Bad News for Affirmative Action But These Sonia Sotomayor Quotes are Bad Ass

The Supreme Court decided Tuesday to uphold a Michigan voter initiative that prohibits the use of race in admissions to the state’s public universities. The 6-2 decision resulted in disappointment for advocates of affirmative action policies. On a much more upbeat note, it also yielded a badass 58-page dissent.

Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, used her lengthy dissent to school her opposing colleagues about one particular message: race matters.

First she tells the other (mostly white male) Supreme Court Justices that when it comes to race, they just don’t get it.

This next point is perhaps Sotomayor’s most heartfelt example of why race matters.

Then she says throws justifiable shade at them.

But it’s not just her opinion. Justice Sotomayor backs her claim with data. The infographic came from a New York Times story on “how minorities have fared in states with affirmative action bans.”

Put this one in the sad but true story category: Justice Sotomayor had to explain why it’s important to have a diverse classroom.

BOOM.

As ABC News points out, in her recent memoir, “My Beloved World,” Sotomayor writes about the impact of affirmative action in her life. She details her time at Princeton: “The Daily Princetonian routinely published letters to the editor lamenting the presence on campus of ‘affirmative action students,’ each one of whom had presumably displaced a far more deserving affluent white male and could rightly be expected to crash into the gutter built of her own unrealistic aspirations. There were vultures circling, ready to dive when we stumbled. The pressure to succeed was relentless, even if self-imposed out of fear and insecurity.”