RACE IS NOT DIVERSITY; LIFE EXPERIENCE IS:

[A] ruling limiting or ending affirmative action in higher education -- though it would have a huge impact on college admissions -- is less likely to draw public outrage. That's because affirmative action is unpopular, even though Americans do want there to be diversity in higher education.

For example, a Washington Post/Schar School poll conducted Oct. 7-10 found that near-identical shares of Americans supported a Supreme Court ruling "banning colleges and universities from considering a student's race and ethnicity when making decisions about student admissions" (63 percent), and thought programs that promote racial diversity in higher education are a good thing (64 percent). This is a great example of one of the central tensions in how Americans think about race-conscious admissions: Many people are uncomfortable with the concept of singling out racial minorities for special treatment if it means other students will have to meet a higher standard, even though they also want universities to have racially diverse student bodies.

Americans' ambivalence about affirmative action is strong enough that a small tweak in question wording can result in a very different result. A Pew Research Center poll conducted in 2017 found that a sizable majority (71 percent) of Americans said that "affirmative action programs designed to increase the number of black and minority students on college campuses" are a good thing. Of course, this number might have changed over the past few years, but it suggests that reminding respondents about the aims of affirmative action programs -- rather than simply telling them how race-conscious admissions works, as the Washington Post/Schar School poll did -- may change the way people think about the concept.

A YouGov poll conducted in April tested this theory and found that framing does matter. When respondents were asked whether they supported or opposed "an affirmative action program for higher education that increases the share of Black and Hispanic students at selective institutions in the United States," there wasn't a clear consensus: Thirty-seven percent supported the programs, 34 percent opposed them and 29 percent said they weren't sure. But a much larger majority (68 percent) said that race should not "be considered when evaluating [a student's] admission to college," and a plurality (46 percent) agreed that "[q]ualified minorities" should not be given "special preferences in higher education."

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