Here’s the thing that boggles my mind about our justice system. The same piece of legislation (the equal protections clause of the 14th amendment, for instance) can be used to fight for the end of discrimination against women, which can then set precedent for protections for queer people…which can ALSO then be used to ban the tools that help us to become anti-racist within education? (see also: this week’s SCOTUS decision banning affirmative action if you live in a hole)
It is up to interpretation of the individual (increasingly more conservative white justices, in this case) to wield the law like a bludgeon for their own values. And you might be like, “Ok. Ok, Chief Justice Roberts. We knew this was coming. I don’t agree with your values, but I see your twisted logic.” And then Justice Roberts says, “Oh, but not for military institutions.” And you’re like, “Wait, what?” And John’s like, “Yeah, affirmative action gets an exemption for military schools.” And so you say, “So like, no limits on equality when we need to feed the war machine?” And he’s all, “THE CONSTITUTION!”
And you’re like, “Ok hold on a second, you lost us Roe and we need you back onside, man. You said that colleges wrongly conclude that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is the color or their skin, not challenges bested, skills built or lessons learned?” John says, “Yep.”
“Ok, so let’s play a game. Tell me who you are without any references to your race, gender, or sexual orientation, and I’m just going to hit this buzzer if what you share is correlated to any of those things…go ahead…” And while you eagerly sit with your hand hovering over a Family Feud style game show buzzer every time Roberts tries to tell you a story about his life, you sigh and say to yourself, “If a legal mind like Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson’s can’t knock some sense into this man, what chance do I stand?”
In contrast, here are a few things that have made sense to me in the wake of the ruling:
The phrase, “Fascism thrives on controlling our stories, our identities, and our bodies,” shared by Marzena Zukowska, a colleague in my RadComms group.
This Slate breakdown from a law professor about how Chief Justice Roberts distorted the legal history of anti-Asian discrimination by misusing Yick Wo vs. Hopkins, the precedent for the Equal Protections Clause of the 14th Amendment.
And finally, this graphic from a 2017 Guardian article in the Way Back Machine, which just tells me everything I need to know about what happens when we ban affirmative action.
The impact of affirmative action at the University of California in one graphic
Illustration: Mona Chalabi