httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23VDkyygWSg
Fisher’s case before the Supreme Court, in which she demanded that she be admitted to the University of Texas at Austin despite not having the grades to get in, confirmed every liberal suspicion about the opposition to affirmative action, namely that it’s not about “Equality” at all, but about making sure white people are always first in line, ahead of all people of color, for job and education opportunities.
All this just makes it all the more emotionally satisfying to report that Fisher was handed a huge defeat in the Supreme Court on Thursday, when conservative justice Anthony Kennedy sided with the liberal side of the court to preserve UT Austin’s admissions protocol aimed at promoting racial diversity at the school.
Even though this ruling is really narrow and does little to truly increase diversity at universities, Justice Samuel Alito issued a lengthy, blistering dissent that accused the school of paying “Little attention to anything other than the number of minority students on its campus and in its classrooms”.
It’s sadly not surprising that Alito so quickly defaults to the racist assumption that white people are more deserving of their opportunities than people of color.
His dissent from Thursday betrays him, as he wallows in the same false assumption that people of color are only getting education and job opportunities because of their race, and not because they are just as worthy as white people.
Alito wants to portray this decision as some kind of radical progressivism, but in reality, it’s an extremely conservative opinion that, in classic Kennedy fashion, doesn’t do enough to shut down attempts to preserve the white dominance over institutions like elite universities.
Millhiser goes on to highlight how much work UT Austin had to do in order to meet Kennedy’s onerous demands for race-sensitive admissions to be acceptable: Over a year of research and study resulting in a 39-page proposal proving that any other strategy was failing to meet diversity needs.
Still, Thursday is a victory all the same, because it’s a blow to this ridiculous notion that any time a person of color gets an opportunity, they are stealing it from a more deserving white person.
It’s a good step in the right direction and, if Democrats are able to overcome Republican obstructionism on court appointments, it’s something for future, more liberal judiciaries to build on.