TL:DR. Medicore Whites is funny.
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The Supreme Court Has Killed Affirmative Action. Mediocre Whites Can Rest Easier.
has been a long goodbye. The Supreme Court declared race consciousness in college admissions, also known as affirmative action, unconstitutional today. The vote was predictable, 6-3, with all the justices appointed by Republican presidents standing together to revoke the policy. The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts himself, who ruled that affirmative action violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment was, of course, written explicitly to revoke the racism practiced by whites against Blacks through their slaver’s constitution, but Roberts doesn’t care about all that. His opinion attempts to capture the 14th Amendment and redeploy it to justify a white version of “colorblindness” that just so happens to lock in a status quo that benefits whites. 1
Like last year’s revocation of reproductive rights in Dobbs v. Jackson, the decision today, in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard University and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, achieves a long-standing conservative policy goal through the fiat of six unelected Supreme Court justices. Conservatives have been gunning for affirmative action since the policy was reintroduced in the 1960s (it had previously been used during Reconstruction and conservatives killed it then too). Today is a victory for the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, and the entire conservative legal establishment that has correctly identified the courts as the way to reverse policies they don’t like. 2
But the death of affirmative action was not achieved merely through the machinations of Republican lawyers. While conservatives on the Supreme Court delivered the fatal blow, the policy has long been made vulnerable by the soft bigotry of parents, whose commitment to integration and equality turns cold the moment their little cherubs fail to get into their first choice of college or university. If you want to see a white liberal drop the pretense that they care about systemic racism and injustice, just tell them that their privately tutored kid didn’t get into whatever “elite” school they were hoping for. If you want to make an immigrant family adopt a Klansman’s view of the intelligence, culture, and work ethic of Black folks, tell them that their kid’s standardized test scores are not enough to guarantee entry into ivy-draped halls of power. Some of the most horribly racist claptrap folks have felt comfortable saying to my face has been said in the context of people telling me why they don’t like affirmative action, or why my credentials are somehow “unearned” because they were “given” to me by affirmative action. 3
That last bit is in some ways the most devastating: Black people are attacked and shamed simply because the policy exists, regardless of whether it benefited them or not. I’ve had white folks whom I could standardize test into a goddamn coma tell me that I only got into school because of affirmative action. I once talked to a white guy—whose parents’ name was on one of the buildings on campus—who asked me how it felt to know I got “extra help” to get in. The sheer nerve of white folks is sometimes jaw-dropping. 4
Affirmative action is used by a certain kind of unwashed white mediocrity as an excuse to denigrate the credentials of anybody Black. Then, those same people use their own racial hang-ups as an argument to get rid of affirmative action, blaming the policy for their own racist inability to regard Black colleagues as equals. There are white people who will argue with a straight face that affirmative action makes them harbor the racist idea that Black people are undeserving of their accomplishments. 5
And some Black people fall for it. It will escape no one’s notice that Clarence Thomas, who happens to be Black, joined the majority opinion banning affirmative action. Thomas wrote a concurring opinion to make an “originalist” defense of a “colorblind” constitution, an argument that is oxymoronic on its face given that the original constitution was most definitely not colorblind towards people who looked like Thomas. 6
People have often expressed surprise that Thomas is so stridently against the policy, but I am here to tell you that of all of Thomas’s treacherous attempts to set Black folks back to second-class status, this one is the easiest to trace. Thomas considers himself a victim of affirmative action. In his autobiography, My Grandfather’s Son, Thomas says his degree from Yale Law School (Thomas graduated in 1974) was never taken seriously because of affirmative action. He recounts, painfully, how white employers didn’t believe that he could be as smart as his grades indicated, because they believed that he was only there as an affirmative action admit. 7
Frankly, I know the feeling. I think that any successful Black person in this country, especially one who went to a traditionally elite university, knows the feeling. I’m a well-respected legal columnist and best-selling author, and I can’t go a week without some simpleton who paid eight bucks for Twitter suggesting that I didn’t “earn” my place at Harvard Law School, an institution I graduated from twenty freaking years ago. It’s maddening—both in the sense that it makes me violently angry and that it interrupts the normal functioning of my brain. If you haven’t walked a mile in my shoes, or Thomas’s shoes, or the shoes of any other Black person who had the temerity to be excellent while Black, you really don’t know what it’s like to have white people who have the intellectual firepower of a wet cigarette question your credentials. 8
The difference between me, along with most Black folks, and Clarence Thomas is that Thomas has decided to take his hurt feelings out on one of the most effective social justice policies in American history, while most Black people just learn to step over the low-account white folks clawing at our ankles. Most Black people strive to overcome racial injustice; Thomas was broken by it. Instead of blaming the white folks doing the oppressing, Thomas has decided to ally with them and blame the policy meant to break their exclusive access to power. He’s almost a tragic figure: a man who has adopted the white narrative about Black people so completely that he’s curdled into a mere spokesperson for that white narrative. 9
Again, I almost get it. I almost see where he’s coming from. I remember coming home from elementary school one day and declaring to my Black and proud parents that I “couldn’t be” Black. I had heard kids at my predominately white Catholic elementary school saying that Black people were not “clean,” and I explained to my parents that this made me not Black because I took a bath every day, and I didn’t want to be associated with people who didn’t wash. Obviously, my parents were horrified. Obviously, they pulled me out of that school the next year and put me into a predominately Black public school. Obviously, I learned that not everything white people say is true. But Thomas is the guy who never learned: he never figured out how to disregard what white people say about us. Learning how to ignore white folks and their stupid racial theories while living your full life is pretty much the final test towards emancipation, and it’s one that Thomas seems to have flunked for his entire professional life.10
Of course, I say that Thomas is “almost” a tragic figure. I almost feel sorry for him. But what drains my empathy for him is the fact that I’ve had to read his absolutely trash legal opinions. 11
But the death of affirmative action was not achieved merely through the machinations of Republican lawyers. While conservatives on the Supreme Court delivered the fatal blow, the policy has long been made vulnerable by the soft bigotry of parents, whose commitment to integration and equality turns cold the moment their little cherubs fail to get into their first choice of college or university. If you want to see a white liberal drop the pretense that they care about systemic racism and injustice, just tell them that their privately tutored kid didn’t get into whatever “elite” school they were hoping for. If you want to make an immigrant family adopt a Klansman’s view of the intelligence, culture, and work ethic of Black folks, tell them that their kid’s standardized test scores are not enough to guarantee entry into ivy-draped halls of power. Some of the most horribly racist claptrap folks have felt comfortable saying to my face has been said in the context of people telling me why they don’t like affirmative action, or why my credentials are somehow “unearned” because they were “given” to me by affirmative action. 3
That last bit is in some ways the most devastating: Black people are attacked and shamed simply because the policy exists, regardless of whether it benefited them or not. I’ve had white folks whom I could standardize test into a goddamn coma tell me that I only got into school because of affirmative action. I once talked to a white guy—whose parents’ name was on one of the buildings on campus—who asked me how it felt to know I got “extra help” to get in. The sheer nerve of white folks is sometimes jaw-dropping. 4
Affirmative action is used by a certain kind of unwashed white mediocrity as an excuse to denigrate the credentials of anybody Black. Then, those same people use their own racial hang-ups as an argument to get rid of affirmative action, blaming the policy for their own racist inability to regard Black colleagues as equals. There are white people who will argue with a straight face that affirmative action makes them harbor the racist idea that Black people are undeserving of their accomplishments. 5
And some Black people fall for it. It will escape no one’s notice that Clarence Thomas, who happens to be Black, joined the majority opinion banning affirmative action. Thomas wrote a concurring opinion to make an “originalist” defense of a “colorblind” constitution, an argument that is oxymoronic on its face given that the original constitution was most definitely not colorblind towards people who looked like Thomas. 6
People have often expressed surprise that Thomas is so stridently against the policy, but I am here to tell you that of all of Thomas’s treacherous attempts to set Black folks back to second-class status, this one is the easiest to trace. Thomas considers himself a victim of affirmative action. In his autobiography, My Grandfather’s Son, Thomas says his degree from Yale Law School (Thomas graduated in 1974) was never taken seriously because of affirmative action. He recounts, painfully, how white employers didn’t believe that he could be as smart as his grades indicated, because they believed that he was only there as an affirmative action admit. 7
Frankly, I know the feeling. I think that any successful Black person in this country, especially one who went to a traditionally elite university, knows the feeling. I’m a well-respected legal columnist and best-selling author, and I can’t go a week without some simpleton who paid eight bucks for Twitter suggesting that I didn’t “earn” my place at Harvard Law School, an institution I graduated from twenty freaking years ago. It’s maddening—both in the sense that it makes me violently angry and that it interrupts the normal functioning of my brain. If you haven’t walked a mile in my shoes, or Thomas’s shoes, or the shoes of any other Black person who had the temerity to be excellent while Black, you really don’t know what it’s like to have white people who have the intellectual firepower of a wet cigarette question your credentials. 8
The difference between me, along with most Black folks, and Clarence Thomas is that Thomas has decided to take his hurt feelings out on one of the most effective social justice policies in American history, while most Black people just learn to step over the low-account white folks clawing at our ankles. Most Black people strive to overcome racial injustice; Thomas was broken by it. Instead of blaming the white folks doing the oppressing, Thomas has decided to ally with them and blame the policy meant to break their exclusive access to power. He’s almost a tragic figure: a man who has adopted the white narrative about Black people so completely that he’s curdled into a mere spokesperson for that white narrative. 9
Again, I almost get it. I almost see where he’s coming from. I remember coming home from elementary school one day and declaring to my Black and proud parents that I “couldn’t be” Black. I had heard kids at my predominately white Catholic elementary school saying that Black people were not “clean,” and I explained to my parents that this made me not Black because I took a bath every day, and I didn’t want to be associated with people who didn’t wash. Obviously, my parents were horrified. Obviously, they pulled me out of that school the next year and put me into a predominately Black public school. Obviously, I learned that not everything white people say is true. But Thomas is the guy who never learned: he never figured out how to disregard what white people say about us. Learning how to ignore white folks and their stupid racial theories while living your full life is pretty much the final test towards emancipation, and it’s one that Thomas seems to have flunked for his entire professional life.10
Of course, I say that Thomas is “almost” a tragic figure. I almost feel sorry for him. But what drains my empathy for him is the fact that I’ve had to read his absolutely trash legal opinions. 11
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