I Wish I Were Black' and Other Tales of Privilege

Authors

Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Boston University School of LawFollow

Author granted license

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-28-2013

ISSN

1931-1362

Publisher

Chronicle of Higher Education

Language

en-US

Abstract

"To be white is to not think about it," a white legal scholar named Barbara Flagg wrote two decades ago.

After the University of Texas at Austin denied Abigail Fisher admission, she made several statements that revealed just how little she had ever had to think about her race. Fisher, the petitioner in the Supreme Court's recently decided affirmative-action case, said in a videotaped interview made available by her lawyers: "There were people in my class with lower grades who weren't in all the activities I was in, who were being accepted into UT, and the only other difference between us was the color of our skin."

Recommended Citation

Angela Onwuachi-Willig, I Wish I Were Black' and Other Tales of Privilege , in The Chronicle of Higher Education (2013).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/shorter_works/21

Publisher URL

https://www.chronicle.com/article/I-Wish-I-Were-Black-and/142561