How America Has Changed Since the First Affirmative-Action Case

This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Question of the Week

If you were in charge of the admissions office at a top-50 college or university, how would you decide which applicants got accepted as undergraduates and which got rejected? (How would you weight grades? Test scores? Athletic ability? Musical prowess? Volunteer work? Parents willing to write a big check to the building-renovation fund? Other factors? Would you think merely of ranking individuals, or also of composing a whole class?)

Send your responses to conor@theatlantic.com or simply reply to this email.

Conversations of Note

While I encourage wide-ranging responses to that Question of the Week, it is inspired by the Supreme Court’s consideration of cases challenging affirmative action in college admissions––and if you want fodder as you ponder the subject, a lot has been produced of late.

At The Washington Post, Megan McArdle provides a bit of historical context that suggests affirmative-action policies are a more awkward fit for America than they used to be:

One of my favorite statistics for shocking Washingtonians is to reveal that in 1960, more than five out of every six accounted for in the census were White — and of the remainder, the overwhelming majority were Black, with the rest of the “non-White” population totaling less than 2 million … Unsurprisingly, our civil rights architecture was primarily structured to