After Fisher v. University of Texas: towards racial justice or whiteness rising?

Abstract

This essay examines the significance of the fortuitous Fisher v. University of Texas Supreme Court decision within a broader historical framework of similar affirmative action legal disputes. The author locates Fisher among a historical trajectory of manoeuvres intended to destabilise modest Civil Rights Era advances toward racial justice. Leonardo’s ‘educational criticism’ is considered as a possible conceptual analysis to take up the continuing problem of race, education and the law in our colour-blind era. Despite the Fisher decision affirming the continued permissibility of limited racial considerations in college admissions, a careful examination of how race is understood from a legal perspective reveals a disconcerting revelation. That is, racial justice advocates in education should temper our enthusiasm for Fisher against evidence that the Supreme Court’s understanding of racism has unquestionably gone backwards. Because of this, Fisher is at best a problematic step toward meaningful integration, and at worst an instantiation of whiteness rising.