One point of contention: In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts writes, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” referring to the provisions outlined in the 1860s-era 14th Amendment.
Verna Williams, the CEO of Equal Justice Works, says Roberts is ignoring why the framers implemented the 14th Amendment in the first place.
“I mean, [the framers] would have to be completely blind and absolutely naive to think that just putting those words in the Constitution would reverse or address hundreds of years of slavery,” Williams tells The Recast.
A Harvard Law School grad who co-founded the Nathaniel R. Jones Center for Race, Gender, and Social Justice, Williams adds that Roberts’ opinion subscribes to the idea of “formal equality.” It’s a concept that ignores differences among individuals and believes treating everyone the same means they’ll be subjected to the same outcomes.
That, she says, reinforces stereotypes:
It also leads to an unspoken, but clearly understood, whataboutism among minority races, she said: “See, they can make it. And if Asians can make it, what’s the matter with the rest of you people of color?”
The ruling is fueling fears that Black and Latino enrollment at elite colleges and universities will drastically drop even further — and that it will have reverberations beyond race-based college admissions.
“Honestly, this is the type of stuff that, while the case is posed at admissions, it can be read broadly enough to go into other aspects of university life,” says Jeff Chang, a journalist and author of “We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Resegregation.”
This could include bringing lawsuits against minority-targeted scholarships, college-based affinity group housing, and even Black, Asian and Latino fraternities and sororities.
The gutting of affirmative action in college admissions, Chang argues, gives those who want to use the equal protection clause “a free invitation to say anything that regards race is up for grabs.”
Others are concerned about the racial blowback: that the fall of affirmative action is because of Asian elites.
“This plays into this idea that Asian Americans are victims, because we can get into Harvard,” says Diana Hwang, founder of the Asian American Women’s Political Initiative, which advocates for Asian American and Pacific Islander women to seek a career in politics.
Hwang says the affirmative action in college admissions cases underscores an “evil brilliance” of how many Asian Americans were centered in the case, brought by Edward Blum, the affirmative action adversary who leads SFFA and wakes up at 4:30 a.m. on most mornings to scour the internet looking for people to file suits against.
“At the end of the day, the real problem is that we’re people of color when you want us to be and not people of color when you don’t.”
Blum recruited Abigail Fisher, the lead plaintiff for the Fisher v. University of Texas case. Fisher, as you may recall, is a white woman who claimed racial preferences denied her admission to the University of Texas at Austin. In a 4-3 decision, the court ruled the school did not violate the equal protection clause.
Seven years later, with the court’s makeup decidedly more conservative, Blum heralded yesterday’s decision.
The ruling, he said in a statement, “marks the beginning of the restoration of the colorblind legal covenant that binds together our multi-racial, multi-ethnic nation.”
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