The case of Regents of University of California v Bakke illuminates cultural shifts and attitudes while simultaneously addressing the court’s role in providing recourse for histories of racial violence, management, and exclusion. The language used in this case exemplifies the need for legal, social, and cultural recourse but the history of this case indicates society’s ambivalence toward race-specific, actionable methods toward equity. This case serves as a prism through which one can observe trends in the history of racial inequality of America as well as the anxieties that drove it and the beliefs that shaped it- but what does this case, read alongside the work of Crenshaw and Ferguson illuminate regarding possibilities for change and paths forward? This case was tasked with addressing admissions policies, but it also tested the limits of society’s willingness to pay for the past. How does intervention and recourse play out in this case and what do Crenshaw and Ferguson have to say about efforts like the one made in this case? How do images serve as an iconography and a vehicle of remembrance that sustains and fabulates a conversation that is riddled with innuendo and a willingness to erase and forget?
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Introduction to Bakke
Regents of UC v Bakke was a landmark case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States regarding race-based college admissions and affirmative action. The decision upheld affirmative action, but struck down racial quotas, which were pivotal to the diversification of higher education spaces. These racial quotas set aside certain percentages of their spots… Read more
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The University as a non-neutral space
As food for thought, I would like to offer a critique of university spaces, which are not neutral in this issue. While of course, in this example, the university was fighting for diversity and inclusion, it is important to note that the university is a product of mass American institutions, like those of incarceration. That… Read more
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Analysis
This excerpt from the legal opinion exemplifies the way the court haphazardly addressed the issue of race. The court did not make a bold statement rejecting the politics of anxiety that permeated this discourse. The fact that racial and ethnic classifications were labeled as inherently suspect exemplifies the vacuum in which this case was discussed… Read more
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ENGL1760Z Final Project: Law, Literature, and Managing Difference 