The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) effectively struck down the affirmative action last Thursday, June 29, thereby prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s racial background when admitting them to college. The ruling came as no surprise to many across the country, who had long anticipated the conservative court’s bias against policies aimed at providing people from underrepresented and marginalized racial backgrounds equal opportunity and freedom. ‘education.
Online via social media posts and in real life via in-person protests, countless artists, activists, students, scholars and others have expressed that their commitments to racial equity will not be thwarted at the light of this disappointing news. But many have noted that it will be an uphill battle. Last week, SCOTUS also ruled that the United States government had no obligation to assist the Navajo Nation with access to drinking water; blocked President Biden’s campaign promise to forgive between $10,000 and $20,000 in student loan debt; and determined that companies can deny ‘expressive services’ to same-sex couples or LGBTQ+ identifying individuals based on a hypothetical situation, subsequently affecting the lives of millions of US residents for the worse.
Artist Dread Scott uses his platform to address the Court’s latest and most polarizing decisions through social media posts written in accessible, no-nonsense language. Get to the root of these decisions, what past decisions have informed them and how the decisions will impact others, Scott sums up how our rights and freedoms have been overthrown in one sentence.
“Today, June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that racism can be used in college admissions and encouraged universities to revert to segregation as they had been for most of story,” Scott wrote in a job on the end of the affirmative action.
“Today, June 30, the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed that discrimination is acceptable, as long as your bigotry is based on a firmly held religious belief,” he wrote in another job about the court’s decision to side with an anti-LGBTQ+ website designer.
Some artists revisit older works that have become increasingly relevant as the reality of court rulings sets in. Prompted by this conservative downturn that strips Americans of rights and freedoms, Puerto Rican artist Pedro Vélez shared a multimedia collaboration with Walter Fernández titled “The Judge” (2019) on his Instagram. The pasted ink drawing of a cherub drinking from a glass bottle superimposed on a drawing of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his 2018 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee is part of Vélez political whiskey series (2016-2019), started during the 2016 electoral cycle.
“I think it was a way for me to deal with the anxiety and the fear of a possible Trump presidency and the hatred that could be felt among conservatives,” Vélez said. Hyperallergic. “First came the illegitimate seat of Neil Gorsuch followed by the sad sight of Kavanaugh. The play is a serious caricature of a dangerous character. I think the SCOTUS decision will suck the lives of young people in the United States of America. I am saddened for them and the ultra-racist and unequal country they will have to negotiate.
“But the SCOTUS decisions will also have serious consequences for our way of life here on the island since these cruel and violent political strategies used in the United States have emboldened radical religious movements on the island,” Vélez added.
Students across the country have rallied to express their contempt for the SCOTUS ruling. Last Saturday in Cambridge, Massachusetts, dozens of Harvard University students protested court ruling on campus, arguing that the university and the workforce would see less diversity in years to come. The school’s admissions practices, alongside those of the University of North Carolina, have been the subject of the Student Trial for Fair Admission which was taken to the Supreme Court. East and South Asian students, who the lawsuit said were discriminated against by affirmative action alongside white applicants, declined to be called champions of that decision. During the protest, they stood alongside other students of color who gained admission to Harvard through affirmative action. Harvard University Branch issued a statement stating that the school would “preserve, consistent with new court precedent, our core values,” adding that the June 29 SCOTUS ruling did not explicitly prevent universities from considering the impact of race on applicants’ lives .
The SCOTUS decision will have resounding implications for higher education and artistic careers – fields that have long been considered a luxury for the wealthy and white. After the announcement of the decision, several art schools such as Pratt Institute and the Rhode Island School of Art and Design (RISD) alongside universities offering competitive arts programs issued statements expressing their disappointment with the decision, noting that they must obey the law but will continue to meet their commitments to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility while reviewing their current policies and practices.
Some museum leaders have also spoken out in response to the rulings. In Memphis, Tennessee, president Russell Wigginton of the National Civil Rights Museum said that the affirmative action ruling is a “poignant reminder that the critical work to redress the generational impacts of our country’s long history of systemic racism is not done.” In Los Angeles, the president and CEO of the Japanese American National Museum, Ann Burroughs, pointed out that in the affirmative action decision, SCOTUS referred to the 1943 Hirabayashi v. United States case that found that the implementation of curfews and other restrictions on Japanese and Japanese Americans was constitutional after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. “The incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II was rooted in the same discrimination and prejudice that drives anti-affirmative action,” Burroughs said on behalf of the museum.
New York-based artist Christina Barrera, who describes herself as an “ardent supporter of student debt forgiveness”, was born in South Florida to Colombian immigrant parents and attended the Maryland Institute College of Art for her BFA with full scholarship. Debt free, she said Hyperallergicwas one of the reasons she was able to pursue an artistic education.
“While my acceptance and scholarship are not explicitly affirmative action, they flow from the same logic – the stated goals of the scholarship were to increase the number of art students from underrepresented demographics who encounter more barriers to getting to art school and staying in the art world in hopes of producing a more diverse art world,” Barrera said. “The creation of the scholarship recognized something that this Supreme Court decision denies (at least publicly) – that we are not all born with the same resources and that we are not all equal.”
