The Mourning After Affirmative Action: A Composite Counter-Story About “Race-Neutral” Admissions, Whiteness as Property, and Possibility (Poster 2)

• In Event: Saturday Poster Sessions 7:45 am
  In Poster Session: Higher Education Is Political: CRT, Affirmative Action, and Necessary Contention

Abstract

During Supreme Court oral arguments and in her dissent in SFFA v. University of North Carolina in 2023, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson posed a question about what the end of race-conscious affirmative action will mean for reviewing two applications, one white, one Black, both from multi- generational North Carolinian families. I explore the significance of Jackson’s hypothetical, guided by Cheryl Harris’ "whiteness as property" within U.S. law, Jarvis Given's "fugitive pedagogy", and Chezare Warren’s "mourning toward possibility". I use composite counter-storytelling methodology to create the main character, Rachel Justice— a Black UNC alumnus who reviews the data-based stories of two applicants, demonstrating the impossible situation that SFFA and the Court’s majority seek to normalize.

Author

• Uma Mazyck Jayakumar, University of California - Riverside