Maybe Arkansas’ Nepo Baby Governor Shouldn’t Be Weighing in on Affirmative Action & Meritocracies
After waiting until the very last minute, The Supreme Court has voted to effectively end affirmative action in higher education. A 6-3 conservative majority did away with decades-old civil rights policies that were put into effect in the 1960s and 70s. Many Americans lamented the momentous loss of these progressive policies that allowed minorities a tiny bit more access into the halls of power from which centuries of institutional discrimination had previously barred them. Many Americans, but not all.
Enter Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
NO. God no PLEASE NO. NO. NOT HER. NOOOOO!!!!
Yes, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the nepo baby who all but inherited her position as the governor of Arkansas, crawled out of the woodwork of the House Divided that is America and decided to serve up a piping hot take on the recent SCOTUS ruling. I’m sure she thought her take would be received by the internet like a warm slice of pizza fresh from the oven, instead, it landed like hot turd fresh from a bird’s ass.
You read that correctly. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, whose Twitter bio reads “Christian. Wife. Mom” in that order, had mind numbing audacity to quote Dr. Martin Luther King to celebrate the DEATH OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION POLICES. I am certain that the good reverend, along with every other deceased figure from the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, is currently rolling in his grave.
To characterize the repeal of affirmative action higher education as a victory for the “fundamental truth” flat out ignores the actual, real-life truths that Dr. King and others like him fought for. A meritocracy is a nice fantasy but in this country, the thing that most determines the opportunities you’ll encounter in life is where you start. White Americans made their start in this nation as rich landowners, while Black Americans made their start in this nation as slaves. As Ketanji Jackson Brown noted in her dissent on this case, that dynamic gives those Americans’ descendants wildly different starting points, as universities are now barred from considering race in the admissions process but can absolutely still give priority to legacy students—as in, the descendants of those white rich landowners.
In an even more immediate example, Sarah Huckabee Sanders fails to see how this fundamental truth relates to her own position in life. Sarah’s father, Mike Huckabee, is the former governor of Arkansas. Gee, I wonder how Sarah got that job? I’m sure it was hard work and bootstrapping! Tracing back Mike Huckabee’s lineage, we discover that he was born to two conservative Southern Democrats. A.k.a. “dixiecrats”, a.k.a. the people that engaged in voter suppression against Black people in the South. If we go back even further we see that the Huckabee family established its roots in America during the Colonial Era. What I’m getting at here is that power, privilege, and prejudice run bone-deep in Sarah Huckabee’s family. At this point, we can’t even blame her for her bullshit point of view. It’s practically a genetic condition.
But I’m going to anyway. And so is the rest of the internet. Twitter was quick to dogpile all over her horrible tweet. Chris Jones, the Democratic Nominee for the governor of Arkansas condemned Huckabee’s lobotomized words. He rightly called her out for “mischaracterizing” Dr. King as the kind of man who would support the Supreme Court’s decision and told her with more grace than I would have been capable of mustering to sit her stupid ass down.
Sanders’ blatant disregard for the legacy of Dr. King is all par for the Republican course, as many conservatives have used the “content of their character” quote to defend themselves against anything they perceive to be an infringement on the civil rights of white people. What they fail to realize is that Dr. King said A LOT OF OTHER WORDS during his “I Have A Dream” speech that qualify this statement as one that was intended to describe oppressed minorities. White people do not fall under that category, despite what conservatives would have you believe.
So to clear up conservatives’ fundamental misunderstanding once and for all, let’s take a look at a statement made by Dr. King’s son Martin Luther King III and his wife Arndrea Waters King: “The old saying, ‘kick them when they’re down,’ has never applied more,” the pair said on Twitter. “Marginalized communities, particularly Black and Brown Americans, were just dealt another devastating blow by the Supreme Court.”
“Unconscionable and infuriating” were the words that the couple used to describe the Supreme Court’s ruling. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ statements regarding the decision could be accurately described in the exact same way.
(featured image: Justin Ford/Getty Images)
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