Insist Justice Scalia Own Up to Racism in His Remarks about Diversity in Elite Colleges
- by: Susan V
- recipient: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made some disturbing comments during an oral argument about diversity at elite universities. Afterward Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid blasted Scalia for endorsing “racist ideas from the bench of the nation’s highest court.”
However others, like National Review’s Charles Cook, defended Scalia, claiming he wasn’t “pitching his own ideas" in saying that there were “those who contend” that blacks would be better off going to “slower-track” schools rather than the University of Texas where they might feel “pushed” in classes “too fast for them.” Cook says Scalia was just “mediating a dispute.”
But based on the entire transcript, that's not all Scalia said. On page 68, Scalia says he’s “not impressed” that “the University of Texas may have fewer” black students, and “Maybe it ought to have fewer.” He goes on to suggest that admitting more “really competent blacks” to UT deprives “the lesser schools” of those students. He sums up by basically saying it's not "a good thing" for UT "to admit as many blacks as possible."
Personally I think Afi-Odelia Scruggs' response in the Washington Post nails what Scalia was getting at. She says his comments come from the “mismatch theory,” which is just a new name for “the same old institutionalized racism that steered generations of African Americans into trade schools instead of universities."
But you be the judge. Sign this petition if you think Scalia’s comments were racist and that he should admit it.
To Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia:
We, the undersigned, agree with Afi-Odelia Scruggs in saying that your comments regarding the case of Fisher v. University of Texas hark back to the same old racist ideas that fueled the stifling of black progress, particularly after Reconstruction.
Scruggs is right on target calling the Mismatch Theory, which your comments reflect, one that supports the “same old institutionalized racism that steered generations of African Americans into trade schools instead of universities.” She more elegantly describes it as “the pernicious whisper beneath current suggestions that perhaps college isn’t for everybody.”
Scruggs does admit that the Mismatch Theory is right in one respect, that “Under-prepared black students will struggle at a demanding educational institution.”
She says she knows, because she “was one.”
However, there’s a big difference in Scrugg's perspective on that experience with struggle versus your conclusions. She points out that “all lessons are not academic,” and the important lessons she learned from struggling or being “pushed” at a fast-track school. She says she learned “how to set” her “own standards for success…how to advocate” for herself, “how to become entitled,” “how culturally limited white people really can be,” and “compassion.”
As one who says she has lived through the experience of being “ignored” as a minority student in an “advanced” college at the beginning of Affirmative Action - one who succeeded in spite of the struggle you describe in your “mismatch" argument - Scruggs says that argument “is flawed because it assumes under-prepared black students will opt to fail instead of push to succeed.” And she concludes by asking what proponents, like you, of that theory “are actually trying to protect: a system that includes black students” like her “or a status quo that keeps them out?”
While some claim your remarks aren’t racist, it would be hard to argue that Scruggs has misrepresented at least their implications. Furthermore it is absurd for you to imply that black students are the only ones who struggle at "advanced" colleges.
We ask that you recognize the racism in your remarks and apologize for them and their implications. As Mr. Garre argues [page 68] in response to your comments “…now is not the time and this is not the case to roll back student body diversity in America.” Certainly your Honor recognizes the significance of that remark.
Thanks for your time.
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