From Fisher to Fisher: a critical race feminist counterstory about access to U.S. higher education

Most education and legal scholarship overlook gendered-race themes in pre-Brown v. Board of Education desegregation higher education cases that remain relevant to examining post-Brown race-conscious admissions cases. The author engaged critical race feminism to create a counterstory with Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, a U.S. Supreme Court plaintiff in conversation with two fictitious Black women, Geneva Crenshaw, a civil rights attorney, and Nia Lytle, a tenure-track assistant professor of higher education. During a fictionalized one-day oral argument presented with dialogue composed from texts of actual race-conscious admission cases, the Black women react to and critique the societal and legal logic used by organizations and individuals who recruited the white women plaintiffs in those cases. The counterstory illustrates how civil rights discourse was coopted to advance white supremacist grievances. The conclusion calls on those invested in racial equity to reframe the discourse of institutional legal strategies to advance race-conscious admissions.