Daily Read: SALT Amicus Brief in Fisher v. UT (II)

As the oral argument scheduled for December 9  for Fisher II approaches, organizations and individuals are filing amicus briefs for the Court's consideration.  SALT - - - the Society of American Law Teachers - - - a progressive organization of law faculty that has long fought for diversity in legal education, has predictably filed an amicus brief supporting University of Texas's admissions program. 

One of the more interesting aspects of the brief is its argument that race neutrality is essentially impossible: "race-blind holistic review is not only a contradiction in terms, it is infeasible."  As the brief argues, "Put simply, because peoples’ lives are not “color blind,” neither can a holistic admissions policy be."

Consider a college application from an individual who lists youth leadership in his or her African Methodist Episcopal Church as an activity. Or consider an application from a first-generation Latina high-school senior whose personal essay discusses her immigrant parents’ experiences and how she learned to thrive in an English-dominated culture even though Spanish is the language spoken at home. If the reader is to conduct holistic review but cannot consider race, the reader is confronted with uncomfortable choices about how to handle these applications.

Moreover, if the reader cannot consider race, the reader would be confronted with an impossible task, because race affects assessments of individuals consciously or unconsciously, regardless of intentions and any mandate from this Court. . . .

Just as Dostoevsky’s polar bear will occupy the mind of anyone challenged not to think about it, so too will the admonition not to think about race generate an unspoken preoccupation with that subject.

 Although the SALT amicus brief does not argue that race will then be only used negatively, that is perhaps a consequence of an elimination of racialized diversity as a positive value.