
It Doesn’t Make It Alright
The SCOTUS decision on affirmative action has ended a hypocritical and incoherent policy.
In 1994, while I was a law student at the University of Houston, I received a call from a lawyer in Austin. He wondered whether I would be interested in joining a class-action lawsuit against the University of Texas (UT) School of Law. “Why would I want to do that?” I asked. Because, he replied, my application to the law school had been rejected primarily on the basis of my race. Had I been black, based on my test scores and grades, I would have been more-or-less automatically admitted to UT Law School. However, since I am white, I was placed in a “discretionary zone,” and UT decided to exercise its discretion to reject me.