Clarence Thomas, Affirmative Action, Anti-Blackness, and the Myth of Meritocracy
The Supreme Court will rule on the affirmative action cases in the coming days, and the conservative leaning court will likely rule against the use of affirmative action in higher education. Clarence Thomas, a Black Supreme Court Justice who benefited from affirmative action, has spent much of his life fighting against it and will no doubt vote against affirmative action when the Court rules.
In Season 8 of Slow Burn, Becoming Clarence Thomas, Joel Anderson details how Clarence Thomas went from a pro-Black, campus radical to the very conservative, right wing Supreme Court Justice that we know today. He also explains how racial preferences gave Justice Thomas a leg up in college admissions, yet they also made him feel degraded and resent everything about affirmative action.
What I find most interesting is not the hypocrisy of Justice Thomas, who clearly benefited from a policy he plans to uproot. What I want to explore in this essay is how anti-Blackness and the myth of meritocracy have led Justice Thomas (and others) to victim-blame and hold Black people responsible for the wrongs of white people.
First, it’s important to understand exactly what issues the court will be ruling on. The issues are 1) whether institutions of higher education can use race as a factor in admissions and 2) whether Title VI of the Civil Rights Act penalizes Asian American applicants.
As I mentioned above, I expect the conservative court to rule against affirmative action, but in doing so, they will likely ignore so many relevant facts and data about affirmative action including that race conscious admissions can be good for Asian Americans, that affirmative action isn’t hurting Asian Americans, that affirmative action has arguably benefitted white women more than anyone, and more. The court will also likely ignore how schools give preferences to rich, white legacy applicants and how legacy applicants get arguably the largest benefit of any group.
In addition to ignoring facts and data about affirmative action, the court will likely also disregard the need to redress the wrongs caused by societal racial discrimination and barriers that have persisted for centuries. They will also likely brush aside the fact that college and universities have been largely reserved for white people (especially rich white people). Many colleges and universities even intentionally adopted measures, including standardized testing, that limited admittance for Black students. Now, standardized tests are one of the primary tools used to argue against affirmative action, so it’s important to understand their origin, impact, and how they perpetuate the myth of meritocracy.
To illustrate how standardized tests limited admittance for Black students, consider the actions of the University of Texas. After the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954, the University of Texas aimed to keep Black students out of their institution. In May 1954, the Admissions Dean, H.Y. McCown, wrote to the University President, Logan Wilson, to figure out ways to "keep Negroes out of most classes where there are a large number of girls.” They intentionally incorporated standardized testing cutoffs to limit the number of Black students. In 1955, if Texas admitted by population proportions, 300 of the 2,700 1st year class would be Black. With the standardized test cutoff, nearly 75% of Black students would be excluded, leaving a maximum of 70 Black students in a class of 2,700.
The University of Texas was not the only institution to use standardized testing to limit student access, especially for Black students. Instead, standardized testing and standardized testing cutoffs became commonplace and accepted. The use of and reliance on standardized testing is exacerbated when you consider the racist history of standardized tests and the racist origin of the SAT in this country. Standardized testing in the U.S. is rooted in racism, xenophobia, and eugenics. Commonly credited with the early creation of the SAT, Carl Bingham (psychologist and eugenicist) aimed to create a test to show Nordic superiority, and he warned of “promiscuous intermingling” of immigrants. Standardized testing was used in the U.S. Army, and this trickled into college admissions. From the beginning, these tests were deeply entrenched with biases and pseudo-science, but they became heavily used and relied upon. Now, standardized testing has become a multibillion dollar industry.
That bias actually still continues to this day. First, though proponents of the SAT and other standardized tests claim the tests are color and class blind, that wasn’t the intention of the early creators:
“If we assume the objective accuracy of standardized tests in their measurement of students, then every test taker is offered a color-blind and class blind, fair and equal shot at educational, social, and economic attainment. Early creators of the SAT college entrance exam, for instance, saw this test as a means to challenge entrenched class privileges that gave the rich advantages in accessing higher education.”
Additionally, Andrew Hartman writes how the SAT entrenched “white identity as the defacto American identity”:
[The SAT] failed to stray from past definitions of what it meant to be American. Sure, after the implementation of the SAT blacks and other peripheral groups were able to gaze upon increased opportunity. But this gaze was merely an apparition for most. The SAT, consistent with other integration projects, did not accommodate black or female identities – in this case, differing learning styles. In order for a more fully integrated society to emerge from the SAT, the onus was placed upon blacks to accommodate to American identity. The SAT further entrenched a seemingly elusive White identity as the de facto American identity.
Kidder and Rosner even found racial biases in the SAT test question process as recently as the early 2000s. Rosner wrote that:
Each individual SAT question ETS chooses is required to parallel outcomes of the test overall. So, if high-scoring test takers – who are more likely to be white – tend to answer the question correctly in [experimental] pretesting, it’s a worthy SAT question; if not, it’s thrown out. Race and ethnicity are not considered explicitly, but racially disparate scores drive question selection, which in turn reproduces racially disparate test results in an internally reinforcing cycle.
There are many instances of biases in the standardized testing process, and standardized testing is often used to justify “meritocracy” despite being racist and classist. Essentially, if someone non-white does not score well on a standardized test, they (or their families, culture, schools, etc.) are blamed or treated as not good or smart enough. And those (especially white students) who score well are assumed to have done so based on merit, intelligence, and ability. Because standardized testing was put into place for the purpose of creating white hierarchies and white supremacy, these notions of meritocracy are deeply embedded with notions of white supremacy.
Now that we have addressed the issues in front of the court, myths about affirmative action, the racist origins and impact of standardized testing, and the myths of meritocracy, I want to reexamine Justice Thomas’s role in the affirmative action debate and how his thinking (and others who share this thinking) is problematic and victim-blaming.
Clarence Thomas’s rejection of affirmative action seems to stem from how he was treated and viewed by white people, especially when he was at Yale Law School. After he graduated, he struggled to get jobs, and he said he was dismissed by many. He is quoted as saying:
“Many asked pointed questions, unsubtly suggesting that they doubted I was as smart as my grades indicated.”
"Now I knew what a law degree from Yale was worth when it bore the taint of racial preference. I was humiliated—and desperate."
"Once it is assumed that everything you do achieve is because of your race, there is no way out…it is irrebuttable and it is proved to be true. In everything now that someone like me does, there's a backwash into your whole life is because of race."
“You had to prove yourself every day because the presumption was that you were dumb and didn’t deserve to be there on merit.”
Justice Thomas says he was doubted and mistreated. He says he faced assumptions and presumptions about being not as smart, and he talked about having to prove himself every day. What’s notable is that Justice Thomas's reactions to the slights from white people have resulted in reinforcing anti-Black policies and laws. Rather than pushing back against white people for their misplaced assumptions, he has instead dedicated himself to uprooting the policies that allowed him to rise to the highest seat in the Judiciary.
Justice Thomas has committed to taking actions that minimize, marginalize, and devalue Black people and also limit the access of Black people into a space that they have long been denied. He refuses to consider the harm, discrimination, and barriers that Black people have faced, and in doing so, he ignores that affirmative action is a small opportunity (not close to enough) to redress decades and centuries of direct discrimination.
His quotes give us insight into why he is so hostile to affirmative action. He intimates that the presence of affirmative action will make it seem like any (and all) Black people don’t deserve to be there on merit. However, Justice Thomas ignores the fact that meritocracy is deeply rooted in white supremacy and that Black people will be assumed to be less than no matter what because we exist in a racialized society where race was constructed to establish a hierarchy.
I spoke above about how standardized tests reinforce the myth of meritocracy. Tests that were created to benefit white people are then used to reinforce notions of merit for white students and devalue the efforts and intellect of other students, particularly Black students. Justice Thomas claims that having affirmative action policies lead to or will lead to the presumption that Black students don’t deserve to be at the institution, but he does not express that concern with legacy students, who are more likely to be white and affluent. Legacy students are disproportionately accepted into many institutions, even with similar or lower credentials than their counterparts, yet the idea of merit or deserving to be at the institution has not been raised by Justice Thomas or many others who are opponents of affirmative action. Perhaps the assumption that Black students don’t belong has more to do with anti-Blackness than it does notions of merit or being deserving.
Justice Thomas’s argument against affirmative action also ignores the fact that the existence or elimination of a policy will not stop white people from deeming Black people as less than or not deserving. This is, once again, because the construct of race itself was formed to establish and maintain a hierarchy. I previously discussed the role of racialization and how people racialize when they want to dehumanize, harm, exclude, or subjugate. Race was constructed to perpetuate racism and racial hierarchies. So, no matter what policies or laws exist, there will also be those who assume that white people are better, more deserving, or more intelligent, even when evidence suggests otherwise.
For example, California banned affirmative action in 1996, yet there have been many suggestions that Black students are only at University of California system schools because of affirmative action. In a previous affirmative action case involving the University of Texas, Abby Fisher, a white woman, was assumed to be deserving of a spot even though her GPA and SAT scores were not exceptional. In that case, 47 students with lower grades than Fisher were admitted to the University of Texas, but 42 were white and only 5 were Black or Latino. However, 168 Black and Latino students with grades as good or better than Fisher were also denied entry into the University of Texas. Yet, Abby Fisher was deemed to be deserving of a spot, and Black and Latino students were assumed to not be deserving.
Not only in college admissions, but in other professional and education settings, Black people are often labeled “diversity hires” even when their academic credentials and experiences far exceed their white counterparts. Now, when a Black person gets a position or opportunity, the organization may get the undefined label of “woke” to dismiss their qualifications. The reason has nothing to do with ability or merit; it has to do with anti-Blackness.
Justice Thomas has spent much of his life trying to end affirmative action because of his belief that white people will doubt, look down upon, or question the abilities of Black people. As a result, he directs his ire at policies that may benefit Black people or offer some level of redress for Black people. However, Justice Thomas would have been better off directing his ire at institutional and structural racism as well as racialization that was formed to create unjust hierarchies that influence the events of today.
Clarence Thomas will likely get his way, and the court will rule against affirmative action. But the ruling will do nothing to make things equal or fair, and the ruling will almost certainly ignore the present and past wrongs that impact Black people and other marginalized and minoritized populations. And rather than hold white people accountable for their past and present wrongs, Justice Thomas will instead insist upon victim-blaming and punishing Black people based on something they can’t control or change: the presumptions and assumptions embedded in the construct and culture of whiteness.