Victory, but struggle's not over
Supreme Court issues mixed verdict on affirmative
action
By Julie Fry
The Supreme Court issued landmark rulings in
two cases on June 23 that challenged the use of affirmative
action programs at public universities and colleges around the
country.
In a victory for students of color, the court affirmed the
right of universities to take a student's race into account
when making admissions decisions.
At the same time, the court severely restricted the ability
of universities to assert this right, by striking down the
University of Michigan's undergraduate "point system"
admissions program.
For over a decade now, right-wing think tanks and
reactionary foundations like the infamous Center for Individual
Rights (CIR) have been pouring millions of dollars into
campaigns to defeat affirmative action. They have gotten
referendums passed in California and Washington banning
affirmative action in public universities and have used
litigation to eliminate it in universities across the
South.
In addition, they have launched a major media campaign in an
attempt to create a racist, hostile climate in this country
that would facilitate the destruction of these important
programs.
This racist campaign culminated in two lawsuits filed by the
CIR: one against the University of Michigan law school and
another against the undergraduate school. CIR knew that these
cases were likely to reach the Supreme Court. These ideologues
were counting on the court to strike down affirmative action
programs, emboldened by the reactionary climate of the Bush
administration.
The Supreme Court, led by some of the most despicable,
racist judges in the country, has been attempting to dismantle
the tremendous gains of the civil rights movement for decades.
From immigrants' rights to public education, this court has
made it clear that it serves the ruling class, not the
people.
But the Supreme Court also is aware of the tremendous rage
and backlash it would spawn throughout the country by
discarding one of the major gains of the civil rights movement.
Students of color, who organized countless demonstrations to
defeat this attack, made it clear that they would not go back
to the days when universities were only for the children of the
white and rich.
In this period of worldwide resistance to imperialism and to
the reactionary U.S. government in all its forms, when the
Pentagon is relying on lack of jobs to drive more people of
color into the military, the Supreme Court was not willing to
incite what would surely be a massive struggle to keep this
most basic right.
Immediate effect
The law school ruling allowing race-conscious admissions
programs will have an immediate effect on access to education
for students of color, especially in the South. In the Fifth
Circuit of the federal courts, which includes Texas, Louisiana
and Mississippi, affirmative action has been banned since 1996,
after CIR filed a successful lawsuit against the University of
Texas. A similar lawsuit was won in the Eleventh Circuit, which
includes Alabama, Georgia and Florida. After these lawsuits,
enrollment rates for students of color in flagship schools
across the South had plummeted.
The Supreme Court decision overturns both those cases.
This ruling also has the potential to reinvigorate campaigns
to overturn racist referendums, such as Proposition 209 in
California, which banned the use of affirmative action
throughout the state university system. Students and faculty at
University of California schools have been fighting Proposition
209 ever since it was implemented. Now students can renew their
campaign to overturn the proposition knowing their goal will
not be pre-empted by a countrywide ban on affirmative
action.
CIR and its supporters sought a complete elimination of all
affirmative action programs for people of color. Its supporters
spent millions to create a climate hostile to affirmative
action. CIR, and others like it, have been waiting for years to
get to the Supreme Court, where they were sure that right-wing
justices like William Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia would help
them wipe out affirmative action.
The fact that CIR lost, despite its bottomless pool of
resources and powerful supporters, is a testament to the
tremendous power of the movement, led by students of color
across the country.
University of Michigan students recognized the threat posed
by these lawsuits as soon as they were filed. They organized
and made a historic, legal intervention in the cases
themselves. Students of color in both Michigan lawsuits were
able to put into the legal record evidence of the racism and
discrimination they face every day--through systemic inequality
in public education--and the overt racism they experience on
campus and in classrooms.
Students also organized countless demon strations, including
a historic pro test on April 1 of this year, the day of oral
arguments in the affirmative action cases. They came to
Washington, D.C., from all over the country to demand their
right to higher education, including access to the most elite
schools. In what is a tremendous example of the strength of the
people's movement, these youth of color can now claim victory
over the powerful CIR and, even more significantly, the Bush
administration which supported the lawsuit.
The fight isn't over
Much is still at stake, however, after the June 23 ruling.
The court struck down as unconstitutional the University of
Michigan's undergraduate affirmative action program. The
program relied on a pre-determined point system awarded to
applicants for different qualifications. An applicant with the
minimum number of points was offered admission. One of these
point factors was race.
The Court said that this system was unconstitutional, but at
the same time upheld the University of Michigan law school's
"critical mass" system--a system that is incredibly vague, and
purposely so. The law school says it is looking for a "critical
mass" of students of color--something above a token number but
not any amount that it is willing to define. The school
authorities say they don't have any objective way of measuring
an applicant's credentials; they just look at the "total
package" and take race into account--in some undefined
way--when making an admission decision.
While touted as some sort of feel-good, "holistic" or
"individualized" approach to affirmative action, the law
school's model could prove to be extremely detrimental to
students of color. By its own terms, this model provides no
standard for measuring whether or not students of color are
getting equal access to these elite schools.
Instead, students are left to the mercy of the bureaucrats
who make up college admissions boards. Students of color, who
have fought for their right to a decent education against
racist school administrators for decades, know full well that
most of these college administrators don't care about their
interests.
This second ruling gives license to these universities, and
in fact demands that these colleges discard any pretense of an
objective standard measuring the progress in admissions of
people of color.
While activists should be proud of the important victory
they have won, they should also stay vigilant and be on guard
against universities that will undoubtedly use the
undergraduate decision as an excuse to replace affirmative
action programs with totally meaningless "subjective" systems
that decrease the enrollment of students of color in colleges
and universities.
Fry is a former University of Michigan student.
Reprinted from the July 3, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
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