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 available for admitted students for students that held certain racial identities and had suffered systemic inequality.

This case was an opportunity for the court to address the way race-based college admission was a critical liberatory project that embodied a specific kind of reparation. While the decision upheld the practice of considering race in the admissions process, it limited the amount of recourse that could be offered by higher learning institutions. This case represents the way that managing difference is tied up in legal struggles that fail to provide recourse or recognize histories and legacies of violence and exclusion. This court case had the possibility of declaring the issue of affirmative action, as a form of reparation, a critical space in which societal and systemic inequality would not be tolerated, and that the impact and intention of affirmative action was a way to do this. However, the court’s decision failed to do this, and in turn, failed to comment