ABSTRACT
San Francisco’s current intercultural struggle is, indeed, one of “racialization” as the “deployment and assignment of race by various structures and interests of power as a construct or marker to differentiate groups and place them in a hierarchy of value” (Halualani, 2022). Hence, this chapter examines a key legal case from the 1990s that launched the intercultural struggle in motion. Given San Francisco’s current, historically protracted, and ongoing intercultural struggle over educational access and the meaning of “merit,” “fairness,” “diversity and equity” (by way of lottery) and its differential and situated effects for Whites, Asian Americans, Blacks/African Americans, and Latino/a/xs, this chapter reflects back on a pivotal legal case—Ho v. San Francisco City Unified School District—that framed this intercultural struggle 27 years ago through the construction of racelessness via the racial state.
