Defanging Diversity

Abstract

They don’t want to realize that there is not one step, morally or actually, between Birmingham and Los Angeles.

- James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro (2017)

This article explores the jurisprudential underpinnings of the so-called “diversity rationale” that until recently had been considered a powerful vehicle for fostering racial diversity on elite college campuses. As the national debate around diversity, equity, and inclusion measures—both their legitimacy and practice—will only intensify in the current sociopolitical climate, this writing attempts to provide a chronology of how the nation’s High Court has shaped the contours of that discourse, arguing that the Court’s juridical trepidation in this area of the law led to an unworkable framework that was doomed from inception. This article further examines the rapidly changing norms of race and identity—including the inherent tensions and complexities that such concepts engender before concluding with a recommendation for how to achieve the supposed aims of the affirmative action regime in American society.