"Students’ Protests May Play Role in Supreme Court Case on Race in Admissions"

"The justices are almost certainly paying close attention to the protests, including those at Princeton, where three of them went to college, and at Yale, where three of them went to law school. At both schools, there have been accusations that protesters, many of them black, have tried to suppress the speech of those who disagree with them. Others welcomed the protests as part of what they called a healthy debate.

The protests call for a new examination of the legacy of racism in the United States. But the Supreme Court’s precedents have rejected affirmative action at colleges and universities as a remedy for past wrongs. They permit only a single justification for race-conscious admissions plans: creating educational diversity so that students of different backgrounds can learn from each other...

“African-American students are telling us in no uncertain terms why diversity on campus is important,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, the president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., which filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to sustain the University of Texas’ race-conscious admissions plan. “They are describing their own marginalization.”...

But, he added, “pushing all of this into the framework of viewpoint diversity robs affirmative action of much of its moral force, which is as a way of addressing our troubled racial past.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/us/politics/justices-to-rule-once-again-on-race-in-college-admissions.html 

When voices aren't heard, information is lost and false assumptions are made. This moment right now when people are hearing new things and asking new questions gives me hope.

I approve of affirmative action from my own experiences - it's really, really diminishing to be "the only one". To enter spaces that were explicitly not built for you and to be asked to thrive. The purpose of affirmative action is to recognize systemic problems and affirmatively address them. But weirdly, it's all been turned into a program to improve the historically unjust institutions. I exist in these spaces to service them with ~perspectives~ but when my perspectives make them uncomfortable, or make it clear that these institutions need to change if they want to keep people with these ~perspectives~ then evidently I am violating the contract I signed by having my skin color and it is reasonable to cast me out.