Who Will Fight for Affirmative Action?

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/who-will-fight-affirmative-action



When the Supreme Court was considering the constitutionality of President Obama’s health care law earlier this year, Democrats and progressives were organized in strong support of it. Liberal organizations wrote dozens of analyses of the benefits of “Obamacare.” Progressive columnists warned the court would be stepping beyond its bounds if it struck the law down. Two months before the decision, President Obama delivered a spirited defense of the law and suggested the court would be violating “well-established precedents” by gutting Obamacare.

Don’t expect to hear the same united voice among Democrats when the court determines the fate of affirmative action, starting with oral arguments today and a decision likely this summer. (The specific case involves a white woman named Abigail Fisher, who sued after being denied admission to the University of Texas Austin.) Members of both parties expect racial preferences to be eliminated by the court largely because its five conservative-leaning justices have shown hostility to affirmative action in the past.

But those justices were no doubt aware striking down health care reform would be highly polarizing, pitting them against roughly half of the electorate. In the case of the race-based affirmative action, that won’t be the case: many Democrats oppose the practice, and some of the key liberal voices in the country are lukewarm about it.

Affirmative action bans have been passed in states full of Democrats, such as California and Michigan. New Hampshire, another state Obama won in 2008, adopted a measure earlier this year that bans affirmative action by colleges in hiring or admissions decisions. While little polling has been done recently, most surveys have found a majority of Americans oppose racial preferences.