Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

Supreme Court Guts Affirmative Action In College Admissions. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired June 29, 2023 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[12:00:00]

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: The statement from Harvard, I think is similar to what we're going to see from many, many universities. Of course, we will comply with what the Supreme Court said. We remain committed to this goal. How they get there? We're going to have lawsuits following up on this, perhaps going back to the Supreme Court for years while they work his out.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN CO-ANCHOR, CNN NEWS CENTRAL: Elie, thank you for sticking with us through all of this. Michael Waldman, thank you as well for coming on. And thank you all so much for joining us on what is been a very momentous day coming from the Supreme Court and more decisions tomorrow. This is CNN News Central. Inside Politics is next.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on Inside Politics, the Supreme Court rewrites a significant section of American life. Again, the justices say affirmative action is wrong. The conservative majority's ruling will change how college admissions decisions are made everywhere.

Plus, personal and appointed. The two black justices on the bench use their opinions to litigate a fight over the role of race in American society. And the ruling is making waves already on the 2024 campaign trail. President Trump calls it a great day for America. President Biden is set to speak in minutes from the White House

I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

Up first, the Supreme Court on does decades of law and precedent. The justices today ruled to get affirmative action and it will scramble how colleges pick and choose who gets into their schools. It will also likely for students, especially black and brown students to rethink where they even apply for college.

I want to go straight to CNN's Jessica Schneider in Washington. So, Jessica, this is a major, major ruling.

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: It is Dana. And at this point, right now colleges and universities are likely scouring this lengthy decision, because they have to restructure their admissions policies. This Supreme Court is saying, they can no longer rely on race, nor can they specifically factor race into an admissions decision. But at the same time, the justices are saying that they're not prohibiting applicants from discussing their race and essays or otherwise, and discussing how their race affected or impacted their lives. So, the takeaway is this. Students won't be able to check a box indicating their race. They can make admissions officials aware, however, of their race in a broader context.

Now, in justice Jackson's dissent, she is saying that this distinction is really without a difference. She says it's like putting lipstick on a pig. And she and the other two liberal justices really lashed out against this decision saying, that it will have a devastating impact.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor read her dissent from the bench, and she said this in part. She said, the result of today's decision is that a person's skin color may play a role in assessing individualized suspicion, but it cannot play a role in assessing that person's individualized contributions to a diverse learning environment. That indefensible reading of the constitution is not grounded in law and subverts the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection.

But the majority here, a six-three decision led by Chief Justice John Roberts. It does tick through the reasons why they say Harvard and UNC's admission policies weren't narrowly tailored, and they violated the equal protection clause of the constitution.

So Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the majority saying, that the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual, not on the basis of race. Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded wrongly that the touchstone of an individual's identity is not challenged bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.

So, Dana, as I said, this decision could really lead to uncertainty at schools nationwide about how they can best structure their admissions policies going forward. One thing though, for certain, gone will be students checking a box indicating their race because universities can no longer factor race directly into the decision whether to admit, those students can talk about it in their individual essays. Dana?

BASH: Jessica, so fascinating. Thank you so much for that report. Here with me in studio is CNN's Jeff Zeleny, CNN's Abby Phillip, CNN's Joan Biskupic and CNN's Laura Coates. You were there. Unfortunately, we still don't have cameras in the courtroom in the federal courts. And of course, that includes the Supreme Court, but we have you.

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN SENIOR SUPREME COURT ANALYST: Oh, my god. The weight of history was so evident in the room. You knew that -- first of all, I should remind everyone that for four years, we haven't been watching any kind of dissent from the bench because of COVID. Dissents and oral statements only started up this session.

So, they come in, Chief Justice John Roberts sitting at the center says, he's about to announce his opinion. We all know where John Roberts has been on racial affirmative action. He has been so against it for so many years. And he said, indeed, six-three they are overturning all this precedent that has allowed colleges and universities to take race of applicants into consideration for at least one factor of many.

[12:05:00]

He reads it pretty steadily. His wife Jane Roberts had slipped into the courtroom just as he was ascending the bench. Everyone is just watching this tableau up there. And then Clarence Thomas, who rarely speaks during oral arguments, or, you know, only recently has been doing that. He starts to talk in his deep baritone voice, as part of the majority to say why he has joined.

And the first thing he mentions is the discrimination against Asian- Americans who are part of the coalition who brought this case. In he likens the plight of discrimination in admissions policies to slavery to the Jim Crow era. He invokes the weight of history, saying this is not what the equal protection guarantee of the constitution was all about.

Going further than the chief is going in terms of talking about wrongs that he feels have always been visited on racial minorities rather than a benefit to affirmative action. And then, probably the most compelling reading came from Justice Sotomayor, the first Hispanic justice on the court, who's speaking for herself.

Elena Kagan, and our newest justice Ketanji Brown Jackson talked about the cost, it's going to be the opportunity for minorities, the rolling back of precedent, but also really very much invoking the promise of brown the board of education from 1954 that first started the path of integrating schools, saying that progress would be lost.

At the very end of her reading, which took about 25 minutes, she and Justice Thomas talked so much they had to sip water along the way. But at the end, she says, we shall overcome, even though the setback is there.

BASH: As we continue this discussion, I just want to read a couple of the exchanges between Clarence Thomas and Ketanji Brown Jackson in their concurring and dissenting opinions. Justice Jackson's -- this is Clarence Thomas speaking, Justice Jackson's race-infused world view falls flat at each step, individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges and accomplishments. What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them. And their race is not to blame for everything good or bad that happens in our lives. This is Justice Jackson.

Justice Thomas ignites too many more straw men to list, or fully extinguish here. The takeaway is that those who demand that no one think about race, a classic pink-elephant paradox, refuses to see much less solve for the elephant in the room, the race-linked disparities that continue to impede achievement of our great nation's full potential.

LAURA COATES, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the room when they were actually discussing these issues behind the scenes. This was what was reduced to paper. You can imagine the fireworks that were actually happening. And you don't rarely -- you usually have a majority or a concurring opinion, I guess, as Thomas that would spend more than what 10 pages going after the dissenting opinion of another justice. That's what happened here.

And what you have here is the conversation that's not limited to inside of the courtroom. This discussion has never been simply about the specific question before the court. It has been infused with political conversations. It's been infused with ideological conversations that are happening. It has been about the role of race in America more broadly.

Thomas has a part of his concurrence about the idea of 17-year-olds today paying for the sins of past years, obviously a nod to a conversation about critical race theory and beyond. But the fundamental question they were trying to ask here was, can you use race to course correct, the disparate treatment that racism had created over the course of our history?

That was the fundamental notion of what they're being asked about affirmative action. It's been chipped away for years and years and years, circumscribing variety of ways. But ultimately, the majority decided that race can only be solved by ignoring what is so evident in every aspect of our lives.

But sending a payload that were so eloquent in the confrontation of this disingenuous discussion that suggests that we can, on the one hand, tell universities how to deal with the subjective process of applications, and then never give the criteria supposedly to do so. And how are you as an admissions office to read this opinion?

BASH: Yes. And Abby, as you react to this, one of the important aspects is that it says that, yes, you can't check a box anymore. But if a student is writing an essay, the essay can include a reference to his or her about their race.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: One would hope so. One would hope that students would be able to talk about who they are and where they came from and what their experiences are. So, I think there was no way that they could not make that carve out frankly.

[12:10:00]

But what to me all of this represents is, this is a proxy discussion for a broader conversation that's happening in this country about whether the consequences of systemic barriers for people of color, specifically for black people in this country still mattered today.

And for some conservatives, they've been saying not just in the year 2023, but really, for many, many decades that there should be no consideration of systemic barriers in college admissions. But today, and where we stand now, I think that the discussion has broadened well beyond education. This is the first foray, right. It's the longest fight that has been -- one of the longest fights that have been being fought. But I think we're going to start seeing this conversation expanding and other aspects of life. And I don't think that it -- just before you jump in, I just want to, you know, we do need to recognize that what we're talking about here, when it comes to education is not just, you know, what is an individual student bringing to the table, but whether the education system in this country was structured by law until relatively recently to disadvantage black people, specifically black people in this country.

And the court says, maybe that was the case, but it doesn't matter now. And I think conservatives are going to now take that and they're going to expand it into so many other aspects of American life.

BISKUPIC: I was just going to add, Abby's exactly right. This group that brought this case is part of other coalition's that are suing in other contexts, for example, for diversity on corporate boards, trying to go after race in a broader way.

And one last thing, you use the word matters, what matters, just as Sonia Sotomayor is always saying, race still matters. It matters in terms of discrimination, right out, outright, but then she's also had some lines that she has said from the bench. And on other occasions, race matters because of how you pre-judged all the time.

BASH: You're so wisely pointing out this case as part of a larger discussion about where society is vis-a-vis race, and it clearly happened in this case. But specifically on the question of considering race in college admissions. Jeff Zeleny, let's look at a recent Pew Research poll was actually in the spring, but there's no reason to believe that it's changed. 50 percent say that they disapprove of considering race in college admissions.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Perhaps not surprising, this is always a determine how you ask the question or whatnot. But more conservative, some 74 percent of Republicans make up that, just a quarter of Democrats support it. But look, I think this is now going to be injected, already has been injected into the presidential campaign, into the context of our public life here. I think that as we hear from President Biden at the bottom of the hour, of course, he was strongly opposed to this. He's talked about it very eloquently.

Look, I mean, this is every Republican candidate to a person has come out in support of what the Supreme Court did, of course, I thought interesting, the comments from former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama issuing separate statements on this, both of whom benefit from affirmative action programs.

I remember back on the campaign trail back in '07. When he was asked as a candidate, if his children should benefit from affirmative action programs. And he said, no, probably not. Because they've had other advantages, but he still called today's decision, disappointing a sad and wrong one.

BASH: I'm glad that you mentioned that I want to read some of Michelle Obama's statement. She said, she talked about the fact that she arrived at Princeton feeling very different. And she said, I sometimes wondered if people thought I was there because of affirmative action. It was a shadow that students like me couldn't shake, whether those doubts came from the outside of the inside or inside our own minds. But the fact is this, I belonged. And semester after semester, decade after decade, for more than half a century, countless students like me showed they belonged too, Your fellow Princeton graduate.

COATES: I am class of '01, and very proud that she wrote that because it speaks to the sentiment of not just students at that particular campus. But students in higher education who for the reasons you've articulated Abby, happiness advantage about the access to the criteria that makes you truly attractive to the admissions office.

She also goes on to make one point talking about that we have no problem with there being affirmative action in other areas, she calls it money, power privilege, perfectly justifiable forms of affirmative action. You know, the broader conversation about affirmative action, this country has got to really speak about just this court ruling. But the advantages people have that are inherently looked at, not with skepticism, but with a plumb.

BASH: Like legacy.

COATES: Like legacy and beyond.

BASH: We're going to keep talking about all that. What a fascinating discussion. Thank you so much, and especially for your bird's eye view inside the courtroom. Coming up more on the seismic, Supreme Court decision gutting affirmative action in college admissions. Green Party presidential candidate and former Harvard professor Cornel West will join me live with his reaction.

[12:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: In minutes, we'll hear from the president of the United States at the White House. Joe Biden will give his first take on a dramatic Supreme Court ruling that guts' affirmative action. Right now, I want to get reaction from another 2024 presidential candidate, Cornel West, Green Party candidate and former professor of public philosophy at Harvard University.

Thank you so much for joining me, Professor West. I want to read part of what Justice Roberts wrote in his opinion, which really sums up this ruling. He wrote, "indifference to race is the only constitutionally permissible means to achieve racial equality in college admissions." You are a graduate of Harvard. You taught there for many years. What is your response?

[12:20:00]

CORNEL WEST, PROFESSOR EMERITUS, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: No, might be especially, it's a very sad day. I think Justice Roberts is so absolutely wrong that this decision. Let us be clear and not be deceived, it's an attack on black people. The question of what you do with the vicious legacy of white supremacy which Supreme Courts justified slavery for almost 80 years that justified, ugly Jim and Jane Crow?

But another 100 years of neo-slavery, in the 60s, we had to raise the question, what are you going to do about these precious human beings. You enslaved in Jim Crow for so long. And the response was first reparations, we'll try to repair some of that with affirmative action, then it shifted to diversity, and said, no, we just have a number of different people.

Now they say, let's be indifferent to race after nearly 100 years of slavery and your constitution, justifying it for 100 years of Jim Crow and your constitution justifying it. The Supreme Court has rarely been a friend to justice when it comes to black people.

Now, what are you going to do with this? How are we going to come to terms with this? This is my question to brother, Edward Blum. He's a conservative Jewish brother. Thank God, we got a lot of Jewish critics of Blum and white critics and Asian critics of it, but he pits the Asians against the black foot. He says now, let's get some hate, works him, the whites didn't work.

Let's get some Asians to pit them against black folk and assure that lo and behold, we can have policies that result in ensure that these black folk don't gang assets. This is a deeper issue that has to do with how do you come to terms with the humanity of black people in a nation shaped by white supremacy? That's what we're talking about. What race matter was about? And we had to proceed. Go right ahead. Go right ahead.

BASH: I'm sorry to interrupt you because I want to get in some reaction from an expert who was on our air last hour. His name is Kenny Xu, and he is the President of Color Us United. He agrees with the Supreme Court decision. He is Asian American, and he gives the perspective of those in his race.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KENNY XU, PRESIDENT, COLOR US UNITED: I could point to race-based admissions as the reason why Asian-Americans are being discriminated against right now. I mean, if you're an Asian-American, you had to score 273 points higher on the SAT to have the same chance of admission as a black person at Harvard. Is that fair? I understand that people's lives are improved by getting into an Ivy League university, but that opportunity should be made available to people in every race, not just one.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: What's your response to that?

WEST: Well, I just think he didn't speak on behalf of all of my precious Asian brothers and sisters, not at all. I would want to say, why you're working with Brother Edward Blum, brother Blum was trying to get Voting Rights Act too. This is not just about education. This is not just about diversity. This is about something much deeper, deeply concerned about trying to ensure that black people's humanity is affirmed that black people are gaining assets, just due to the power and positions that he had to for we have not.

And all of the deodorize discourse about x and y and equal rights and so forth. No, we got to be honest about this. Clarence Thomas, love you brother. You all to be a shame. You wouldn't be it for what (crosstalk)

BASH: Let me read that.

WEST: (crosstalk) Joe Biden militated Clarence Thomas on the court. Just be honest about the.

BASH: Professor, I want to read part of what Clarence Thomas said in his concurring opinion. He said, quote, today's 17-year-olds after all, did not live through the Jim Crow era, enact or enforce segregation laws or take any action to oppress or enslave the victims of the past. Whatever their skin color, today's youth simply are not responsible for instituting the segregation of the 20th century, and they do not shoulder the moral debts of their ancestors. Our nation should not punish today's youth for the sins of the past.

WEST: Yes. Brother Clarence his wrong again. The new Jim Crow is still in place, mass incarceration is still in place, segregated places of where we live, segregated schools that we go to are still in place. So that when you talk about, well, Jim Crow was over. No, Jim Crow, Jr. is very strong and operating. Mass incarceration is a form of Jim Crow, in some ways, even an extension of slavery.

So, Clarence, you're wrong, brother. Love you. You're wrong as you can be. And in fact, we're going to have to come up with some creative, loving, civically oriented ways of wrestling with this vicious legacy of white supremacy. You don't do it by claiming Justice Roberts. We can be indifferent to it.

You can't be indifferent to practices that are still shaping the precious lives of young people in Barrios as well as ghettos as well as reservations. And I would go, of course, I want to talk about our poor white brothers and sisters that I think actually socio-economic criteria (crosstalk)

[12:25:00]

BASH: I'm glad you brought that up. I'm glad you brought that up because some critics of affirmative action argue that there are other factors like class, like income that should be determinative here. And that if anything, it's income equality, not skin color, that should boost a student's chances of getting into a university. Would that be better maybe a fair approach, more fair than the system that existed until two hours ago?

WEST: I have always argued that these programs are not just for the children of the black bourgeoisie and the black educated class. They are for the brilliant ones coming out of poor and working-class community. Let me say this on a very personal note. There is two magnificent human beings who are the architect of the Harvard admissions. Chase Peterson, he's my Mormon brother. I was blessed to read the preface for his memoir.

He was the leader of the admission process. He brought in another brilliant brother named David Evans, together a white Mormon and a black brother from Tennessee with a Princeton degree reshaped Harvard for 50 years because before that affirmative action was white. We know the great book by Ira katznelson, affirmative action has been white for 180 years and people didn't say a mumbling word.

And then, all of a sudden, you get affirmative action tilted toward black folk, and civilization is coming to an end. We've got to be vigilant about our rights, vigilant about liberty, please, we see the hypocrisy. We see the discrepancy between your words and your actions.

And let me say this, too, would never surprise by setbacks. We are never in any way paralyzed by despair. Sister Jackson, Justin Jackson is right. We shall continue to fight. We shall overcome. We shall produce our love warriors and our freedom fighters and our joy shares and wounded healers.

That's the legacy of Frederick Douglass. That's the legacy Martin King and Fannie Lou Hamer. So, we tell the country and the world, we know we've been attacked, but we come in back for more than spiritual power, you've never seen before.

BASH: Professor Cornel West, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it.

WEST: They spell, appreciate.

BASH: Thank you. In any minute we are going to hear from President Biden discussing this monumental decision by the Supreme Court. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:30:00]