"The View" hosts reacted to the Supreme Court's affirmative action decision on Thursday and co-host Whoopi Goldberg wondered if it would lead to "no women in colleges."
"When you have a justice who says something as ridiculous as ‘I don’t get it,’ it just makes an Asian kid, a Native American kid, a Black kid feel like you don’t matter. Like you don’t understand why my struggle is hard. Or your struggle or your struggle. Is it leading to no women in colleges soon? Who knows," she said.
Co-host Sunny Hostin said the decision was "horrible" but "could have been worse."
"I will say that this could have been worse. It’s already horrible, but it could have been worse because when you read the opinion, at least Justice Roberts concludes and says, in this opinion, nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting, as Alyssa mentioned, universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or other life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise. Race blind admissions are not required and I think the lived experience of a white kid in Appalachia or perhaps on a potato farm in Idaho or Brooklyn, is different in this country for a Black student," she said.
"In my view, pretending it is no longer an issue exacerbates the problem. If you look at California, you had affirmative action dismantled in California in 1998. The very next year, 50% of Blacks and Latinos were no longer in those institutions. It has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller since affirmative action was taken away. That’s a problem," Hostin continued.
The Supreme Court rejected the use of race as a factor in college admissions in a landmark decision on Thursday.
In a 6-3 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that, "A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination."
Goldberg called out Justice Clarence Thomas and accused him of being "full of it."
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CASE: JUSTICES ALITO, ROBERTS SNAP AT HARVARD LAWYER
"He doesn’t know what diversity is. That’s what he said and so he doesn’t get it. Let me pose this question to you, Justice Thomas: Could your mother and father vote in this country? Because 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 it change. If we didn’t have to, no one would do it. Who wants to get hit by water from a water hose? Nobody. But that’s what people did in order to get the vote so when you say you don’t know what diversity is, I say you’re full of it," Goldberg said.
Hostin said "The group that has been most successful in accessing diversity initiatives are White women."
"That’s just a fact. So when we’re talking about taking preferential treatment, we have to look at that. Are we now also going to take away legacy, sports, how about people with disabilities?" she continued.
She also wondered why the decision was "just about race."
"That’s why I said what is scary, because you are talking about folks who bust their behinds who get a little bit of help, because if you’re a Black kid as we said, if you’re a Black kid or an Asian child or a Native American kid that’s coming from your experience, they are taking that into consideration, because you’ve worked your way to there. You’ve gotten to here and they say, let us help you get up because we see where you’re heading. We want to help you," Goldberg added.
