I champion affirmative action and thus derive little satisfaction from the Supreme Court’s ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas. True, I am relieved that the court, the most reactionary we have had on racial matters in many decades, did not go further in crippling efforts by institutions of higher education to insure an appreciable presence of marginalized racial minorities, especially blacks and Latinos. After all, Fisher did leave intact the program under challenge which counts being black or Latino as a plus in the searing, high-stakes competition for scarce places at the University of Texas. The Supreme Court held only that the lower courts had been insufficiently exacting when determining whether the university properly justifies its resort to race in making admissions decisions. The Fisher decision is bad because it will invite a barrage of new attacks upon affirmative action in higher education, thereby discouraging a practice that has over the past 40 years been conducive to the public good, integrating racial minorities in key institutions at a pace that would have otherwise been impossible. It will make affirmative action more vulnerable by telling judges to pay less deference to university administration or admissions. But the problem with Fisher goes beyond a single decision. The problem resides in several decades of Supreme Court jurisprudence. Since Justice Lewis Powell’s landmark opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke in 1978, the court has abjured justifications for affirmative action that are as compelling, if not more persuasive than the diversity rationale that is now all too dominant as a basis for positive discrimination on behalf of marginalized racial minorities. (MORE: No Silver Linings for Conservatives on SCOTUS Affirmative-Action Decision) Affirmative action can rightly be justified as a means of seeking reparatory justice on behalf of groups that have long been oppressed and still bear the debilitating scars of their mistreatment, as a means of facilitating integration and as a means of countering ongoing racial prejudice. Limiting the accepted rationale for affirmative action to “diversity” constrains the policy unduly and makes it vulnerable to … Continue reading Viewpoint: The Goal of Affirmative Action Should Not Be ‘Diversity’ but Righting Wrongs