Source: https://virallysuppressed.com/2012/12/17/are-we-there-yet-affirmative-action-in-america/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 13:49:12+00:00

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The upcoming ruling by the Supreme Court in Fisher v. Texas—likely in Spring or Summer 2013—will either affirm or strike down the court’s most recent ruling on affirmative action in the case of Grutter v. Bollinger Et Al, which was heard by the Supreme Court in 2003. The majority opinion, written by the now-retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, ruled in favor of the University of Michigan Law School and its president, Lee Bollinger, stating that nothing in the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment prohibited, “narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.”8 The majority opinion cited the enhancement of classroom discussion, fostering of civic engagement and the preparatory value of mirroring the diversity found in the workplace as some of the reasons why affirmative action was a compelling interest in higher education.
With that being said, Grutter v. Bollinger came with a number of caveats and limitations, the first of which being that any race-conscious admissions measures had to be limited in time and contain a foreseeable end point or sunset provision. The court was not acknowledging that affirmative action was appropriate in a vacuum, but only insofar as we lived in a society that required it to make access to higher education equal for all citizens regardless of race. In fact, Justice O’ Connor remarked that the court, “expect[s] that 25 years from now, the use of racial preference will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.”8 With nine years having passed since the Grutter decision, you would be hard pressed to find any minority rights advocates that would agree that minority admissions at U.S. universities were rising at a rate that would make affirmative action unnecessary by 2028.
Justice Powell’s rationale was sound insofar as universities should be forced to evaluate each applicant individually, using race/ethnicity as one part of a larger, holistic consideration of their application. The problem is that, in forbidding the use of quotas for racial groups in the admission process there is no objective way to establish when exactly a university has reached the tipping point where they no longer need to use affirmative action to maintain adequate diversity on campus. This lack of specificity is especially prescient when you consider Justice O’ Connor’s opinion in Grutter, which emphasizes that the court is only endorsing the use of affirmative action for a pre-determined period of time, in this case 25 years. Assuming the decision in Grutter survives that long, how will universities be able to accurately determine if their affirmative action programs need to be continued if they are forbidden from using quotas?
The reason why the concept of critical mass is so crucial to the debate surrounding affirmative action goes back to the majority opinion in Grutter and it’s interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause. Grutter determined that it was in keeping with the 14th Amendment for a university to include a, “narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further acompelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diversestudent body.”8 For the University of Texas at Austin, that “compelling interest” is represented by this numerically undefined concept of critical mass. It was precisely this lack of specificity in definition that the conservative members of the Supreme Court repeatedly attacked during oral arguments, but, as the appellate brief from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit shows, the justices are taking issue with the decision in Grutter more than any specific portion of UT’s admissions policies. The appellate brief maintains that, “Plaintiffs’ criticism ofUT is little more thana thinly-veiled attack on Grutter itself”, pointing out that Grutter explicitly stated that there is no number or percentage that can be said to constitute critical mass.15 This was demonstrated quite clearly by 5th Circuit Judge Emilio M. Garza who, in specially concurring with ruling given by Judge Higginbotham, noted that he did so, despite his belief “that Grutter represents a digression in thecourseofconstitutionallaw…and only the [Supreme] Court can rectify the error.”16 It cannot be said with any validity that the University of Texas did not adhere to the letter of the law as put forth by Grutter, leaving their only potential indiscretion as being the implementation of admissions system that would be retroactively unconstitutional, if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiff.
Ultimately, the only thing that has changed in the nine years since the Grutter ruling is the composition of the Supreme Court. Since 2003, four Supreme Court Justices have either retired or died. The deceased Chief Justice Rehnquist was considered to be a conservative, while Justices O’ Connor, Souter and Steven were considered liberals. These Justices were replaced by acting Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, who were appointed by George W. Bush, and Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, who were appointed by President Obama. The end result of this is that we have a more conservative court than we did a decade ago and, in the case of a 5-4 decision like Grutter, that makes all of the difference. Especially when you consider that Justice Kagan has had to recuse herself due, most likely, to her work on the case as Solicitor General, and it seems more and more unlikely that affirmative action will survive intact after this case is ruled upon.
I suppose this is the point in the program where I provide my personal rationale for either upholding or striking down Grutter and, by extension, affirmative action as a whole. And, while it is tempting to get bogged down in the minutia of modern college admissions policy, I firmly believe that you have to go back to the source to find the answer to this question. The 14th Amendment was enacted by Congress in 1868 as a way of codifying the civil and political rights of recently liberated African American slaves who were still facing de facto slavery during reconstruction through the implementation of black codes throughout the South. The 13th Amendment banned the institution and the idea of slavery, while the 14th Amendment banned the individual mechanisms by which such practices were carried out. The history of the Civil Rights movement in this country is one of unceasing advocacy for the rights outlined in the 14th Amendment. The rights of due process; the right of suffrage; the right to the same opportunities as anyone else who is a citizen of this nation—these are the things which the 14th Amendment was designed to protect and our continued inability to match practice with principle was what necessitated the implementation of affirmative action in the first place.
Laws do not exist irrespective of the times in which they were made and in which exist. The Equal Opportunity Clause of the 14th Amendment was born out of the fires of The Civil War and 250 years of slavery. For roughly a century it was rendered all but irrelevant by Jim Crow and a society still steeped in a culture of prejudice and racial injustice. It has been less than a half century since President Johnson passed The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and racial division is arguably more entrenched in America now than it was 35 years ago. So, the question that you need to ask yourself is, is this equality? What we live and breathe right now, is that the fulfillment of the promises of the 14th Amendment or, at the very least, have we accrued enough momentum to meet those promises without policies that acknowledge the racism inherent in 21st century life? When the University of Texas at Austin’s freshman class only mirrors 2/3 of the state’s Hispanic population, 1/3 of its African American population and ¼ of its American Indian population, can we say that our progress is sufficient?
There has already been a 7 year test run in Texas and we know how this story is likely to play out. If affirmative action is struck down the Supreme Court, you will see a marked decrease in minority enrollment at state universities across the country, followed by a mad scramble to come up with “race-neutral” policies that can give preference to minorities without explicitly stating that as its purpose. If Texas is any indicator, the best we could hope for in such circumstances an eventual return to the already insufficient levels of minority enrollment we see now. We would, as a society, be saying that is enough; that we have reached the critical mass necessary to create an academic environment that reaps the benefits of a diverse student body. We would be saying that everything is equal now and we would be wrong.
1U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1.
5John F. Kennedy: “Executive Order 10925,” March 6, 1961. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=58863.
9Student profile: Enrolled freshman class of 2012. (2012). Unpublished raw data, The University of Texas at Austin Office of Admissions, .
12Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978).
14 Transcript of Oral Argument, Fisher v. University of Texas, No. 11-345 (argued Oct. 10, 2012).

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