Analysis

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?