It's a good question. I mean sure we can say by some arbitrary metric two candidates might be equal but one might have had to work a lot harder based on their life experience to get to that point. I think it is more than fair to consider that.

I posit that it is impossible to fully separate race from life history in a country where race shaped neighborhoods, schools, wealth, policing, health care, and opportunity for generations.

That does not mean schools get to use race as a shortcut.

It means pretending context is race-free is its own fiction.

The hard question is not whether race boxes are legal.

They are not.

The hard question is whether colorblindness requires admissions officers to become history-blind too.

Yermin

It's an interesting question because I do think context matters but how much should it matter in the admissions process? I don't know the correct answer to that.