Whoopi Goldberg Slams SCOTUS Decision To Outlaw Race as a Factor in College Admission: “You Don’t Get It”

Whoopi Goldberg of The View criticized the SCOTUS ruling to limit racial consideration in college admissions. On June 29, the Supreme Court eliminated affirmative action in college admissions. The conservative majority of the Supreme Court's justices held that the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection provision was violated by taking race into account when deciding whether to admit prospective students.

The judges declared 6-2 that Harvard's admissions process should be invalidated. Liberal justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself from the case because of a conflict of interest with Harvard.

Golberg slammed the verdict on The View, saying, “Now the 14th Amendment is supposed to promise equal protection, but if everyone was actually treated equally, we wouldn't have had to put in affirmative action. We wouldn't have had to do it! People wouldn't have had to march and beg and got hosed and all of these things people did just to balance us out with everything else going on in the country.”

While discussing the subject with her fellow daytime co-hosts, Goldberg addressed Justice Clarence Thomas' legal defenses. She criticized Thomas' decision in particular. “I want to also sort of read something that Clarence Thomas apparently said. He doesn’t know what diversity is. That’s what he said.”

Goldberg, visibly frustrated by the vote, added, “And so he doesn’t get it. Well, let me pose this question to you from Justice Thomas,” Goldberg added. “Could your mother and father vote in this country had the 14th Amendment actually had us on equal footing, they would have been able to vote. And you know why that changed? Because people got out and made a change.”

The studio audience applauded Whoopi as she finished, saying, “So when you say you don’t know what diversity is, I say you’re full of it.” The decision makes students from marginalized communities feel particularly alienated, she said, adding, “When you have a justice who says something as ridiculous as ‘I don’t get it,’ it just makes a kid, an Asian kid, a Native American kid, and a black kid feel like you don’t matter. Like you don’t understand why my struggle is hard.”

Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined Justice Sonia Sotomayor in disapproving of the conservative justices' judgment, calling it "indefensible."

Not just Goldberg but other well-known Black figures called out Thomas. Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP, sharply criticized the conservative justice and denounced the verdict, per The Recount. “The worst thing about affirmative action is that it created a Clarence Thomas,” Johnson said.