Fancy colleges want to make sure only the right sort of people get in, and chief among their tools is the legacy admissions system which gives priority to the children of former students. Mostly rich insiders, "legacies" were originally favored to keep Jews out, and to this day they help Ivy League colleges manage the headcount of undesirables. Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down affirmative action, which was a key challenge to this self-reproducing elitism, a civil rights group is taking aim at what amounts to affirmative action for whites.
"Why are we rewarding children for privileges and advantages accrued by prior generations?" said Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, the group's executive director. "Your family's last name and the size of your bank account are not a measure of merit, and should have no bearing on the college admissions process."Opponents say the practice is no longer defensible without affirmative action providing a counterbalance. The court's ruling says colleges must ignore the race of applicants, activists point out, but schools can still give a boost to the children of alumni and donors.
A good opportunity for the courts to land on whatever finely-sliced version of "colleges can let people in on any basis they please, even if it's overtly discriminatory, and continue to receive federal funding" they can shovel through what's left of the Civil Rights Act and Title IX.
