Exploring the color-evasive hustle 2.0 and Asian Americans within U.S. higher education race-conscious admissions oral arguments

Abstract

ABSTRACT Ongoing sociolegal conflicts over affirmative action in race-conscious admissions in U.S. higher education have significant modern-day relevance. This article, informed mainly by Asian American women’s scholarship, explores discourse in U.S. Supreme Court rulings and oral arguments and how litigation actors continue to recycle this discourse in more recent legal strategies that maintain and normalize inequitable access to selective, historically White institutions. The author revisited and extended critical race feminist Kimberlé Crenshaw’s metaphor, the Colorblind Hustle, which describes the anti-affirmative action strategy of deploying Black spokespersons as advocates for eradicating policies that promote racial equity. The author proposes a new metaphor, the Color-Evasive Hustle 2.0, to describe current anti-affirmative action strategies with Asian Americans as plaintiffs in a 2018 lawsuit against Harvard University. Finally, this article elevates interdisciplinary scholarship and legal strategies with potential to expose the Color-Evasive Hustle 2.0 and affirm and sustain educational equity.