I was trying to figure which of the Supreme Court's 6-3 fuckings this week to write about. Perhaps the full-on face fucking of allowing any business that declares what they do "expressive" to discriminate agains LGBTQ+ people (or, really, anyone) because they think an invisible sky wizard will be mad at them if they don't. Is cooking expressive? Is diagnosing medical conditions expressive? Who the fuck knows? Or maybe the large strap-on ass fucking of the court blocking President Biden's student loan forgiveness plan where, in essence, the majority added back $10k or more in debt that had been eliminated. Thanks, John Roberts, you vicious, psycho numb nuts.
But perhaps, as a college professor, I am best suited to talk about the pair of cases that led to the majority overturning affirmative action programs in higher education because that shit is dead center in my wheelhouse and I'm gonna fuckin' swing for the fences because I know what the fuck I'm talking about. The majority came to my fuckin' place of work and shit all over it. I don't go over to the Supreme Court and slap William Rehnquist's dead dick out of Roberts' whore mouth.
See, in the roughly 250 or so years I've been teaching, I've led classes with little to no racial diversity and classes with extraordinary diversity. I've seen how diversity in hiring has an effect on the students and I've seen how diversity within the classroom impacts all students, white and non-white. So let me put this plainly: diversity and equity in higher education are pedagogically important in the classroom in a way that continues after graduation. Lemme put it even more plainly: this shit matters so that students of all races learn how to fucking exist in the real world.
I could get anecdotal here pretty easily. I could tell you about amazing discussions in classrooms around works of literature where one student of one race will talk about how something is true to their life and another student of another race will say they never knew. I could tell you how blowing up the literary canon to include far more women writers and non-white writers and non-Western writers has enriched the classroom experience. I regularly teach works by American writers who are Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, African, and more, along with white writers you've heard of, and students are fucking thrilled by it because many of them end up finding something about themselves in that work and then it matters more and then it opens them up to other works. Every fucking year this happens, and the experience of those works is heightened by the diversity of the class itself. And then I see these students hanging out and making plans together. It's fucking beautiful.
Frankly, I think that's what the people who are against affirmative action fear most: the normalization of diversity. Goddamn, I have taught in places where classes of 30 or 40 had one or two non-white students, if that. I loved teaching those students and gave it my all, but it feels so divorced from what they are almost guaranteed to experience outside that classroom. It matters. I know everyone on the right thinks higher education is either a waste of time or a means to a job, but it's also teaching you what it means to be in a diverse country. It makes you a better, more open-minded member of this damned society.
But that's my personal shit and everyone in higher education can give you examples of that. Instead, let's get some research up in this motherfucker. For years, studies have been showing that a diverse student population has a net positive effect on socialization, on civic engagement, and, yeah, on grades. A 2013 study out of Princeton concluded, "Diversity of all kinds is generally associated with positive learning and performance outcomes. Not only do experiences with diversity improve one’s cognitive skills and performance, it also improves attitudes about one’s own intellectual self-confidence, attitudes toward the college experience, and shapes performance in the workplace."
You might say that the Supreme Court shouldn't worry about the pedagogical aspect of diversity in higher education. But ignoring it is tantamount to the Court setting curriculum for all colleges, participating in pedagogical decisions quite fully. And, as both Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in their dissents, abandoning diversity as a goal for the classroom and campus has larger societal impact because the students go into the workforce. "Greater diversity within the teacher workforce improves student academic achievement in primary public schools," writes Sotomayor. "A diverse pipeline of college graduates also ensures a diverse legal profession, which demonstrates that 'the justice system serves the public in a fair and inclusive manner.'" That last part is quoting a brief from the American Bar Association. Diversity in higher education makes everything stronger.
And what about the notion put forth by some on the right that we just don't need affirmative action programs anymore? That's bullshit. "Current rates of change suggest that it would take about 70 years for all not-for-profit institutions to reflect underrepresented students fully in their incoming student population...For Black and Native American students and for faculty from all underrepresented populations, there was effectively no progress from 2013 to 2020," says a 2022 report. If anything, the actual numbers would call for more intensive emphasis on diverse recruitment. That's reality. And we know in places where affirmative action has been banned that the numbers of Black and Hispanic students dropped a whole lot in flagship universities.
Roberts goes on endlessly about the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. But if you're going to apply it to justify eliminating programs that attempt to enhance the education of all students under the idea that all races aren't being treated absolutely, totally, constantly equal all the time, then why not use it to ensure that equality of opportunity in all education is assured? Why not force states to make sure that public schools in all places are offering the same level of funding and same level of services? In other words, if you wanna eliminate the need for affirmative action, then eliminate some of the things that cause it to be necessary.
Or you just want to harm Black and brown people and don't give a fuck otherwise.
(Note: I can't leave this fucked up discussion without saying something about elite colleges, two of which were the defendants in these cases. Really, this was all about some students upset they didn't get accepted to Harvard or UNC-Chapel Hill, even though they might not have gotten in anyways. It's fucking absurd that we give so much importance to schools that are circle jerks of privilege, as if that's the only route to success in an area. US News and World Report's rankings can go suck all the dicks. You can get an amazing education in hundreds of other schools. Why would you want to got to schools that let George W. Bush or Jared Kushner in just because of their rich daddies?)
