Anti-Affirmative Action and Historical Whitewashing: To Never Apologize While Committing New Racial Sins

Apologies, official or otherwise, for historical wrongs are important steps in the road towards reconciliation. More difficult are historical wrongs that have yet to be fully acknowledged. The reemergence of affirmative action in the public consciousness via the Supreme Court represents a striking example of the ways in which our collective consciousness has yet to fully account for our past educational sins: segregation and income inequality. This essay explores the multiple consequences to our historical memory when the anti-affirmative action narrative continues to dominate the public discourse on racism in education. I offer a renewed focus on ‘fenced out’ as the deterministic consideration of racism in education. In doing so, our historical memory and contemporary consciousness regains the potential to differentiate between admissions grievances, and ongoing racists practices such as de facto segregation and income inequality in education