Guerrero: Affirmative action cases aren’t about ending discrimination. Their goal is white supremacy.
In January, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas—an affirmative action lawsuit brought by a white woman who claimed that she was denied admission to UT by an all-white committee because of her race. The court will decide whether to hear the case, which could set a new precedent on racial preferences and whether the University of Texas (UT) violated the constitutional rights of a woman of color.
What were the major issues at play in the Fisher case, and how could the court rule on them?
The Fisher lawsuit is really a great symbol for the problem of affirmative action in the U.S. Supreme Court. The Fisher case is about two issues at once: one is the effect of racial preferences on the University of Texas, and the other is the effects on all public institutions of race-based preferences.
The University of Texas is a great symbol of what affirmative action has wrought on the U.S. system. Over the last 40 years, the University of Texas has been transformed from a school where black, white and Latino students are represented—and where those students’ voices were heard—into a system of racial preference.
The Fisher case is about an all-white committee—with the participation of only white and Hispanic administrators, faculty, and students—who made a series of decisions for the entire campus in 2016 that left Affirmative Action at UT. And the consequences of these decisions reached the entire nation, from New York to Texas.
The Fisher case is about a white woman who was not entitled to be a part of the University of Texas because of her race and in the name of affirmative action. That is the kind of outcome you don’t see every day, and it is a shame. I have no doubt it would have been different if she had been Asian or Native American, or if she had a different background and religion.
And that, in a way, is what the Fisher case is really about. It is about the effects of affirmative action on institutions of higher education, and it is about the effects of affirmative action on America itself.
The first effect is that the University of Texas, and every public institution of higher education, has been shaped
