Born in the Chambersburg section of Trenton, Justice Antonin Scalia implied Wednesday in a Supreme Court hearing on affirmative action at the University of Texas that black students should attend “a slower-track school”.
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“Now is not the time and this is not the case to roll back student-body diversity in America”, he said.
She listed some of the reasons university officials gave for why increased diversity is needed, including concerns about race-related incidents on campus and minority students complaining about feeling isolated.
Scalia further elucidated, however, on the experience of African-Americans in higher education: “One of the briefs pointed out that most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas”.
Racial tensions are high across college campuses, with students of color protesting a lack of diversity programs, insufficient support from the administration to combat race-based threats, and buildings named after Woodrow Wilson-a former president and a supporter of the Ku Klux Klan. “Maybe it ought to have fewer”, Scalia continued. But he told students and faculty at the University of Hawaii’s law school on Monday, Feb. 3, 2014, the case came during a time of panic about the war.
Garre shot back that the academic performance of minorities admitted under the affirmative action program at UT was higher than those admitted under the Top Ten Percent Plan.
For the remaining slots, it uses a “holistic” evaluation of applicants that includes race as one of many factors. Abigail Fisher sued UT in 2008 saying she was denied admittance to the school because she was white.
Racially segregated by law for its first 70 years – the school did not admit the first African-American until 1950 – the University of Texas at Austin has tried several means of increasing minority enrollment.
Controversial since its inception in the 1960s, affirmative action is once again being debated by the United States Supreme Court. Justice Clarence Thomas, an affirmative action opponent who has said he felt stigmatized by racial preferences, was customarily silent during the arguments.
Greg Garre, the lawyer for the university, faced tough questions not just on the specific program but on the future of affirmative action altogether.
“The top 10 plan does not classify anybody by race”. A 2003 Supreme Court ruling said public universities could take race into account when accepting students. But when Justice Scalia heard that point, he essentially asked if that, in itself, was a problem.
U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., also arguing for UT-Austin’s side, again sought to defend the consideration of race in admissions, stressing interests expressed by military and government leaders and business executives for racial diversity in their leadership ranks. The longtime 15th district legislator asked the justice about his Trenton roots and learned that Scalia had an aunt who still lived in Chambersburg. He noted that when the court approved using race in small conditions, it said “that we didn’t anticipate these kind of applications to be around in 25 years, and that was 12 years past”.
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The Supreme Court in the past has decided that the use of race as one factor of a “holistic review” of an applicant is acceptable. “Really, it is on the basis of awful stereotyping”. Scalia is a known critic of affirmative action and argues it pushes black students into universities they’re not prepared for. “They found new ways to create it, and in some ways better methods, given that they will benefit economically-disadvantaged students of all races”.
