The UC Davis scale: When race-neutral still involves race

When institutions choose shortcuts to racial diversity, everyone ultimately loses: the students, the profession, and the patients it serves.Nowhere is this clearer than at the UC Davis School of Medicine. UC Davis has allegedly handed the US Department of Justice a near-perfect exhibit of exactly how this misguided approach plays out in practice.School leaders allegedly created the “Davis Scale,” a scoring system that gives extra consideration to applicants from lower-income families, those whose parents had less education, and those who grew up in underserved areas.

On paper, it sounds perfectly race-neutral.In practice, as Associate Dean Mark Henderson explained with refreshing candor, it was “class-based affirmative action,” and “class struggles have a huge overlap with race — that’s how we skirted the issue.”One almost has to admire his honesty.

Most prefer to whisper such things in private emails.Here, the architect publicly appeared to describe a workaround, promoted it to other medical schools, and celebrated the results.

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By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.Never miss a story Internal documents and simulations suggested that UC Davis tested the scale specifically to increase black and Hispanic enrollment.

Administrators allegedly tracked racial percentages like sports scores and proudly announced that “underrepresented in medicine” students had tripled, reaching levels that neatly matched California’s demographics.When the very people who designed the tool openly appear to admit that it was built to produce the racial outcomes the Supreme Court has forbidden, their defense would seem to lose much of its rhetorical force.Intent matters.

As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the Students for Fair Admissions decision, “what cannot...