Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker has doubts about President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee. While on a podcast last week, Senator Wicker lamented that President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee will be a “beneficiary of affirmative action” and, implicitly, unqualified to sit on the highest court in the country. Beyond the initially evident problems with that statement, Biden’s Supreme Court pick has yet to be named. Wicker seems to believe the pick will be unqualified simply because President Biden has promised to nominate the first Black woman to the court.
Wicker’s comments occurred in the context of an upcoming Supreme Court case about admissions at Harvard College. The complainants argue that Harvard is discriminating against potential students by considering race in their application process. Affirmative action in higher education began in the 20th century, as compensation for the historical subjugation and exclusion of marginalized groups, particularly Black Americans, Latinos and Native Americans. Experts agree that if the conservative supermajority on the court decides to rule race-conscious admissions unconstitutional, it would result in a significant reduction of Black and Latino students at nearly every prestigious college in the country.
While opponents of affirmative action complain that the program discriminates against white students, the reality of college admissions paints a different picture. Studies have repeatedly shown that the largest “beneficiaries” of affirmative action since the program’s inception have been white women. Furthermore, other admissions criteria that overwhelmingly favor white students often go unmentioned in affirmative action debates. Legacy admissions, for example, give preference to students whose parents attended the university to which they are applying. This is, of course, discriminatory to students of color whose parents were routinely excluded from selective universities in the past and wholly disadvantages first generation students. The impact of legacy admissions is huge, with over one-third of Harvard’s class of 2022 being compromised of legacy students. The overall chance of being admitted to Harvard as an undergraduate is an astonishingly low 3.4%, but if one or both of your parents attended Harvard, your chance skyrockets ten times to 33%. One can not help but wonder why only students of color are considered undeserving of their spots at prestigious universities.
After his unsavory comments on affirmative action, Wicker doubled down on his racist rhetoric surrounding Biden’s potential nominee. “We’re going to go from a nice, stately liberal to someone who’s probably more in the style of Sonia Sotomayor,” Wicker stated on the podcast. Notably, Justice Sotomayor is the first Latina and woman of color to serve on the United States Supreme Court. In contrast, Wicker called Justice Amy Coney Barrett an “inspiration” to his granddaughters. The intersection of sexism and racism present in this sentence is palpable. With the mention of even a theoretical Black woman, Wicker already denigrates her to not only unqualified, but unprofessional and offensive. Beyond this obvious racism, for what other Supreme Court nominee was being “nice” a major consideration? By degrading affirmative action programs, Wicker lays the groundwork to discredit any Black woman nominee, no matter how “qualified” or credentialed she may be. Wicker’s dog whistles are painfully unsubtle and embarrassing to the state of Mississippi.
Katherine Broten is a junior majoring in economics and public policy leadership from Farmington, New Mexico.
