Politics

How Abigail Fisher Wasted Everyone’s Time

48 Comments

Affirmative action (particularly the race-based variant of it) has long proven a controversial issue in the USA for many reasons. Strong feelings exist on both sides of the aisle. Conservative forces call race-based affirmative action an affront to the legacy of civil rights, and even go as far in some cases as to equate themselves to historical figures like MLK and Medgar Evars as the inheritors of a anti-racist legacy.

On the other side, liberal forces equate the maintenance of race-based affirmative action to the maintenance of America’s moral legitimacy, claiming that the policies are essential to the reparation of past inequities/atrocities and that society is morally obligated to see said reparation through at all costs.

Both sides got their chance to be heard on America’s largest legal stage recently thanks to a young female plaintiff named Abigail Fisher.

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A (mediocre looking) Texan, Fisher applied to the University of Texas at Austin in 2008 and was rejected. With the backing of conservative donors and activists (including her father, a legacy at UT whose longtime friend and classmate Edward Blum has lead Fisher’s legal charge), Fisher filed suit claiming that her race was used unfairly against her. The case was, obviously, a direct challenge to the use of race in college admissions, specifically UT-Austin’s consideration of race (along with dozens of other factors) as part of its “holistic admissions” process for students like Fisher who do not qualify for automatic admission to the school via the state’s “10 Percent Plan” (more on that plan later).

Fisher ‘s case was defeated in all of the lower courts, and many observers were surprised to see the Supreme Court take the case on appeal. The result of their examination, however, was less surprising: the court essentially punted the issue, handing it back down to a lower court and asking them to do what amounted to a “do over”.

I say that this result was unsurprising because anyone, upon closer examination of Fisher’s merits, could see that she was not the ideal poster child for white victimization at the hands of affirmative action. Here is why she proved to be a waste of time:

1. She didn’t have particularly good numbers.

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Fisher had a 3.59 GPA and an 1180 SAT score. UT-Austin offers automatic admission to all students who finish within the top 10% of their high school classes, and Fisher failed to do that. UT-Austin admits the majority of its students via this 10% plan, so this forced Fisher into a very competitive pool of applicants seeking the remaining spots in the class (just 8% of UT-Austin’s in-state slots in 2008 went to students admitted outside of the 10% plan). That she failed with her scores was not surprising, since they didn’t stand out among her group.

2. She can’t prove that her race was used against her.

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UT-Austin evaluates candidates who fall outside of their 10% auto-admit group on a host of factors. Race is just one of them, and Fisher has offered no evidence to show that it (and not the dozens of other alternatives) was the key that pushed her out of contention.

In their bid to substantiate that claim, Fisher and her supporters have argued that minorities with lower scores than hers were getting into the school, claiming that the only difference between these minorities and Fisher was racial. The numbers do not back this up:

Fisher did not particularly stand out. Court records show her grade point average (3.59) and SAT scores (1180 out of 1600) were good but not great for the highly selective flagship university. The school’s rejection rate that year for the remaining 841 openings was higher than the turn-down rate for students trying to get into Harvard.

As a result, university officials claim in court filings that even if Fisher received points for her race and every other personal achievement factor, the letter she received in the mail still would have said no.

It’s true that the university, for whatever reason, offered provisional admission to some students with lower test scores and grades than Fisher. Five of those students were black or Latino. Forty-two were white.

Neither Fisher nor Blum mentioned those 42 applicants in interviews. Nor did they acknowledge the 168 black and Latino students with grades as good as or better than Fisher’s who were also denied entry into the university that year. Also left unsaid is the fact that Fisher turned down a standard UT offer under which she could have gone to the university her sophomore year if she earned a 3.2 GPA at another Texas university school in her freshman year.

Again, Fisher has argued along with her supporters that race was the key to her rejection, citing her scores and parroting the notion that less qualified minorities “took her spot”. Yet the numbers show that the vast majority of those admitted ahead of Fisher despite being “less qualified” than (at least as far as test scores and GPA’s went) were actually white, just like Fisher. Further, there were hundreds of black and Hispanic students with numbers at or above Fisher’s level who, like Fisher, failed to gain admission. These rejected minorities outnumber the supposedly “less qualified” minorities admitted ahead of Fisher by a factor of more than 33.

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Even Fisher’s primary backer, Edward Blum, had to admit the absurdity of it all:

In an interview last month, Blum agreed Fisher’s credentials and circumstances make it difficult to argue — as he and his supporters have so ardently in public — that but for her race Fisher would have been a Longhorn.

And yet the saga continued.

The debate over affirmative action is not over, and it will not be going away anytime soon. Fisher’s case has been punted, but that only means that the lower court will be revisiting it in a year’s time. Furthermore, other cases relating to affirmative action are likely to pop up in the coming years.

US Supreme Court Issues Orders On Pending Cases

That being said, those looking to challenge the viability of race based affirmative action are going to continue to have a hard time doing so with the likes of Abigail Fisher leading their way. Fisher is a an average individual who displays a strong sense of entitlement to above-average outcomes, using scapegoats to cover herself in the event of her inevitable failure to achieve them. That any time was wasted considering the inevitable and entirely defensible results of her entitlement in this land’s highest court of law is disappointing. If such individuals come to be associated too often with the anti-affirmative action cause, then it will continue to struggle to gain ground.

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48 thoughts on “How Abigail Fisher Wasted Everyone’s Time”

  1. “That being said, those looking to challenge the viability of race based affirmative action are going to continue to have a hard time doing so with the likes of Abigail Fisher leading their way. Fisher is a an average individual who displays a strong sense of entitlement to above-average outcomes, using scapegoats to cover herself in the event of her inevitable failure to achieve them”
    *sigh*
    People like this are why anything involving race/sex/etc never get anywhere. People who have informed opinions are forgotten about, while these fuckwits get centre stage and make everyone else look bad. Overcompensating for the past isn’t going to change or fix anything.
    The future is in indifference.

  2. lol @ usa and their race issues. Try to do that in europe and you’r gonna get laught at, if not ignored.

    1. Have you been living in a cave the last decade? In Sweden the state is paying 80% of the salary if they hire non-white immigrant (no, danish people could never get to claim that, neither would a Boer). And this is while Sweden have a youth un-employment level at around 25% among those who are registered as un-employed.
      Count in that companies gets tax-reliefs for having their company in immigrant-zones, they throw millions over their schools and neighbourhood while swedish native children doesn’t even get half as much.
      Then we have a law that is called HMF. Threats against minorities which means you can’t critize certain things without getting fined/prisoned, but they on the other hand can talk about extincting the swedes, call our sisters for swedish whores and claim in Mainstreamedia that we doesn’t even excist, which is bullshit if you’re atleast educated about DNA, genetics and fundamental biology.

  3. How Abigail Fisher wasted everybody’s time:
    She’s a white woman fighting affirmative action. This in itself is laughable, as nobody in America has benefited more from affirmative action policies than white women.

    1. Yeah, she’s a poor symbol BUT I’m waiting for a good symbol/example to destroy affirmative action. At least they could have given it an appropriate name, to me affirmative action implies enhancing the good in society and crushing the bad. This “affirmative action” is pretty much defined as: being a pussy and trying to pander to the crap in society so they’ll shut up. Then again, I doubt they’d ever have called it “Pussy Action.”

  4. Nonsense, the average level is where affirmative action is applied. If even one person is admitted due to affirmative action, everyone denied has grounds for complaint of discrimination, and even those accepted are damaged by the degradation of education (“diversity” is actually of zero value).
    Would you really say blacks would have no grounds for complaint if there was a quota to keep them off campus, because they couldn’t prove they individually were denied for that reason?

    1. “If even one person is admitted due to affirmative action, everyone denied has grounds for complaint” only one person would have grounds for complaint. basic math. 1:1.

  5. Great article as it provided a lot of information that was left out of many of teh news reports on this case.

    1. “Great article as it provided a lot of information that was left out of many of teh news reports on this case.”

      Yes. From the many mainstream news articles you read on her, you would think her case was slam-dunk and that affirmative action was DOA. I didn’t know she was basically just some average bitch until I read this piece by Athlone.

  7. Why not just go to a different school? There are plenty out there, and nobody in the professional world really cares where you got your degree.

  8. I applaud your selection of photographs.
    It’s interesting how a (young) white woman reacts when she–for once–doesn’t get the stack of freebies, red-carpet treatment, and all-access pass that she’s gotten from society most of her life and sees the rest of her cohort get as a matter of routine. She takes the case to the Supreme Court of the land.
    That’s how surprising it is to her.

    1. She has a point. Affirmative action of ANY kind is unacceptable and only compulsive political doormats would agree with it.

  9. Yeah– I didn’t get in with a 1420 SAT out of 1600, and veteran’s preference and a 3.5 college GPA in chemistry.. UT in state if you aren’t a recent high school graduate is INSANE. We are talking transfer acceptance rates of well below 1%.

  12. I went to Texas. First, the state of Texas is a little unique in that the organization of public schools is based on what is called an Independent School District. It is a taxing entity and is entirely separate from any city government. Often the suburbs have an ISD completely separate from the city and that blocks many force integration actions as in other states. The nature is such that more successful people generally live in some such ISD and the schools in that ISD are funded as the residents of that taxing district wish them to be funded. So you have have some ISD with a high content of exceptional students with driven and smart parents. And the nature of things within those schools is that if you get one B during your high school career than you may not get into the University of Texas. Keep in mind that many of these students take AP classes and can actually have averages above a 4.0.
    Second, the adoption of the 10% rule IS the affirmative action program of the state in that it automatically accounts for racial and socioeconomic realities of schools. It assumes you compete in the environment in which you are placed and it is too difficult to judge students universally. If you do, then you get into policies like a Princeton with judging the value of your extra-curricular activities as having merit. So it is arbitrary but it is a fair and even handed sense of arbitrariness. It actually does, in a way, penalize those white students in better school districts, in that competition within that school might be intense, and a student that might easily be in top 10% of another school would fall below that level in his current school. There was actually talk of moving away from the hot school district for your senior year to a smaller town or lesser performing school. But there are spots open to account for that. But the reality is such, if you don’t have well over 1200 on a SAT and a very high B then fuck off. Go to A&M.
    There is just something about going to Texas when you live in this state. And while an above comment says the school isn’t important, there is some bump to going to this college. And one of the key lessons I learned in life and really didn’t learn it until after college, is that there is no shame in being an average student at the University of Texas because when you get out into the rest of the workforce, you will see that you are not average. The school is hard, both socially and academically, and all attendees “go through some changes” and these changes stick with you for life.
    So frankly, given all the admission policies in this nation I am most surprised that those of the University of Texas would end up in front of the Supreme Court as a test of affirmative action. Perhaps they wanted the 10% rule thrown out. And while it is acknowledged that it is a form of affirmative action, it is so universally applied, that some white kid from a small town in Texas that is lucky to be at a school that can cobble together enough students for a trig program or a second chemistry class can still have a shot at entry to the flagship state university. And trust me, this is one of the most republican states in this nation and the general attitude is sort of “Well, it’s kind of a fair policy”.
    I am here to tell you. The admission policy is such: Do what you are supposed do in the place where you are at and you can get in.

    2. I live in Texas, my children go to school in Texas, all schools are a part of an Independent School District regardless of being in the city or “suburb.” Dallas has Dallas ISD (my mother works for Dallas ISD as an elementary teacher) and Houston has Houston Independent School Districts and just like in the suburbs the ISD regardless of whether it is in the city, suburb, or rural still generates it’s money from taxing the residents in its district. Also, when schools want money they put it up for vote in elections, most well to do areas always vote to increase taxes for the schools while others vote against. Therefore, some ISD’s are wealthier than others but you have to blame the voters and the people of the district. In my ISD, we always vote to give the schools money when they ask. In fact, my taxes are now now higher than my mortgage every month. While I am glad you visited my state, please get your facts straight because “I visited” doesn’t make you an expert, especially when you were wrong!

  13. i personally dislike the modern application of affirmative action. i can agree that at one time (70s and 80s) it was useful and necessary to enforce racial equality and expediate the integration process, even if it is a bit of a stretch as far as individual rights go.
    but that time has passed. it has become government racism against white males essentially at this point. it is unnecessary. the only thing keeping it around are minority lobby groups such as the naacp claiming equality and pushing for it and quite often threatening a public “scandal” and loss of the minority votes should any official step forward and challenge it. anyone who challenges it essentially gets touted as a racist by lobbies that benefit from it.
    this woman is definitely not the ideal candidate. but she did put it front and center for a minute, she did make it ok for white people to address the issue socially and publicly, and she is pretty much the first tangible step made towards a true racial equalization post integration.

  15. “UT-Austin offers automatic admission to all students who finish within the top 10% of their high school classes”
    This is not true. UT Austin successfully petitioned the legislature to deviate from this law that applies to all of Texas’ other state universities. It has varied, but automatic admission to UT requires one to be in the top 6 or 7 percent of their high school class.
    The “top 10% rule” is in itself an affirmative action policy. A kid graduating in the top 20% of their class at a decent suburban high school is probably better prepared for college than one in the top 10% of a poor urban school. Where UT went too far was adding affirmative action to affirmative action. Abigail Fisher might not have been the ideal poster child, but I’ll wager someone darker and less academically qualified was admitted when she wasn’t.

  17. She thought she could play the gender card and win. I’m glad she fell on her ass because her sense of entitlement is just disgusting.

  18. Sounds like she was a rich kid and legacy who thought she was entitled to it.
    I hope a lot of those kids who got in before her were from poor / working / lower-middle backgrounds.

  19. i dont care how she looks, dont care if her grades suck….she fought the jew system claiming bias against whites, nuttin wrong wit dat nigga.

  21. [email protected]_mcginnis:disqus desperately trying to pretend like Fisher didnt have a case. The 10% program itself was racially biased. If she had gone to one of the ghetto high schools, she would have been valedictorian and easily gotten accepted. Of course, she also didnt want to die, so its understandable she took the harder path of a suburban high school.
    The reason this plan was such a failure is that UT denied middle class blacks that universities around the country are always desperate to find, and instead allowed in the best of the worst. There was already problems with the student body feeling “unsafe” and was creating racial tensions like it was a redux of the 60’s. With this SCOTUS ruling, UT can happily go back to recruiting the kind of blacks SWPL’s love to have around, and once again keep the underclass blacks out altogether.

    1. Desperate? There’s no desperation here, her lack of a case is obvious.
      “If she had gone to one of the ghetto high schools, she would have been valedictorian and easily gotten accepted.”
      She probably would also have been accepted had she attended a much less well regarded podunk high school out in the rural boonies.
      She took the “harder path” of a suburban high school because that’s her background. She’s a middle (upper middle?) class white girl, there was no other choice for her.
      “With this SCOTUS ruling, UT can happily go back to recruiting the kind
      of blacks SWPL’s love to have around, and once again keep the underclass
      blacks out altogether.”
      If the 10% plan remains in place and presumably continues to provide a path to admission for those in even the worst urban school districts, won’t those underclass/”best of the worst” still be getting in?
      This ruling allows them to balance things out with more middle class blacks/hispanics, but I don’t think the underclass will be getting shutout either.

      1. >This ruling allows them to balance things out with more middle class blacks/hispanics, but I don’t think the underclass will be getting shutout either.
        No, they will not be getting in, because the ghetto black students cant compete with the surburban black students. And since the colleges will still get the demographic diversity they want, everyone wins. Except the NAM-underclass.

      1. Lmao, where are they? We live in a world where college administrators and employers go out of their way to hire and admit as many minorities as possible.
        The only people being punished by this are whites and Asians.
        Its also the same reason why monsters like Kermit Gosnell are able to operate for so long. If he was white, he would have been shut down after his first inspection, instead of going on for years undetected. Another example of the tragedy of low expectations.

        1. Again, where are the 150 Black students who were more qualified than her? They didn’t get in either, meanwhile the majority of unqualified kids who got in were White. This Abigail story backfired on your novelty.

        3. It was in the article.
          “Neither Fisher nor Blum mentioned those 42 applicants in interviews. Nor did they acknowledge the 168 black and Latino students with grades as good as or better than Fisher’s who were also denied entry into the university that year.”
          Did you not read the article? :/ I guess everyone passing your comment were too nice to say anything, hoping you would see it.

  22. Sorry, but I disagree with this post and with most of the comments also.
    Abigail Fisher thought that she was being discriminated against AND DID SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
    Men are at the receiving end of far more discrimination, but don’t seem to be capable of taking concrete action against it. Concrete in this context can mean just about anything as long as it’s not on the internet: filing a civil suit; joining a Men’s organisation; picketing; going on marches – these all count. Whining in the manosphere – not so much.
    Abigail Fisher shows that it can be done. Now it’s up to us to do it.

    1. “Abigail Fisher thought that she was being discriminated”
      And she thought wrong-that’s the point that has been made both in the post and in the comments.

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