Speaker 1: Pushing.
Speaker 2: I'm Khalil Jibrad Muhammad.
Speaker 1: I'm Ben Austin. We are two best friends, one black,
Speaker 1: one white.
Speaker 3: I'm a historian and I'm a journalist. And this is
Speaker 3: some of my best friends are.
Speaker 1: Some of my best friends are in this show. We
Speaker 1: wrestle with the challenges.
Speaker 4: And the absurdities of a deeply divided, separate, and unequal country.
Speaker 4: And nowhere is this more apparent than in the American
Speaker 4: school system from K through higher education. Today we're talking
Speaker 4: about the recent Supreme Court decision banning race based affirmative
Speaker 4: action in higher education and what that means for the future.
Speaker 1: And oh man, that's right. And we have someone on
Speaker 1: the show that couldn't be better to speak with, our friend,
Speaker 1: Anarema Bargava. Honarema has this amazing pedigree. She served in
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights Division at the US Department of Justice
Speaker 1: during the Obama administration, focusing on education issues, and before that,
Speaker 1: she also worked on education at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Speaker 1: And Honareima was actually at the Supreme Court hearings when
Speaker 1: this affirmative action case was being argued, so she knows
Speaker 1: what she's talking about. And she also happens to be
Speaker 1: an old friend, Honorema, grew up two blocks for me
Speaker 1: in my neighborhood, and she went to our high school,
Speaker 1: Kinwood Academy. You know, it always comes back to Chicago.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: Anarema is going to tell us about what she calls
Speaker 3: the setup behind this case and the campaign to keep
Speaker 3: our country essentially segregated, or at least to take us
Speaker 3: back to the quote unquote good old days based on
Speaker 3: this ruling.
Speaker 2: So let's get to it.
Speaker 1: Let's go.
Speaker 5: We got in a fish and him.
Speaker 1: All right, an Arima, welcome to Some of my best friends.
Speaker 5: Are so excited to be here with you, and.
Speaker 1: It's like a homecoming for real, because we you and I,
Speaker 1: we go way back to when we were we were shorties.
Speaker 1: There were days after school when I was a little
Speaker 1: one and I, since we grew up in the same neighborhood,
Speaker 1: I would get taken back to your house for after school.
Speaker 1: And I just want to say that my after school
Speaker 1: snacks at my house, like I would make myself a
Speaker 1: bowl of cereal, and if I was really ambitious, I
Speaker 1: would fry up some sizzeline and at your house, at
Speaker 1: your house, your mom made homemade somosis. Wow, it was crazy.
Speaker 5: Every day, every day she made tomosas for you whenever
Speaker 5: you showed up.
Speaker 6: It was like a daily, daily practice.
Speaker 5: I was a little bit more of a shorty than
Speaker 5: you were, because I remember, well, I told the story
Speaker 5: all through high school, which is that I said that
Speaker 5: you and your brother baby sat me. It might have
Speaker 5: just been your brother, but this was a really important
Speaker 5: story for me to tell everyone that I you know,
Speaker 5: I got to spend some time with Ben Austin when
Speaker 5: I was when I was a kid, quality time getting
Speaker 5: babysat and eating somosas.
Speaker 1: Because I was like the big man on campus.
Speaker 5: I was like, you know, I'm not I'm not gonna
Speaker 5: I'm not gonna talk about, you know, the big man
Speaker 5: on campus moment.
Speaker 6: I feel like Khalil might get a little bit.
Speaker 5: Jealous or sad here, so I just I'll just say
Speaker 5: maybe maybe maybe, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well that he was. He was much cooler than
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 3: And now that I know he was, he was eating
Speaker 3: somosa's even more uh more in the in the in
Speaker 3: the know than I was. So look, we all went
Speaker 3: to the best high school in America, you know, hands down,
Speaker 3: Kinwood Academy, home of the Broncos and uh, you know this.
Speaker 3: This is a public high school. It's on the South
Speaker 3: side of Chicago.
Speaker 2: We've talked about.
Speaker 3: It on our show many many times. Majority black student population,
Speaker 3: but obviously we had some white kids, we had some
Speaker 3: Jewish kids, but we haven't talked that much about our
Speaker 3: Asian population. And turns out that some of our best
Speaker 3: friends from high school from Kenwood we're also of Asian descent,
Speaker 3: in your case an arena South Asian. So like, what
Speaker 3: was it like to be a student, you know, in
Speaker 3: this black, white world as as a little girl with
Speaker 3: a crush or a young woman I should say, with
Speaker 3: a crush on Ben.
Speaker 1: Not the last part.
Speaker 6: I didn't do that part.
Speaker 1: I was talking.
Speaker 3: We all know how that works, right, it's my friend
Speaker 3: who who has the crush?
Speaker 1: I get it.
Speaker 2: I get it, you do.
Speaker 5: I mean I might have had another few crushes in
Speaker 5: your class.
Speaker 6: So I'll leave it. I'll leave it that.
Speaker 5: We can talk about that some other day.
Speaker 6: I will.
Speaker 5: I will say it made us. There weren't that many
Speaker 5: South Asian students around. I mean, there weren't that many
Speaker 5: kids on the South Side. He was South Asian or
Speaker 5: and the kids who were coming in to Kenwood. A
Speaker 5: lot of the Asian kids, I think, were coming from
Speaker 5: across the city, and so I think in some ways
Speaker 5: we got to be whoever we wanted to be, right,
Speaker 5: So you kind of got to flow through because people
Speaker 5: didn't know exactly what to do with you other than
Speaker 5: your mom made somosas. And you know, my brother used
Speaker 5: to get called Gandhi all the time because I was
Speaker 5: the only you know, Indian person ever anyone had ever
Speaker 5: heard of.
Speaker 6: It didn't feel like we were different.
Speaker 5: It just felt like we were We were learning about
Speaker 5: each other and we had something you know, strange and
Speaker 5: different to contribute to that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know, that's that's that's kind of my
Speaker 3: experience too, meaning that I don't remember a lot of
Speaker 3: students of Asian descent, whether East Asian or South Asian
Speaker 3: or API in the broadest sense. I remember a few,
Speaker 3: like in my classes. And Ben's going to be totally
Speaker 3: embarrassed by me telling this story, but I had a
Speaker 3: classmate in a in a speech class, actually was an
Speaker 3: acting class. It was drama, and he had an accent.
Speaker 3: He was probably Filipino descent, and one day we were
Speaker 3: all doing improv and sort of the prompt was like,
Speaker 3: you know, he had to say something equivalent. Ben is
Speaker 3: shaking his head, like bad day, but it came out
Speaker 3: bad day. And for years Ben and I kind of
Speaker 3: like if we had a bad day, we adopted his
Speaker 3: Filipino accents, and like, there's all kind of fucked up
Speaker 3: about it, right, But like, if I'm being honest, it
Speaker 3: was partly the foreignness of this Filipino kid in a black,
Speaker 3: white school that kind of made the accent stick out
Speaker 3: and then became a kind of inside joke between us
Speaker 3: when we actually used.
Speaker 2: The word like, yo, how was your day?
Speaker 3: I had, you know, he would say it or I
Speaker 3: would say it anyway. I think, you know, if this
Speaker 3: show's going to be true to itself and if we're
Speaker 3: going to talk about these issues in a world that
Speaker 3: is really crazy right now, and the topic that we're
Speaker 3: talking about, you know, I got to own my own
Speaker 3: my own ship, and that that great high school that
Speaker 3: we all went to CLO.
Speaker 6: I think we all had it.
Speaker 5: I mean, there are all kinds of stereotypes about people
Speaker 5: of every background, right, and I think in some ways
Speaker 5: it was it was good that we had a few
Speaker 5: because you could kind of the part that I did
Speaker 5: like was that you kind of represent and wander, so
Speaker 5: you didn't have you know, the Indian kid that people
Speaker 5: call Gandhi also did graffiti and you know, and swear
Speaker 5: and got himself in trouble and was walking around and
Speaker 5: you know. So that's that's the part that that you
Speaker 5: break up the stereotypes, right and and you need that
Speaker 5: because otherwise you only know the accents and and whatever
Speaker 5: it is that you got on TV.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this gets that zan Rima to the to
Speaker 1: what we're talking about today, which is diversity and the
Speaker 1: recent Supreme Court decision which got rid of affirmative action
Speaker 1: as far as a decision in college admissions. And we
Speaker 1: want to hear more about like your career trajectory and
Speaker 1: the work you've done as a civil rights attorney with
Speaker 1: the NAACP, with the Obama Justice Department that really working
Speaker 1: on cases just like this, And can you talk about
Speaker 1: sort of the really like the decades of work you've
Speaker 1: done that give context for this moment on affirmative action.
Speaker 5: So I think it all comes back to Kenwin. I
Speaker 5: think I went into college thinking I was going to
Speaker 5: be a doctor like most Indian kids, and you know,
Speaker 5: I didn't do so well in organic chemistry.
Speaker 6: So that was the end of that.
Speaker 5: And then, you know, I think about how extraordinary all
Speaker 5: these people we grew up with are, right, And you know,
Speaker 5: there were people who would wrap in the hallways, and
Speaker 5: the way they understood the world and the way they
Speaker 5: talked about the world was smarter than anything else I
Speaker 5: had come across, right, just just to be able to
Speaker 5: take it all in and figure it out in a moment, right,
Speaker 5: And and so that's the my friends growing up from
Speaker 5: from those who weren't sure where their parents were, were
Speaker 5: sometimes homeless, some of whom you know, grew up in
Speaker 5: very difficult circumstances, some of the most you know, extraordinary
Speaker 5: seers of what was going on around us.
Speaker 6: Those those are the folks who should have had the.
Speaker 5: Same shots that I did, right, And and we went
Speaker 5: to the same high school. But I had parents who
Speaker 5: were middle class parents who had all kinds of opportunities
Speaker 5: that I got because of that, And and so I
Speaker 5: I think that's why I wanted to do something in education.
Speaker 3: Can I pause you on that, Aama for a second, Yes,
Speaker 3: because I think you're saying something that is really relevant
Speaker 3: to the to the larger conversation we have so you're
Speaker 3: basically saying that out of the experience of being part
Speaker 3: of a small minority meaning an Indian a descendant kid
Speaker 3: in a largely black white school, like for you, diversity
Speaker 3: was a win win win, meaning you came to see
Speaker 3: kids in this space where you're learning. When you said
Speaker 3: the word seers like you could you're sort of learning
Speaker 3: from people because their diversity was on full view from
Speaker 3: your perspective, they were very much not like you. And
Speaker 3: you're saying that you partly in college discovered that You're like, hey,
Speaker 3: I want to make sure there as many schools in
Speaker 3: this country that replicate the kind of experience I had.
Speaker 3: Is that is that what you're saying in terms of
Speaker 3: like translating your own personal experience into your career choice.
Speaker 5: Yes, and in the sense that it's not that they
Speaker 5: were not like me, it's that they were like me
Speaker 5: right and in some ways so much better than me
Speaker 5: right in terms of what they had to navigate and
Speaker 5: the ways in which they found to navigate it. We
Speaker 5: joke about this, but like we used to sit outside,
Speaker 5: y'all did too, right, playing force squear and having conversations,
Speaker 5: and it was back to the place where like the
Speaker 5: most like the way you would learn with those conversations
Speaker 5: after school about all kinds of stuff, about music, about
Speaker 5: you know, what was going on in the world, was
Speaker 5: going down down the street, and you start to learn
Speaker 5: about how the world works that way, like that's that's
Speaker 5: your education.
Speaker 1: And to remind I want I want to jump ahead
Speaker 1: to say your years in the in the Civil Rights
Speaker 1: Division of the Department of Justice, describe some of the
Speaker 1: cases that you're working on and sort of what that
Speaker 1: means for affirmative action.
Speaker 5: Sure, so I'm working let me let me start with
Speaker 5: the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and then to the Justice Department.
Speaker 5: And in both places, the bulk, like hundreds of cases
Speaker 5: were about segregation in schools around the country, and and
Speaker 5: the fact that there are cases that had been around
Speaker 5: longer than I've been alive about you know, the ways
Speaker 5: in which schools were still you know, could you could
Speaker 5: map them in places on different sides of train tracks,
Speaker 5: all black or all white? And how opportunities map that way?
Speaker 6: Right? So the reason I wanted to do.
Speaker 5: Those kinds of cases is because we spend so much
Speaker 5: time thinking about outcomes, like like how did you know
Speaker 5: how our kids doing on tests? But these were cases
Speaker 5: about like the fundamentals, like do you actually have a building,
Speaker 5: do you have teachers, do you have staff? You know,
Speaker 5: do you have the resources for students who the only
Speaker 5: difference between them is race in some cases in class, right,
Speaker 5: and they have a very different educational experience, you know,
Speaker 5: in nearby areas, right. And so I think about all
Speaker 5: the ways in which we learned from each other. We
Speaker 5: learned what unites us by being in class together in
Speaker 5: high school. But it was also the kind of resources
Speaker 5: that we ended up having being at one of the
Speaker 5: few high schools in Chicago that was out of a
Speaker 5: magnet high school, right.
Speaker 6: So both things really.
Speaker 5: Drove the kind of work we were doing in the
Speaker 5: Justice Department and at the Legal Defense.
Speaker 1: Funt So, the vast majority of schools in the nation
Speaker 1: are still almost completely segregated, Like seventy five percent of
Speaker 1: students go to either an all white school or in
Speaker 1: all black school. And what you're saying too is they're
Speaker 1: not just separate, but they're still separate and unequal.
Speaker 5: We are separate and unequal, and we are at a
Speaker 5: place where our pools across the country are as segregated
Speaker 5: as they were in nineteen seventy and so all of
Speaker 5: the things that we were trying to talk about in
Speaker 5: America today that we had a chance to do differently
Speaker 5: at Kenwood.
Speaker 6: If we are.
Speaker 5: Separated, we look at people who are different from ourselves
Speaker 5: and we've never been in spaces with them.
Speaker 6: So what do we go to.
Speaker 5: We go to fear, we go to the unknown, we
Speaker 5: go to those type of things. And I think that's
Speaker 5: the thing that I'm really and now continue to be
Speaker 5: worried about, which is the more segregated we are, the
Speaker 5: more we create the breeding grounds for fear, for hate,
Speaker 5: for divides.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly right, Anna Rima. So we're going to
Speaker 3: take a quick break, and when we come back, we're
Speaker 3: going to talk about this recent Supreme Court decision on
Speaker 3: affirmative action and a really poor forecast.
Speaker 2: For the future of this country. We'll be right back
Speaker 2: after the break.
Speaker 1: We are back on. Some of my best friends are
Speaker 1: with one of our best friends on Arima Bargava on Arema,
Speaker 1: you are the perfect person to talk to us about
Speaker 1: the recent Supreme Court affirmative action decision, and could you
Speaker 1: please sum up for us what just happened? What is
Speaker 1: the students for fair Admissions versus Harvard and the University
Speaker 1: of North Carolina.
Speaker 5: So I'm going to start with the decisions and what
Speaker 5: the court came down and said, and then I'll go
Speaker 5: to what this is all about, because.
Speaker 6: It's a really big setup. That's a really big setup.
Speaker 1: Well, I did say I did say some up.
Speaker 6: So I'm going to sum up.
Speaker 5: I'm going to sum up the setup.
Speaker 6: That's what's going to happen here, and I'm going to.
Speaker 5: Talk about the way that the justices justices fell into
Speaker 5: the setup. So let me just start by saying this,
Speaker 5: this decision, like Justice sot to my or and Justice
Speaker 5: Jackson talked about, lack any kind of coherence, like it's ahistorical,
Speaker 5: it doesn't make any sense, and it doesn't make that
Speaker 5: much sense legally, because really what this is about is
Speaker 5: there are interests that we have, and one of the
Speaker 5: interests that we have in America is to actually have
Speaker 5: people be in diverse spaces, to talk about the way
Speaker 5: in which that's a strength that we can take account
Speaker 5: of race in very limited and narrow ways to try
Speaker 5: and create spaces that are diverse. And that was something
Speaker 5: that that schools were able to do for the last
Speaker 5: many many years that's been court decision In two thousand
Speaker 5: and three out of the University of Michigan, there were
Speaker 5: two decisions about how you could actually take account of
Speaker 5: race in the context of higher education. And what the
Speaker 5: court basically said back then was we're going to give
Speaker 5: colleges some leeway. And let me be clear, we're only
Speaker 5: talking about when we' talking about higher education, we're only
Speaker 5: talking about about two hundred colleges and universities are actually selective,
Speaker 5: which means they take less than fifty percent of students.
Speaker 1: And so this is a case every other school like
Speaker 1: pretty you can of most schools, you apply and you
Speaker 1: can get in, like they need students.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yes, they want you.
Speaker 5: They want you, they want your money, they want you
Speaker 5: to get there, right, and so so so we're talking
Speaker 5: about about two hundred college and universities and of those
Speaker 5: that these cases are about two of the most elite
Speaker 5: Harvard and the University of North Carolina, one private, one public.
Speaker 1: Oldest private and oldest public. They were chosen probably very
Speaker 1: strategically here, they.
Speaker 5: Were absolutely chosen. So this is this is these are
Speaker 5: cases about how do we describe merit? You know, is
Speaker 5: what is our definition of who is meritorious to be
Speaker 5: able to get into elite spaces, which has.
Speaker 6: A long history in American law.
Speaker 5: But more importantly, they're much more about humanity, right, which is,
Speaker 5: how do we actually think about the many talents and
Speaker 5: the many things that people bring, things like judgment and
Speaker 5: the kind of obstacles and what I was talking about
Speaker 5: a Kenwood, all these students who were able to overcome
Speaker 5: so many different things.
Speaker 6: And so what the.
Speaker 5: Supreme Court saying is, you can look at every factor
Speaker 5: about a student except for their race everything else. And
Speaker 5: then they did some weird things, right, which they said, well,
Speaker 5: actually you can look at everything and you know, butt race,
Speaker 5: But if a student wants to write an essay about race,
Speaker 5: and you know, for example, I'm I love black comic
Speaker 5: books like I love the new series that came out
Speaker 5: about Wakanda in comic book style, right, and the only
Speaker 5: thing you can talk about about that is that they
Speaker 5: love comic books, and not about the fact that they,
Speaker 5: you know, maybe black and that resonates with them. There
Speaker 5: was a real concern that these decisions would actually say
Speaker 5: you can't talk about your own stories. I mean, you
Speaker 5: can't talk about your experiences. They didn't quite go that far.
Speaker 5: But the second thing they do is, you know, back
Speaker 5: to that the way I started. When there's something really important,
Speaker 5: like a compelling interest, which is the way the legal
Speaker 5: world talks about it, like diversity, can you still pursue that?
Speaker 5: And the answer from the court is the way I
Speaker 5: read it, Yes, But the court says, hey, we're not
Speaker 5: institutionally competent to figure out whether or not you've actually
Speaker 5: gotten the benefits of.
Speaker 6: Diversity, So we don't know.
Speaker 5: There's no way to sort of measure that, and we
Speaker 5: don't know how to concretely measure it. And so because
Speaker 5: of that, we're going to say you can't really consider race. Well,
Speaker 5: of course you can't measure it. How could you possibly
Speaker 5: measure what it is that the benefits that the three
Speaker 5: of us got from being able to go to school together, Like,
Speaker 5: there's there's no way to be able to think about that.
Speaker 5: And so the big answer is they took out race
Speaker 5: as a factor and for for people to consider. And
Speaker 5: the only place we think it can still go on
Speaker 5: is the military. And so this is the one exception,
Speaker 5: which is they say you can you can take account
Speaker 5: of diversity with account to the military, and as just
Speaker 5: as Jackson notes, it's basically saying like, we want black
Speaker 5: and brown kids.
Speaker 6: To go to the bunker, but not to the boardroom, right.
Speaker 1: And an Arima, you're you're I mean you You've laid
Speaker 1: out so many things, and you know this idea that
Speaker 1: we're like post civil rights, post racial which is part
Speaker 1: of of Chief Justices Robert's argument that we don't need
Speaker 1: this anymore, And all of your work of showing just
Speaker 1: how segregated and unequal the country is still it's just
Speaker 1: such a farce.
Speaker 3: Can I add one thought on this? I am upset
Speaker 3: about what you just described. I mean, the disadvantage, the privilege,
Speaker 3: the segregated schools, the lack of resources, the pathways to
Speaker 3: dead ends, all of it.
Speaker 2: It's all there.
Speaker 3: But look, the Constitution does not protect or guarantee class equality.
Speaker 2: The Constitution doesn't give us shit.
Speaker 3: About poor people. It doesn't care about opportunity structures they have.
Speaker 3: So there is actually some basis for the Court to say,
Speaker 3: we don't care about legacy, we don't care about white privilege,
Speaker 3: and we understand that it can be passed on, but
Speaker 3: that is not what we're solving for here.
Speaker 2: So the problem we have because of the.
Speaker 3: Supreme Court decision, this notion that the Constitution guarantees colorblindness,
Speaker 3: but there is no amendment for poor people's rights in
Speaker 3: this legacy debate, whether they happen to be black or
Speaker 3: South Asian or Latino or anything when it comes to
Speaker 3: getting into college.
Speaker 5: So this is where the Constitution ends up playing out
Speaker 5: in really perverse ways.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: So what the Supreme Court and others have said, right
Speaker 5: is that class is not something that we are is
Speaker 5: protected in America. So if you're poor, as you just said,
Speaker 5: if you're poor, you are lower income, you don't have
Speaker 5: the kind of wealth that other people around you might have.
Speaker 5: There's there's no you know, sort of ways in which
Speaker 5: we try to address you being discriminated against, or if
Speaker 5: there are barriers about that, or there's opportunities you don't
Speaker 5: have because of your class. That's not something that the
Speaker 5: Constitution is worried about. On the flip side, it says
Speaker 5: if if things map because of race, if you're discriminating
Speaker 5: against because of race, or if you want to take
Speaker 5: race into account in some ways, we're actually going to
Speaker 5: apply the hardest legal standard to that. Whenever race comes
Speaker 5: into play, We're going to look at it really, really closely,
Speaker 5: and so it just ends up being a strange We're
Speaker 5: in a strange place to begin with. And then just
Speaker 5: to put this in there, what Chief Jofice Justice Roberts does,
Speaker 5: which is just extreme, you know, it's mind boggling again,
Speaker 5: which is what he says is it doesn't really matter
Speaker 5: if you're using race in a way to benefit people
Speaker 5: or to discriminate or harm people. What he's saying is,
Speaker 5: you know, you can't stop discrimination on the basis of
Speaker 5: race by discriminating on the basis of race. That's coming
Speaker 5: from another decision in two thousand and seven about a
Speaker 5: diversity in K through twelve schools. So he said that
Speaker 5: that then, and he's what he says here is anytime
Speaker 5: you're using race, someone might benefit, but someone's gonna lose,
Speaker 5: and so you can't use it.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: This is where the USUS Jackson and Justice Soda Mayor
Speaker 5: are just like, what world are you in? Because you're
Speaker 5: basically saying, we are in a society that is mapped
Speaker 5: by race, and then you have to be color blind, right,
Speaker 5: and then you have to be colored blind. And so
Speaker 5: that is what you're getting from Chief Justice Roberts is
Speaker 5: basically a complete lack of regard to the way in
Speaker 5: which race still has a role in all kinds of
Speaker 5: measurable and concrete ways in America. Right, He's just ignoring
Speaker 5: all of it and saying, yeah, just in this one moment,
Speaker 5: we don't want to use race because it makes us
Speaker 5: feel icky, right, But we're not talking about the fact
Speaker 5: that everything that leads up to that moment, from pre
Speaker 5: k to twelfth grade, the ways that play race plays
Speaker 5: out into whether or not you even have a shot
Speaker 5: at that admissions moment. We're just going to ignore all
Speaker 5: that because we just want to make sure that one
Speaker 5: little moment is colorblind.
Speaker 1: Right right, all right, anarema. You said that this case
Speaker 1: actually used Asian American students as part of the lawsuit,
Speaker 1: and that they were being discriminated against places like Harvard
Speaker 1: where they make up about twenty nine percent of the students,
Speaker 1: and the idea that there could be even be more.
Speaker 1: I'm interested. You were in the courtroom when these cases
Speaker 1: were heard. Can you describe, like, who is actually who
Speaker 1: the plaintiffs were, what they look like racially? Even so,
Speaker 1: I was in.
Speaker 5: The Supreme Court when the Harvard and UNC cases were argued,
Speaker 5: and I was in the first row of the Supreme
Speaker 5: Court bar section, which means I'm basically in their first
Speaker 5: world of the courtroom, and in front of me arguing
Speaker 5: for Chinese students were six white men. So Students for
Speaker 5: Fair Admission says they have about twenty thousand.
Speaker 6: Members, but they don't tell you who those members are.
Speaker 5: And throughout the entirety of the Harvard case, there is
Speaker 5: not one Asian student who came out to testify in
Speaker 5: court about the discrimination that they experienced. So the plaintiff
Speaker 5: here is not Asian or Chinese students. It is this
Speaker 5: organization we don't know who the members are, that is
Speaker 5: led by a guy named Ed Bloom, And Ed Bloom
Speaker 5: is someone who has been bringing cases challenging voting rights,
Speaker 5: challenging the ways in which race has a role in
Speaker 5: trying to promote quality in America in all different parts
Speaker 5: of our lives. And so this is just when I
Speaker 5: say it's a setup. You're setting it up by talking about,
Speaker 5: as we talk, the oldest elite private and public university.
Speaker 5: You're trying, because there has been many attempts to sort
Speaker 5: of have this be on behalf of white students. They
Speaker 5: went to that old trope dividing conquer. Let's try to
Speaker 5: figure out a way to pit communities of color against
Speaker 5: each other and to have you know, if the if
Speaker 5: the blame comes down, it's not going to go to
Speaker 5: white people. It's not going to go to those legacy
Speaker 5: or donor communities, right, or students. It's going to go
Speaker 5: to Chinese students or other API students for being the
Speaker 5: reason that in some ways affirmative action or the consideration
Speaker 5: of race got brought down, right, And so this is
Speaker 5: this is this is old, old tropes that go back
Speaker 5: to even you know, in the Supreme Court one hundred
Speaker 5: years ago, when there were a lot of cases around
Speaker 5: who's white in America? And you see, you know, different people,
Speaker 5: different racial and ethnic backgrounds trying to demonstrate that they're
Speaker 5: white and and by they demonstrate it by trying to,
Speaker 5: you know, show how they're different from other people of color.
Speaker 5: So when you think about the Court that day, it's
Speaker 5: just another example of our communities being used to to
Speaker 5: for some people to hold power and to continue their
Speaker 5: grip on power in this country and on the narrati,
Speaker 5: and so we end up in a situation where we're
Speaker 5: trying to fit their narrative.
Speaker 6: And so this you know.
Speaker 5: The thing that just struck me in court is that
Speaker 5: you have Justice Clarence Thomas sitting there over and over
Speaker 5: go and being like, you know, I don't know what
Speaker 5: this diversity thing.
Speaker 6: Is, Like I don't know what it means.
Speaker 5: And I'm like, first of all, y'all came up with it,
Speaker 5: like the Supreme Court isn't want it, came up with it.
Speaker 5: And secondly, I just wanted someone to look at him
Speaker 5: and be like, I don't know, you tell me, it's
Speaker 5: the only reason you're here, like at some level, like
Speaker 5: it's just the idea that you're questioning. You know, the
Speaker 5: very ways in which you've set up the structure and
Speaker 5: the system, and you've benefited from it, you know, like
Speaker 5: Clarace Thomas has benefited from the very thing that he
Speaker 5: doesn't know what it is or how it exists, right, you.
Speaker 3: Know, Anoreima, I just want to clarify here that Justice
Speaker 3: Thomas did, in fact get into Yale in nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 3: and this is the same year they started an affirmative
Speaker 3: action program. So there is no question that the guy
Speaker 3: who's been the only person of color on the bench
Speaker 3: for nearly twenty years benefited directly from affirmative action. But
Speaker 3: here's the interesting thing. His dislike of affirmative action is
Speaker 3: precisely because he took it personal that people could question
Speaker 3: whether he qualified to get into Yale, and so he
Speaker 3: has seen affirmative action as a stigma that is attached
Speaker 3: to black people, which is unfair. It's his own personal commitment.
Speaker 3: In this Supreme Court decision, he actually makes the argument
Speaker 3: that by getting rid of any form of racial discrimination
Speaker 3: in his own language that even would help black people,
Speaker 3: he is upholding the truest principle of equality. He sees
Speaker 3: himself as the true vanguard of racial equality in America.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just absolutely bizarre, because of course, at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, you'd have to whitewash or
Speaker 3: make disappear all of the systemic racism it still exists
Speaker 3: in our country.
Speaker 5: You know, I didn't do what Coyle did, which is
Speaker 5: I didn't bother to spend my time reading Justice Thomas's
Speaker 5: opinion because I'm not going to sit here and try
Speaker 5: and understand how you could cast something like Brown versus
Speaker 5: about Board of Education as a moment of color blindness.
Speaker 5: Brown versus Board of Education was a moment of extraordinary
Speaker 5: recognition of the ways in which race has mapped. You
Speaker 5: know what kind of opportunity we have, the ways in
Speaker 5: which has played out in terms of segregation. And so
Speaker 5: for us, as Thomas, to say anything different about you know,
Speaker 5: what the law says, or the Constitution says, or even
Speaker 5: what Brown says, is something that again is trying to
Speaker 5: all of a sudden we cast words in ways that
Speaker 5: have the most limited meaning and don't mean anything in
Speaker 5: terms of how we actually live and learn and educate
Speaker 5: and love and promote something different in the world today.
Speaker 3: So, Anoreema, I mean, obviously I think this is personal
Speaker 3: for all of us, you know, in this conversation in
Speaker 3: same and maybe even slightly different ways. I know, for me,
Speaker 3: I had a numberumber of Asian American students who I
Speaker 3: was teaching at the time that Harvard first won the
Speaker 3: case in the Lower courts, and so there's been an
Speaker 3: ongoing conversation on the Harvard campus. There's been organizing, and
Speaker 3: one of the things I was struck by was diversity
Speaker 3: amongst the AAPI community. Many of my students, who often
Speaker 3: self select into a course which I teach about the
Speaker 3: history of racism, saw this for what you and I
Speaker 3: would agree was a setup, a way of further dismantling
Speaker 3: the opportunity structures in this country to deny and erase
Speaker 3: the history of racism and the ongoing problem systemic racism.
Speaker 3: But for other students on campus, who sometimes indexed as
Speaker 3: first generation Chinese immigrant students, there was this sense of
Speaker 3: we are defending meritocracy. We want the system to work
Speaker 3: this way. Colorblind, I mean within your community, and I'm
Speaker 3: speaking specifically here of Asian American community, is their diversity?
Speaker 3: I mean, did you have to have arguments with people
Speaker 3: you know or one degree removed from folks you know
Speaker 3: about this issue.
Speaker 5: So to close question, yes, there's diversity, And I think
Speaker 5: part of it goes to this very question that Ben
Speaker 5: posed about, like what's the definition of merit? And if
Speaker 5: you and we define merit based on test scores, right,
Speaker 5: which is in the in the in the Asian American community,
Speaker 5: and frankly in a lot of communities in which, like
Speaker 5: you know, there's this idea of test scores or how
Speaker 5: you do in terms of your grades being the measure
Speaker 5: of your worth. What happens when we tell people that
Speaker 5: test scores and your grades are what you are worth
Speaker 5: which we know are heavily, if not, you know, almost
Speaker 5: exclusively influenced by things like wealth and income. Right, you know,
Speaker 5: whether or not you can take a test prep course,
Speaker 5: whether or not you're able to actually even have the
Speaker 5: opportunity to learn. In New York City schools, you know,
Speaker 5: most kids don't even have the opportunity to learn the
Speaker 5: things that are being tested on to get into sort
Speaker 5: of specialized elite high schools. Right, They're not learning it.
Speaker 5: And so the only way to get there is to
Speaker 5: be able to, you know, take a test prep course
Speaker 5: or be in a private school. And so when you
Speaker 5: say you sit there and thinking about that, you're like,
Speaker 5: this is this is this is the first.
Speaker 6: Problem of merit.
Speaker 5: Then those are problems of how we see ourselves, right,
Speaker 5: and do we see ourselves as those who are part
Speaker 5: of a larger community, right, in which we have a
Speaker 5: lot that unites us with people who are different than us.
Speaker 5: And this is where, you know, I'll go again back
Speaker 5: to Kenwood, which is, you know, that's what I got
Speaker 5: the privilege and the honor of learning early, which is
Speaker 5: to go to an elementary school on the South side
Speaker 5: of Chicago that was largely black, and to go to
Speaker 5: a high school that was largely black, right, and to
Speaker 5: recognize that there are so much the stories that we
Speaker 5: are being told about ourselves are not actually the reality
Speaker 5: of of of who we are and how weird and
Speaker 5: nerdy and strange, you know, the two of you and
Speaker 5: the rest of us have been, you know, like that's
Speaker 5: that's that's actually true, right, And we need to be
Speaker 5: able to celebrate that in and celebrate ourselves in all
Speaker 5: of all of the things that we're worthy of being,
Speaker 5: right and and not just narrow ourselves to test scores
Speaker 5: and GPA. And that's what these cases we're trying to
Speaker 5: do is suggest that that's the only thing that we
Speaker 5: need to be sort of measuring people on. And So
Speaker 5: this is a setup because not only because it's Harvard
Speaker 5: and U and C. Not only because it was Asian
Speaker 5: American students, not only because it's divide and conquer, but
Speaker 5: in a moment in America in which you know, there's
Speaker 5: an image that's trying to be created, right of all
Speaker 5: of us fighting amongst ourselves, and this not being a
Speaker 5: moment of white people really trying to hold on the
Speaker 5: power and to erase in some ways our stories. Outside
Speaker 5: of these concrete, measurable things that they say we have
Speaker 5: to demonstrate, all right, and.
Speaker 1: To remember, we're going to take a quick break, we're
Speaker 1: going to come back and we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: what this decision means for the future. I also want
Speaker 1: to say when you said our high school is weird,
Speaker 1: strange and nerdy, that you pointed at Khalil when you
Speaker 1: said nerdy. We'll be right back after the break.
Speaker 5: I was looking at you, though, I was looking at you.
Speaker 2: So look, Ben, I had a theory.
Speaker 3: It was a light bulb moment just before the last
Speaker 3: break that the nuttiness of this decision, it turns out,
Speaker 3: had nothing to do with Chief Justice John Roberts or
Speaker 3: Clarence Thomas.
Speaker 2: It was chat GPT.
Speaker 3: Chat GPT wrote this decision that explained everything, because of course,
Speaker 3: AI only knows what the Constitution says. It doesn't know
Speaker 3: anything about all this soft and squishy stuff like bias
Speaker 3: and stereotype thread and systemic racism because guess what, we
Speaker 3: live in a country that doesn't keep track of racism.
Speaker 3: There are no benchmarks on racism. Hell, the Supreme Court
Speaker 3: doesn't even recognize racial dispair as evidence of racism. So
Speaker 3: of course artificial intelligence wrote this Supreme Court decision, man,
Speaker 3: oh man, that explains everything.
Speaker 1: And Clarence Thomas. Clarence Thomas is so lazy man saying
Speaker 1: that he's race.
Speaker 7: My daughter Justice said no, He's spoken the least of
Speaker 7: any justice ever and is also the longest servance justice ever.
Speaker 1: Painfully all right, maybe maybe, okay, let's talk about what
Speaker 1: this decision means for the future. For the future, first
Speaker 1: of college admissions and the racial makeup of classrooms. All right,
Speaker 1: So we know that schools still want to like have
Speaker 1: diverse classrooms, most of the of these elite schools do.
Speaker 1: And you know, let's think about other proxies for race
Speaker 1: that they might use, and what are some other implications
Speaker 1: of this.
Speaker 5: So my view is that the two hundred selective colleges
Speaker 5: and universities that we're talking about are going to figure
Speaker 5: this out, right, and they're going to figure it out
Speaker 5: in a whole bunch of ways in which they've already
Speaker 5: been working. And there have been nine states across America
Speaker 5: that already were in a position where they couldn't take
Speaker 5: account of race, and the way that this Preme Court
Speaker 5: just ruled you can't. So we have some places where
Speaker 5: people have been looking at this and so other ways
Speaker 5: in which we can think about opening up pathways. It
Speaker 5: can be everything from looking at students, neighborhoods, opportunity indexes.
Speaker 5: There's lots of ways to do this. I think the
Speaker 5: more important part about these cases are what they are
Speaker 5: trying to signal, right, And and as Clill knows well,
Speaker 5: there there are efforts around this country, in Florida and
Speaker 5: Texas most prominently, to to really erase the ways in
Speaker 5: which rape race plays a role in our societies. You know,
Speaker 5: we can we can talk about Juneteenth, but we can't
Speaker 5: teach it. And we know that this this decision is
Speaker 5: already being used by a lot of people, not only
Speaker 5: in those two states but around the country for something
Speaker 5: that it doesn't even say, right, I mean, it doesn't
Speaker 5: say that that all of a sudden, this means you
Speaker 5: can't you know, you can't teach certain things, or you
Speaker 5: can't you can't look at thing like black history, but
Speaker 5: people are going to use it that way. It doesn't
Speaker 5: say that you can have diversity, equity inclusion programs, but
Speaker 5: people are going to try to use it that way.
Speaker 5: And so this is this is like, this is a
Speaker 5: decision that some people were waiting for just so they
Speaker 5: could say, Hey, we're done with this whole post George
Speaker 5: Floyd diversity moment we were having, and and we want
Speaker 5: to again hold on to power in terms of white
Speaker 5: communities in the way that we have for a long time,
Speaker 5: and don't want to have to go and engage with people.
Speaker 6: That's what that's what these cases are going to are
Speaker 6: being wielded as a tool for.
Speaker 5: Whether or not they're actually what this was about. And again,
Speaker 5: this was really about higher education selective, very narrow set
Speaker 5: of circumstances.
Speaker 6: But but it's going.
Speaker 5: To be used to to really question our freedom to
Speaker 5: learn and our freedom to be ourselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well I love you mentioning freedom to learn,
Speaker 3: which some people know has been an effort to push
Speaker 3: back against all the anti coracier legislation around the country.
Speaker 3: This decision sits squarely within a larger moment that is
Speaker 3: pushing back against every effort to deal with the unfinished
Speaker 3: problems of the civil rights movement, which is to say,
Speaker 3: the problems of the systemic racism, the problems of redlining,
Speaker 3: the problems of a criminal justice system that nobody would
Speaker 3: disagree has shown time and time again to have explicit
Speaker 3: evidence of racist bias in the treatment of black defendants
Speaker 3: compared to their white counterparts. Part of what is articulated
Speaker 3: in this decision is a very clear notion that any
Speaker 3: form of race consciousness is unconstitutional. And so to your
Speaker 3: point that first today it's affirmative action, Tomorrow it will
Speaker 3: be DEI, tomorrow will be minority scholarships, it might even
Speaker 3: be a lawsuit to go after funding for HBCUs as
Speaker 3: inherently discriminatory. I mean, I'm not trying to see ideas
Speaker 3: for these people, but I mean that's how capacious The
Speaker 3: underlying logic of this decision is.
Speaker 2: Should we be that afraid? Ana Marima? Am i am
Speaker 2: I exaggerating?
Speaker 5: We should absolutely be that afraid, because what's behind this
Speaker 5: is an idea for us to believe that America is
Speaker 5: not big enough for us all to succeed, right. The
Speaker 5: idea behind all this is to say that in order
Speaker 5: for somebody to be able to thrive, somebody else is
Speaker 5: being harmed, right, And so if we're always at each
Speaker 5: other's throats, that's like, that's where you get the division
Speaker 5: that we're seeing in America today. And so not only
Speaker 5: do we see this real effort to divide us and
Speaker 5: to suggest everybody that we're always always competing or for survival,
Speaker 5: you know, against people who are of different races in us. Right,
Speaker 5: But it's also exactly what you just said. This is
Speaker 5: absolutely not about finding a solution. If it was about
Speaker 5: finding a solution, you would do you would try to
Speaker 5: find a solution and the easiest way possible to get
Speaker 5: to where you want to get to. If we want
Speaker 5: to we get to a place where our institutions are
Speaker 5: places where people can thrive, you know, according to their talent,
Speaker 5: then we would do we would continue to have ways
Speaker 5: in which we account for people's racial experiences and the
Speaker 5: kind of obstacles they faced. So what we're doing here
Speaker 5: is like making this just a hell of a lot
Speaker 5: harder and suggesting that any consideration of race is a problem,
Speaker 5: is something that we should be afraid of, and the
Speaker 5: only thing that's going to do is to make us
Speaker 5: more afraid and more divided.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just want to underline some of the things
Speaker 1: you guys are saying that I'm hearing that it does
Speaker 1: matter who gets into these two hundred elite schools in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, but now it actually has real
Speaker 1: ramifications for who might be in a workplace. And then
Speaker 1: it is also a signal. It's indicative of what's going
Speaker 1: on in the country. I mean, I think about what
Speaker 1: Justices Roberts and Thomas said, you know, of denying what's
Speaker 1: happening in the reality of the present and the past,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what you guys are saying. That's what's
Speaker 1: going on in terms of race in the country right now.
Speaker 1: We can't talk about the realities of discrimination or inequality,
Speaker 1: and we're not honest about our past, and that is
Speaker 1: written into these majority decisions. It's right there.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, the paradigm of color blindness is coming back
Speaker 3: with a vengeance. I mean, we've got Republican primary candidates
Speaker 3: for whom this is like the key talking point. You know,
Speaker 3: we need color blindness. The Governor Ron de Santis redefined diversity, equity,
Speaker 3: and inclusion down in Florida as color blindness, merit and equality,
Speaker 3: which you know, in a way, and here's the irony
Speaker 3: for me as a historian, like the plus versus Ferguson
Speaker 3: decision made the argument that in terms of political equality
Speaker 3: and civil equality civil rights equality, black people were equivalent,
Speaker 3: but they were fundamentally inferior, and that the Constitution had
Speaker 3: no no obligation to ensure social equality when one race
Speaker 3: be inferior to another. And it seems to me that
Speaker 3: when this current regime of quote unquote color blindness is resurging,
Speaker 3: part of the argument is if you are in a poor,
Speaker 3: dilapidated school system, if you happen to be in a
Speaker 3: red line zip code and you happen to be inferior
Speaker 3: as a result of it, there is nothing the Constitution
Speaker 3: can do to help you. That is the underlying logic
Speaker 3: of this, and it basically leaves us fighting with the
Speaker 3: same tiny, tiny weapons that folks had back one hundred
Speaker 3: years ago, you know, fifty years before the civil rights movement,
Speaker 3: when they just had to start one little litigation strategy
Speaker 3: at a time.
Speaker 5: Hello, it's actually worse than what you say, because it's
Speaker 5: not even just saying that the Constitution on the law
Speaker 5: can't do anything about it. It's suggesting that it right.
Speaker 5: And so the idea that we're saying that the Constitution
Speaker 5: and law shouldn't address the very fundamental inequalities, that it
Speaker 5: shouldn't do that, and not just that it can't, is
Speaker 5: part of what you're getting from this decision. It's just like,
Speaker 5: you know, we're just going to try to blind eye
Speaker 5: to it at a moment in American history where we
Speaker 5: are as segregated as we were in nineteen seventy and
Speaker 5: we're seeing the kind.
Speaker 6: Of divides that are fueling the kind.
Speaker 5: Of hate and insurrection that we are experiencing in places
Speaker 5: across the nation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean talk about coming full circle that essentially
Speaker 3: our ability to understand and be with each other is
Speaker 3: the only thing that ultimately will save us from everything
Speaker 3: that we see happening in this country right now.
Speaker 2: So we are so happy that you.
Speaker 3: Came on, Ana Rima, truly one of our best friends
Speaker 3: from back in the day, right on.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Ron Arima, Thank you Bob oh Man.
Speaker 3: Aside from being scared to death about what's coming down
Speaker 3: the pike in this country, I have to say, like,
Speaker 3: you know, there was another version of affirmative action from
Speaker 3: back in the day.
Speaker 2: I didn't even realize.
Speaker 3: At a majority black school with all these handsome black
Speaker 3: guys like myself, here you are like this, you know,
Speaker 3: tall handsome Jewish guy who's getting you know, all these
Speaker 3: people crushing on you.
Speaker 1: Man. Affirmative action full effect. You know, but definitely.
Speaker 2: Affirm affirming action.
Speaker 6: That's funny, all right, man, I love you, I love
Speaker 6: you too.
Speaker 3: Some of My Best Friends Are is a production of
Speaker 3: Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted by me Khalil,
Speaker 3: Jabron Muhammad and my best friend Ben Austen.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Lucy Sullivan. Our associate producer is Rachel Yang.
Speaker 1: It's edited by Sarah Nicks, Our engineer is Amanda ka Wang,
Speaker 1: and our managing producer is Constanza Guyardo.
Speaker 2: At Pushkin thanks to Letal Molatt, Julia Barton, Heather Fein,
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Speaker 1: Our theme song, Little Lily is by fellow chicaguin the
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