The legal justification for affirmative action is that diversity makes for good education. Specifically, that diversity benefits the majority of beneficiaries of elite education and selective colleges, who are white people who can get the experiences they need to govern a diverse society, or as CEOs in corporations where diversity matters, Carnevale with Georgetown said. When California voters supported a ballot initiative to ban the use of race in admissions in its public universities, enrollment of Black and brown students dropped precipitously, said Sarah Hinger, senior staff attorney in the Racial Justice Program at the American Civil Liberties Union. It took a long time and a lot of effort for the schools to endeavor to recruit and bring back the involvement of those students. “Affirmative action hasn't cured inequities in education, but it has been an important tool in an effort to at least partially recognize the substantial inequities that exist and that people are positioned with when applying to colleges, and on college campuses,” Hinger said. For students of color, it can help ensure that they aren't in an insular or token position on college campuses, because that allows them to be able to learn, express themselves, and explore their ideas freely as an individual and not feel the burden of being expected to represent their race, she said.