MSNBC co-host Melissa Harris-Perry has written an open letter to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas because she is not satisfied with his position on affirmative action.
Harris-Perry asserts that both Thomas and Abigail Fisher, the woman suing the University of Texas, have interpreted affirmative action “all wrong”.
Fisher was an honors student who was not admitted into the University of Texas and she says that she was not admitted because she’s white. She claims that other students in her class who had lower grades than her were accepted into the University of Texas and “the only difference between us was the color of our skin.”
Gregory Garre, the lawyer for the University of Texas said that “Fisher would not have been admitted, no matter what her race.” He goes on to say,
“Even if Abigail Fisher had received a perfect Personal Achievement Index score she would not have been admitted … because her Academic Index was simply not high enough.”Harris-Perry argues that minimizing the accomplishments of black people is not a legacy of affirmative action but is instead a legacy of racism.
“We need generations to break down the barriers that divide us, and do you know one of the important places where that work begins? In college classrooms, diverse classrooms, the kind of classrooms that affirmative action has created. And here’s something I’ve learned as a college professor. The measure of merit isn’t the test you take to get into school, it’s what you learn after you’ve been admitted and what do you with that knowledge once you’ve left.”
I really sympathize with the last two senteneces, "The measure of merit isn’t the test you take to get into school, it’s what you learn after you’ve been admitted and what do you with that knowledge once you’ve left." These are more important than just doing affirmative action.
ReplyDeleteThis lady's words only further expose the victimizing rhetoric employed by the general american public in which "they are the actual minorities being under attacked". The problem is that there are people that exploit this view as well as universities that are actually blind to racist discourses like this.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about the class' thoughts on affirmative action and the dangers of claiming a superficial diversity because it shows that racism is dead, and thus this discourse hides racial inequalities. When done this way, affirmative action's quite the opposite of action, but feels more like resigning to mainstream power dictations.