The Supreme Court's decision in Fisher v. The University of Texas brings an eight-year temper tantrum to an end.

In 2008, the plaintiff, Abigail Fisher, a disgruntled prospective college student supported by a conservative advocacy group, Project on Fair Representation, challenged the admissions process at Texas's flagship state school, UT-Austin, when she failed to earn a seat in their prestigious freshmen class. The university's policy was to grant automatic admission to students who graduate in roughly the top 10 percent of their high school classes, which accounts for about 75 percent of admissions. The other 25 percent is made up of students evaluated on a "holistic review" of variety of factors, including race. Fisher, a white woman, did not qualify for the Top Ten Percent program, so she hoped to secure spot in the other group. When she didn't get one, she blamed the school's practice of affirmative action — and sued the school.

In a somewhat surprising 4–3 ruling, the Supreme Court rejected Fisher's challenge to this admissions policy. Previous rulings have upheld bans on affirmative action, and Justice Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion in this case, had expressed concern about the university's plan. By ruling this week that officials at universities can consider race — albeit in a limited way — when admitting students, the Supreme Court has dealt a serious, though far from fatal, blow to the argument that affirmative action is "reverse racism" that undermines true racial equality. The ruling also exposes the longing for the racial hierarchies of yesteryear at the heart of so many of our current social conflicts, both here and abroad. For while it is heartening that the Fisher case was shot down, this ruling is just one battle in the war and backlash against civil rights gains for marginalized people.

It's worth noting that, despite Fisher's contention that she was denied admission because the school factored race into its decision, she was actually a high school student with a decent GPA but mediocre test scores (1180 out of 1600 on her SAT). It's also worth noting that of the 47 students with lower grades and test scores than Fisher who were admitted to UT, 42 of the students were white. Abigail Fisher, along with the right-wing race baiters who funded her legal proceedings, had beef with the five students of color with lower grades and test scores who got into UT. Race, according to the Supreme Court, is only a "factor of a factor of a factor" in considering applications — in addition to grades and test scores, admissions officers look at essays, leadership, and service as well as a "special circumstances," a category that includes race, economic status, and household language. So the 47 students who were accepted to UT must have had stronger writing samples, more impressive extracurricular activities, and more interesting applications than the decidedly milquetoast Fisher. 

Perhaps it is unfair to focus on Fisher, who has since graduated from Louisiana State University. Though she didn't sue UT-Austin on her own and was instead approached by the Project on Fair Representation as a fitting poster child — a cherubic strawberry blond who just wanted to go to the school of her dreams — the young woman whose name is attached to this case has inspired countless articles, news reports, and even hashtags like #StayMadAbby and #BeckyWiththeBadGrades.

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Still, if Fisher is a pawn in a larger endgame, so are the five students of color who Fisher and her legal team identified as the major obstacles to her educational dreams. These five students bear the weight of racial and racist representation that have identified them as unqualified recipients of social welfare and as obstacles to the success of Fisher and those like her from the start. Their presence, Fisher and her supporters implicitly argue, is evidence that multiculturalism and political correctness has gone berserk and that truly qualified students have been caught in the cultural crossfire.

Fisher represents a terrible trifecta of racism, mediocrity, and entitlement — ever the more ironic since it is well known that white women have gained the most from affirmative action. Abigail also could have attended another school in the university system and transferred to UT the next year if she earned a 3.2 GPA, but she decided against this option. "It's like saying to Rosa Parks, 'Well, just go sit in the back of the bus for a while,' " according to a 2014 interview with a lawyer who represented her. "No one whose civil rights are violated should tolerate having to do something that you know other people don't have to do because they're a different color or they're a different religion or they're a different ethnicity."

Thus, Fisher's case also embodies the misdirection and dog-whistle politics central to what Carol Anderson calls "white rage" and reminds us that contemporary racism does not always look like burning crosses and yelled racial epithets — although we are seeing some of that too this election cycle. White rage is Fisher's incredulous anger at not being admitted to UT-Austin and the scorched-earth tactics of her lawyers that reveal the deep sense of fury at the loss of white entitlement, despite her benign words that claim to seek colorblind politics.

Furthermore, the lengthy court battle illuminates the fundamental misunderstanding of the true role of affirmative action and other legislation born out of the civil rights movement. At its core, affirmative action seeks to address and redress the persistent race-based discrimination that has been central to many of our key American institutions. Programs such as affirmative action do not insert race into conversations where they have not been; these programs invite institutions to positively consider the inclusion of people of color as a value added, as a way of correcting decades — centuries — of whiteness (and maleness) as the only experience that matters when it counts.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruling is important for a variety of reasons. We are in a particularly volatile political moment that we sometimes think came out of nowhere. But that is actually untrue. The notion that people of color and other marginalized groups have received undue civil rights and social gains goes back to the 1970s when affirmative action first started getting attacked, and is being ratcheted up to dangerous levels today. The same day Supreme Court rules in favor of affirmative action, they deadlocked on immigration; two weeks ago, a homophobic gunman massacred LGBT folks; a year ago, a racist gunned down nine parishioners in a historic black church. The hard truth is that the same thinking that prompted Abigail Fisher to sue regarding affirmative action is not unlike the thinking behind "Making America Great Again" or "taking our country back." And that should make us all very worried.  

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