Justices review racial preferences for college
The Supreme Court is setting will be reviewing the process of determining college admission by race this election season.
Affirmative action has been a hotly contested policy since its inception in 1978. Years later, in 2003, Sandra Day O’Connor wrote the court’s decision to reaffirm the practice. O’Connor said if society continued to evolve and racism continued to wane, affirmative action would no longer be defensible, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Now that O’Connor has been replaced by Samuel Alito Jr., five justices now are against the idea of using race in an admissions process to create diversity on campus.
According to the Associated Press, Abigail Fischer, a white girl who got denied entrance into a Texas college, sent the case to the judges. If the judges rule in favor of the student, affirmative action programs across the country would be in danger.
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. said in a decision that prohibited race-based transfer policies in elementary and high schools five years ago.
Some are hoping that this law suit will prod President Barack Obama into voicing his opinions about affirmative action.
When he ran for president in 2008, President Obama said he saw more of a need for colleges to help out disadvantaged kids with getting into college, regardless of race.
“I think we should take into account white kids who have been disadvantaged and have grown up in poverty and shown themselves to have what it takes to succeed,” he said.
