Why Students Are Being Told Not to Write About Race
The Realities of College Admission in 2025
Two years ago, the Supreme Court struck down race-conscious admissions, and its ripple effects are now landing in the most personal place for teenagers: their college essays. Counselors are warning students not to write about race, culture, or heritage, not because those stories don’t matter, but because colleges may have to ignore them altogether.
I want to pause here and say: I am not a journalist. I am just a mom trying to write this in the most neutral way possible so that families from all backgrounds can learn and consider data and facts that may not have felt relevant until your teen hit college-prep age. I am not an expert in politics or law or even college admissions, but this is happening in real time, and I don’t want us to look away.
History is So Important
Race-conscious admissions, often called affirmative action, began in the 1960s alongside the Civil Rights Movement. The idea was never that race was the deciding factor in admissions. It was one factor among many, considered along with grades, test scores, activities, and background, to help build a diverse student body and address historic inequities.
Over the decades, the courts narrowed and redefined what was permissible. In 1978, Bakke struck down quotas but allowed race to be part of holistic review. In 2003, Grutter v. Bollinger reaffirmed that diversity was a “compelling interest.” More recently, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard/UNC (2023) ended the practice nationwide.
Since then, the landscape has shifted quickly. Predominantly white institutions have seen declines in Black student enrollment, while HBCUs reported a 5.9% increase in 2024. Some universities have pivoted to race-neutral measures like socioeconomic status, first-gen status, or geography. Others are experimenting with test-optional policies or rethinking legacy admissions.
For families who wonder why race was ever considered in the first place, history is key. If you, for example, don’t know what the term “redlining” is, this is a great place to start to learn more about the history of our country that is so often forgotten. History is SO important, and we so often make decisions based on what we’re being spoon-fed by social media or the news.
So, starting with this example, redlining was a government practice from the 1930s that denied loans and housing to entire neighborhoods based on race. Those policies shaped where people could buy homes, how property values grew, and whether families could build equity to pass down.
Fast forward a few generations: a white family might inherit a house, or wealth built from that house, while a Black family in a redlined neighborhood was denied that chance. So even if both families today start with empty bank accounts, one may still have access to generational resources the other never had. That is why the familiar “bootstraps” argument rings hollow to many, because the starting lines were not the same.
So when race was considered in admissions, it was not about giving someone a leg up. It was about acknowledging the ground has never been level.
Where We Are Now
Public opinion is divided. A 2023 Pew survey found that 50 percent of U.S. adults disapprove of colleges considering race in admissions, while only 33 percent approve. Predictably, views split by party: 74 percent of Republicans disapprove versus 29 percent of Democrats. Even among racial groups, there is divergence. Forty-seven percent of Black adults approve, compared to smaller shares of Hispanic, Asian, and White adults.
Meanwhile, the current administration has gone further, directing the Department of Education to audit universities’ admissions data to ensure no “racial preferencing” remains.
“Be Yourself” But Don’t
All of this lands on 17- and 18-year-olds staring at a blank Google doc, trying to decide what they are allowed to say. If their lived experience is tied to culture, heritage, or identity, they may be told to leave that out, and with it, the most authentic part of themselves.
As parents, this weighs heavy. We want to tell our kids to “be yourself,” but what happens when whole parts of the self are now considered off-limits?
The long-term effects are still unfolding. We will see shifts in where students apply, how universities recruit, and which institutions become the new engines of access. But one thing is clear: history is not gone. It is simply being rewritten in real time, and the cost of forgetting it is falling on our kids.