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Affirmative action

Wednesday 21st of January 2026

Affirmative action “Affirmative action” policies do nothing to increase the overall number of blacks and Hispanics able to access a college education. Rather, those racial policies simply redis- tribute individuals among institutions of higher learning, placing some into more competitive institutions than they otherwise  would have attended. … The resulting mismatch places “many blacks and Hispanics who likely would have excelled at less elite schools … in a position where underperformance is all but inevitable because they are less academically prepared than the white and Asian students with whom they must compete.” Clarence Thomas, concurring in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action After  extensive discovery and two lengthy trials, neither SFFA nor the majority can point to a single example of an underrepresented racial minority who was admitted to Harvard or UNC on the basis of “race alone.” Sonia Sotomayor, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action as expected, the court has inverted the 14th.  an amendment written explicitly to directly  ameliorate the conditions of race hierarchy becomes in conservative hands an amendment that says it’s illegal to try to directly ameliorate the conditions of race hierarchy Jamelle Bouie, 10:09 AM – Jun 29, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action At bottom, the six unelected members of today’s majority upend the status quo based on their policy preferences about what race in America should be like, but is not, and their preferences for a veneer of colorblindness in a society where race has always mattered and continues to matter in fact and in law. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action At bottom, without any new factual or legal justification, the Court overridess its longstanding holding that diversity in higher education is of compelling value.  To avoid public accountability for its choice, the Court seeks cover behind a unique measurability requirement of its own creation. None of this Court’s precedents, however, requires that a compelling interest meet some threshold level of precision to be deemed sufficiently compelling. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action The best that can be said of the majority’s perspective is that it proceeds (ostrich-like) from the hope that preventing consideration of race will end racism. But if that is its motivation, the majority proceeds in vain If the colleges of this country are required to ignore a thing that matters, it will not just go away. It will take longer for racism to leave us. And, ultimately, ignoring race  just makes it matter more. Katanji Brown Jackson, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action Both schools frequently choose to award a “tip” or a “plus” to applicants from  certain racial groups but not others. These tips or plusses are just what they sound like—“factors that might tip an applicant into [an] admitted class.” … And in a process where applicants compete for a limited pool of spots, “[a] tip for one race” necessarily works as “a penalty against other races.” Neil Gorsuch, concurring in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina [NOTE: tips for athletes and relatives of alumni, donors, and faculty are presumed to be unrelated to race, color, or national origin] © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action The Court has come to rest on the bottom-line conclusion that racial diversity in higher education is only worth potentially preserving insofar as it might be needed to prepare Black Americans and other underrepresented minorities for success in the bunker, not the boardroom … It would be deeply unfortunate if the Equal Protection Clause actually demanded this perverse, ahistorical,  and counterproductive outcome. To impress this result in that Clause’s name when it requires no such thing, and to thereby obstruct our  collective progress toward the full realization of  the Clause's promise, is truly a tragedy for us all. Katanji Brown Jackson, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action [T]he Court’s holding is based on the fiction that racial inequality has a predictable cutoff date. Equality is an ongoing project in a society where racial inequality persists. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action I have yet to meet the white male in whom special favoritism (getting a job, for example, through relatives or an old boys' network, or because of racial discrimination by a union or an employer) fostered doubt about his own abilities. Eric Foner, “Hiring Quotas for White Males Only” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action I would like to see jurisprudence issued in which racial classifications are considered off-limits, except under the most extraordinary circumstances. Police seeking to infiltrate a race-based drug gang could hire someone of the same background, but that’s about it. Edward Blum © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action In fact, all racial categories are little more than stereotypes, suggesting that immutable  characteristics somehow conclusively determine a person’s ideology, beliefs, and abilities. Of course, that is false. … Members of the same race do not all share the exact same experiences and viewpoints; far from it. … Yet, universities’ racial policies suggest that racial identity “alone constitutes the being of  the race or the man”  … That is the same naked  racism upon which segregation itself was built. Small wonder, then, that these policies are leading to increasing racial polarization and friction. Clarence Thomas, concurring in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action  In order to get beyond racism, we must first  take account of race. There is no other way.  And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently. We cannot — we dare not —let the Equal Protection Clause perpetrate racial supremacy. … in McCulloch against Maryland, [Chief Justice John Marshall] went on, in words that i think are particularly appropriate for this case, “Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the Constitution, and all means, all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adopted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, are constitutional.” Harry Blackmun, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke © 2022 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action In the end, when the Court speaks of a “colorblind” Constitution, it cannot really mean it, for it is faced with a body of law that recognizes that race-conscious measures are permissible under the Equal Protection Clause. Instead, what the Court actually lands on is an understanding of the Constitution that is “colorblind” sometimes, when the Court so chooses. Behind those choices lie the Court’s own value judgments about what type of interests are sufficiently compelling to justify race-conscious measures. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action [I]t is worth recalling a sobering feature of the racial history of the United States: Every major step undertaken to advance African Americans and to redress the consequences of racial subordination has been met with charges of “reverse discrimination” and unfair “preference.” … Historically … those who have been at the  forefront of attacking affirmative action have hardly been militants in challenging white supremacist policies, habits and customs. Often, the only discrimination that snags their empathy is that which they see as adversely affecting white people. Randall Kennedy, New York Times, June 7, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action The majority’s true objection appears to be that a limited use of race in college admissions does, in fact, achieve what it is designed to achieve: It helps equalize opportunity and advances respondents’ objectives by increasing the number of underrepresented racial minorities on college campuses, particularly Black and Latino students. This is unacceptable, the Court says, because racial groups that are not underrepresented “would be admitted in greater numbers” without these policies. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action [N]othing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university. Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. This Nation’s constitutional history does not tolerate that choice. John Roberts, syllabus in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action This contention [that it is unfair to consider race as one factor in college admissions] blinks both history and reality in ways too numerous to count. But the response is simple: Our country has never been colorblind. Given the lengthy history of state-sponsored race-based preferences in America, to say that anyone is now victimized if a college considers whether that legacy of discrimina- tion has unequally advantaged its applicants fails to acknowledge the well-documented “intergenerational transmission of inequality” that still plagues our citizenry. Katanji Brown Jackson, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action This supposed recognition that universities can, in some situations, consider race in application essays is nothing but an attempt to put lipstick on a pig. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action Today, the Court concludes that indifference to race is the only constitutionally permissible means to achieve racial equality in college admissions.  That interpretation of the Fourteenth Amend- ment is not only contrary to precedent and the entire teachings of our history … but is also grounded in the illusion that racial inequality was a problem of a  different generation. … Ignoring race will not equalize a society that is racially unequal. What was true in the 1860s, and again in 1954, is true today: Equality requires acknowledgment of inequality. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action Today, this Court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress. It holds that race can no longer be used in a limited way in college admissions to achieve such critical benefits. In so holding, the Court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race  has always mattered and continues to matter. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action  The United States as amicus curiae  contends that race-based admissions programs further compelling interests at our Nation’s military academies.  No military academy is a party to these cases, however, and none of the courts below addressed the propriety of race-based admissions systems in that context. This opinion also does not address the issue, in light of the potentially distinct interests that military academies may present. John Roberts, majority opinion in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action The US debate remains stubbornly monopolised by the ethnic breakdown of the tiny number of students who win the Ivy League lottery. The 19mn or so of those 31mn young Americans who do not progress beyond high school, and the roughly 12mn who go to less elite colleges, barely feature. Whatever tweaks the Ivy League has to make to keep its diversity ratios after last week’s ruling are thus largely irrelevant to the 99.8 per cent that will never get there. Edward Luce, Financial Times, July 5, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth, and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time, if it remains true to its great heritage, and holds fast to the principles of constitutional liberty. But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country, no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. from John Harlan's dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson  [NOTE: Concurring opinions in SFFA v.  Harvard &  UNC affirm the last sentence, which defines color  blindness as a fiction based on white supremacy] © 2023 Kwiple.com
 
Affirmative action With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces “colorblindness for all” by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life. And having so detached itself from this country’s actual past and present experiences, the Court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America's real-world problems. Katanji Brown Jackson, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com