What the Supreme Court's Affirmative Action Case Was Really About

[marmar]

What the Supreme Court's Affirmative Action Case Was Really About

Friday, 24 June 2016 00:00
By Nikole Hannah-Jones, ProPublica | News Analysis

Update: The Supreme Court has upheld the University of Texas's consideration of race in admissions. The case had been brought by Abigail Fisher, who argued she had been denied admission because of her race.

In 2013, ProPublica's Nikole Hannah-Jones highlighted an overlooked, deeply ironic fact about the case: When one looked at Fisher's arguments, she had not actually been denied admission because she is white, but rather because of her inadequate academic achievements. Read that analysis, originally published March 18, 2013, below.

When the NAACP began challenging Jim Crow laws across the South, it knew that, in the battle for public opinion, the particular plaintiffs mattered as much as the facts of the case. The group meticulously selected the people who would elicit both sympathy and outrage, who were pristine in form and character. And they had to be ready to step forward at the exact moment when both public sentiment and the legal system might be swayed.

That's how Oliver Brown, a hard-working welder and assistant pastor in Topeka, Kan., became the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit that would obliterate the separate but equal doctrine. His daughter, whose third-grade innocence posed a searing rebuff to legal segregation, became its face.

Nearly 60 years after that Supreme Court victory, which changed the nation, conservatives freely admit they have stolen that page from the NAACP's legal playbook as they attempt to roll back many of the civil rights group's landmark triumphs.

In 23-year-old Abigail Noel Fisher they've put forward their version of the perfect plaintiff to challenge the use of race in college admissions decisions.

.....(snip).....

So while the Fisher case has been billed as a referendum on affirmative action, its backers have significantly grander ambitions: They seek to make the case a referendum on the 14th Amendment itself. At issue is whether the Constitution's equal protection clause, drafted by Congress during Reconstruction to ensure the rights of black Americans, also prohibits the use of race to help them overcome the nation's legacy of racism. ..............(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/36568-what-abigail-fisher-s-affirmative-action-case-was-really-about

[Hoyt]

1. Interesting article. Glad Supreme Court did the right thing in this case.