Radical affirmative action: a call to address hegemonic racialized themes in U.S. higher education race-conscious admissions legal discourse

Abstract

Anti-affirmative action legal discourse about U.S. higher education within selective institutions race-conscious admissions encompasses co-opted civil rights aims for racial equity in education that maintains white supremacy. Racially progressive efforts to include historically racially minoritized applicants of color have been met with unfounded assertions of reverse discrimination by White applicants and most recently, Asian Americans. In this essay, I use a critical race analysis to illuminate how four racialized themes, color-evasive rhetoric, the normalcy of white privilege, diversity rhetoric, and the myth of meritocracy, operate in legal discourse. I conclude by offering radical affirmative action as a way to refute the themes and influence research on legal discourse about race-conscious admissions.