative action was next on the conservative court’s plate before it was gutted. I thought about it frequently, as a Black student at an Ivy League school. I was undoubtedly in support of affirmative action policies, and I had often questioned whether they were responsible for my admittance. But further experience in the education system of the elite has taught me differently: that affirmative action policies based on race were truly not the greatest solutions to the racial inequalities of our country, even those maintained by elite school admission policies. The Supreme Court ruling reminded me that much more has long been needed. 

In admissions, affirmative action policies influence the degree of racial diversity in student bodies at elite schools. Of course, with various academic and experiential backgrounds, non-white students are as worthy as white students of attending college and Ivy League institutions. Many non-white students will continue to attend college and Ivy League institutions as these affirmative policies are removed. However, the lack of educational resources available to non-white students will continue to pose the greatest hindrance to the spaces that they occupy in university student bodies.

I am an upper middle-class Black Yalie from Westchester, New York. I attended a private college preparatory high school, with an annual tuition of around $13,000. When it came time for me to apply to college, my parents and guidance counselor steadily guided me towards my acceptance to Yale, particularly with the help of a test prep firm they found to prepare me for standardized exams and for writing my applications. If it was not for these educational resources, I simply do not think that I would have been accepted into my Yale.

Maybe. 

But, in the light of the Court’s elimination of racial affirmative action policies, I have sharply grown much more confident about greater inequalities. Black, Hispanic and non-white students are desperately missing different kinds of educational resources, not select admission opportunities or the affirmation of race in the eyes of admission officers, who must pull from an “other” stack or embrace a different perspective when looking at an application because of the race attached to it. The Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action calls for an improved public education system and financial reparations — for example, scholarships selectively for Black, Hispanic and non-white students.

At Yale, I interact with New Haven and Connecticut high school students as a volunteer debate coach and judge. All the students I have interacted with are brilliant, but I noticed a stark difference between those I coached at a school newly added to our debate organization and those I judged at a regular tournament. 

The latter group of students were simply more confident. Though they were seasoned debaters, they were diligent in their attitude toward the activity and expressively eager, especially when asking me for feedback. Meanwhile, the few students who attended debate practice at the new high school needed much more encouragement to improve and to step out of their bounds. 

To put it simply, I believe that these students, compared to the students who participated in the tournament, lacked a sense of educational privilege and a growth mindset. 

These two — educational privilege and a growth mindset — are the keys to getting anyone into an Ivy League institution. The students whom I coached lacked the educational privilege that made elite academic aspirations and application resources, such as extracurricular opportunities and test prep resources, more accessible. The high school teacher, who administered the debate club where I coached, even admitted to me the school was struggling with maintaining its daily student attendance. Public school systems, teachers, guidance counselors and students all need greater investment to face the inequalities of elite college admissions processes. 

And secondly, a growth mindset fostered by this educational privilege is necessary. Especially after the learning setbacks inflicted by the coronavirus pandemic, public school systems need to make learning, and thus college-level academic aspirations, attractive to students again. Students must want to learn again. With educational resources and the self-motivated drive to succeed, many more Black, Hispanic and non-white students can compose the campuses of elite universities and institutions in the future.

As a Black student at an Ivy League school, I have long wrestled with the question of whether or not I belong here. I knew that many other students that I encountered would not also be here if they didn’t have X, their parent wasn’t the owner of Y or they didn’t found Z company themselves when they were 10 years old. Greater educational resources and privileges must be allocated to students of color, starting with the revamping of public school systems in inner cities and the greater accessibility of scholarships and college-prep resources. And this is true, with or without affirmative action.