ivashkiv blog post 2

 Harris uses the 1978 court case of the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke to justify that whiteness has been maintained as a property interest after the age of legalized segregation. In her view, the Bakke verdict served to “mask settled expectations and continued white privilege” (1770). She grouped the Bakke case in the category of court cases in which there was “a rejection of affirmative action programs” (1767). However, the ultimate decision, which was proposed by Justice Powell, approved of Affirmative Action as long as race-based quotas were not instituted. He wanted to replicate the system that Harvard used, in which race could be included as a “plus” in an application. In this way, Harris implies that she approves of race-based quotas as a part of Affirmative Action, despite the fact she does not explicitly mention race-based quotas in her view of distributive justice. 

However, even in 1993, there was ample evidence to support the notion that affirmative action punishes Asian-American applicants, a non-white group, more than any other group. Asian-Americans were discriminated against by the legal definition of Affirmative Action, decided in the Bakke case, and were also allegedly discriminated against through illegal quota systems in as recently as 2018.  Of course, Harris could not write about something that happened in 2018 in this piece. However, the Asian-American example shows how the University of California’s view might protect white privilege. In the Bakke case, Justice Powell concluded that the University of California had two separate admissions tracks: one in which minority students competed with one another and another in which white students competed with one another. In this way, the system prohibited more minority students from gaining admission than were allotted by the quota system. This could result in qualified minority students from being rejected. This fear was seen in the recent discrimination against Asian-Americans, a discrimination that I think is very obvious.

Similarly, Harris’s disagreement that Bakke was qualified to gain admission invites new ways that universities can protect whiteness as a property interest. All three parties of the four-one-four decision agreed that Allan Bakke was more qualified than the minority students admitted in the quota system. However, Harris argues that while test scores and GPA are important, so are “work experience” and “difficulty of course study” (1770). Again, universities have allegedly done what Harris suggests in the larger effort to discriminate against Asian-American students and protect white property interest. Harris writes that “when the claim is between competing Black and white competitors” … “decision-makers and holders of power, they are obviously major players” (1783-1784). This statement makes the implicit assumption that white rule-makers will protect whiteness as a property interest. Given these two premises, white decision-makers could use subjective measures to protect whiteness as a property interest.

Harris’ criticisms of the Bakke case are valid in the sense that the case has not yielded a real sense of equality. However, Harris also agrees that this state of equality has never existed. In this way, it is difficult to measure the impact of current practices. However, the impacts of the other side’s argument of the Bakke case should be analyzed before they are defended.