Wow. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissent.
pic.twitter.com/ica3ED6LZq
— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) June 29, 2023
Posted on 06/29/2023 10:18:40 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
As RedState reported earlier, the United States Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 vote Thursday that the race-based college admissions processes used by Harvard and the University of North Carolina (UNC) violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, effectively striking down the use of affirmative action programs in college admissions.
In Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissenting opinion in the UNC case, Jackson, who was nominated by President Joe Biden to the Supreme Court in part based on a campaign promise to nominate a black woman, accused the court’s conservative majority of “let-them-eat-cake obliviousness,” proclaiming that the Justices “detached” themselves from “this country’s actual past and present experiences,” while lecturing the “ostrich-like” members about so-called “lived experiences”:
Wow. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissent.
pic.twitter.com/ica3ED6LZq— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) June 29, 2023
In his concurrence with the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas responded accordingly to Jackson’s dissent. Here are some noteworthy excerpts:
Accordingly, JUSTICE JACKSON’s race-infused world view falls flat at each step. Individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments. What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them. And their race is not to blame for everything—good or bad—that happens in their lives. A contrary, myopic world view based on individuals’ skin color to the total exclusion of their personal choices is nothing short of racial determinism.
JUSTICE JACKSON then builds from her faulty premise to call for action, arguing that courts should defer to “experts” and allow institutions to discriminate on the basis of race. Make no mistake: Her dissent is not a vanguard of the in-nocent and helpless. It is instead a call to empower privileged elites, who will “tell us [what] is required to level the playing field” among castes and classifications that they alone can divine. Post, at 26; see also post, at 5–7 (GORSUCH, J., concurring) (explaining the arbitrariness of these classifications). Then, after siloing us all into racial castes and pitting those castes against each other, the dissent somehow believes that we will be able—at some undefined point—to “march forward together” into some utopian vision. Post, at 26 (opinion of JACKSON, J.). Social movements that invoke these sorts of rallying cries, historically, have ended disastrously.
Unsurprisingly, this tried-and-failed system defies both law and reason. Start with the obvious: If social reorganization in the name of equality may be justified by the mere fact of statistical disparities among racial groups, then that reorganization must continue until these disparities are fully eliminated, regardless of the reasons for the disparities and the cost of their elimination. If blacks fail a test at higher rates than their white counterparts (regardless of whether the reason for the disparity has anything at all to do with race), the only solution will be race-focused measures. If those measures were to result in blacks failing at yet higher rates, the only solution would be to double down. In fact, there would seem to be no logical limit to what the government may do to level the racial playing field—outright wealth transfers, quota systems, and racial preferences would all seem permissible. In such a system, it would not matter how many innocents suffer race-based injuries; all that would matter is reaching the race-based goal.
Worse, the classifications that JUSTICE JACKSON draws are themselves race-based stereotypes. She focuses on two hypothetical applicants, John and James, competing for admission to UNC. John is a white, seventh-generation legacy at the school, while James is black and would be the first in his family to attend UNC. Post, at 3. JUSTICE JACKSON argues that race-conscious admission programs are necessary to adequately compare the two applicants.
As an initial matter, it is not clear why James’s race is the only factor that could encourage UNC to admit him; his status as a first-generation college applicant seems to contextualize his application. But, setting that aside, why is it that John should be judged based on the actions of his great great-great-grandparents? And what would JUSTICE JACKSON say to John when deeming him not as worthy of admission: Some statistically significant number of white people had advantages in college admissions seven generations ago, and you have inherited their incurable sin?
The full opinion can be read here. Thomas’ full response to Jackson starts on page 97.
Flashback: Justice Clarence Thomas Cements ‘Legend’ Status With One Very On-Point Quip About the MSM
Affirmative Action Jackson
actually when it comes to college admissions it is Asians that are primarily being discriminated against by AA programs.
Thomas is a gift, great intellect and respect for our country.
Not a Constitutional scholar. I’d seriously question her as a scholar period.
I did not get what AA was all about early in my work career. Later I saw top-level qualified individuals denied promotion so that the hiring board could "recast the net" until they could find at least one AA applicant. They had a quota to fill, and many of those applicants were not up to the job.
I am retired now, but my career could have gone differently if I had only announced some 50 years ago that my paternal GrandMother was Hispanic. I never knew her, and pre-WWII family records were lost. I suspect some of my co-workers grabbed onto a piece of the AA "golden ring". Even to question their claims of heritage would in itself have smacked of racism. just saying.
I am not crying foul for myself, just expressing the folly of the argument. Justice Thomas gets it right. One making a decision needs to look at the entirety of the individual. In the process of deciding on applicants, validity of a decision matters; What decision today results in the best outcome down the road? What is best, given a group of applicants, limited resources to share?
I knew we were doomed when special groups got special rights. Co-workers receiving paid time off and travel costs paid to attend group meetings highlighting their differences.
WIFLE (Women in Federal Law Enforcement)
NOBLE (National Order of Black Law Enforcement Executives)
I wanted to start a branch called SNIFFLE (Several neglected insignificant Fat Fellows in Law Enforcement)
I wonder if institutions even care ay longer about quality of outcomes and a competent workforce. Bud doesn't seem upset, CNN doesn't seem upset by poor ratings with their non-diverse 100% leftist employees. What AA does is make the product worse, every single time. Nobody seems to care except the conservative small business owner it seems.
That makes a lot of sense. But...the left and blacks are saying all whites, no matter their bank accounts or lack thereof have “white privilege” just by being born white. This has been going on for years. I was passed over for a civil service job because I am white. It didn’t matter that my husband and I were walking the streets collecting aluminum cans to help put gas in our car so we could go find jobs. {this was in the 70’s).
AA has been nothing but a bribe for the black vote...
This will result in an ever increasing effort by the Junta to pack or eliminate the constitutionalists on the SCOTUS, make no mistake about it, they are spitting blood over this.
Sotomeyer and Brown are qualified only as Walmart Greeters.
You are too kind. more like a 5th grader.
No offense to Walmart Greeters, of course.
Socialism would be government ownership of the means of production. Giving preferences for admission to kids from poor backgrounds is IMO, more like equalizing opportunity. Getting into a good school does not exempt you from the need to work to get the grades or to get out and work to get a good job and then work hard at that job to be successful. In other words, they're not mandating equal outcomes for everyone by helping those from poor backgrounds have more access to prestigious universities.
Thanks for providing a link to the full decision. Thomas’ concurrence is worth reading all by itself. The excerpts give were pretty much those I would have picked. IIRC, from my reading of it yesterday, footnotes 5 and 7 are juicy as well.
Because of the immense stigma that racism acquired, the Left discovered that race could be used as a battering ram to break down the limits set by the Constitution on governmental power. Beginning in the 60s, the government began to intrude on the most basic liberties of the American people in terms of freedom of association. Having already dispensed with the Commerce Clause's limits on controlling interstate commerce in the 30s and 40s, the Federal government now additionally assumed the power to subject the sale of every item in every store and every hiring decision to the tutelary despotism of the Federal bureaucracy with regard to race. Even JFK thought Federal power extended only to businesses involved in interstate commerce. By 1964, that last vestige of the Commerce Clause was gone.
In addition, the courts subsequently and illicitly extended the powers of intervention regarding "race" to sexual practices and are extending it yet again even as we speak to "gender identity."
Rather than using class as a means of overthrowing the Constitutional order, the Left has seized upon "identity" as the means to do so. The Leninist goal of having a private vanguard class seize control of every public institution without the limits of bourgeois law is being achieved through race and "identity."
The real problem that even Thomas skirts is that even if AA and these other measures could be proven to achieve their goals of eliminating the effects of racism, the means chosen are and always will be contrary to the Constitution. Because such extreme fairness can only be achieved by despotism, we are faced with either choosing liberty or fairness, but not both.
I just don’t see how it is possible for these people to move about with such huge and obvious chips on their shoulders.
Why don’t they just admit that without special consideration and affirmative action they lack the skills to thrive in the mainstream of society?
If blacks are not able to compete on a level playing field after the last 60 years of “adjustment” and at least 3 or 4 generations of having the deck stacked in their favor When will they ever?
Remove race from applications, make them race and gender blind with admission, hiring and everything else based only on merit, interpersonal skills and emotional quotient. Discrimination is endemic, it is all part of selection regardless of color.
The early labor movements fighting against 12 hour days and 6 1/2 day work weeks, child labor and unsafe working conditions (Triangle shirt factory fire) got their heads bashed by strike breakers, Pinkertons, thugs, National Guardsmen, Army troops and scab labor for too many years to forget how “conservatives” played the game. If we don’t face that history voluntarily, we will face the latter day payback involuntarily. This is a WORKING CLASS patriot talking.
The whole administration is proof that affirmative action fails society.
Sorry, posted to wrong thread.
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