Affirmative Action, a cracked glass that was half full at best
10th July 2023 · 0 Comments
When the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority struck down so-called “Affirmative Action” considerations in college admissions as unconstitutional on June 29, 2023, the GOP took yet another step in its strategic plan to strip away the civil rights of certain Americans and forced the country back to a time before Brown v Board of Education America, when discrimination, apartheid and denying Black Americans civil and human rights was legal.
With the stroke of a pen, SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts, in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students For Fair Admissions v. the University Of North Carolina, struck down decades of remedies for the discrimination that plagued Black people and relegated them to the bottom rung of every facet of American society, especially in the Ivy Halls of higher education.
Ironically, the cases were brought on behalf of Asian Americans who felt that the affirmative action programs discriminated against them and kept them from gaining admission to Harvard and UNC. How ludicrous to think that affirmative action programs only benefited Black Americans?
Yes, affirmative action programs were designed to close the floodgates of discrimination and institutional racism faced daily by Black people. Still, if we’re being honest, very few people of color benefited from those programs. Yet there has yet to be a complete examination and discussion of why such a program was necessary and codified in the first place and an investigation into whether such programs are still needed.
If institutional and structural racism didn’t exist, there would be no need for affirmative action programs. But what is never said is this: Racism is a drug, and too many white Americans are addicted to it.
Despite all odds, some Black Americans rose and continue to rise to prominence and contribute significantly to American society. But far too many didn’t and still haven’t. Affirmative Action programs in college admissions and procurement programs provided seats at the table of economic and generational wealth for some who would only have had the opportunity to become as successful as they have with race-conscious considerations.
That there should be no need for affirmative action is a given, but there is a need and will always be a need as long as whites are chosen over people of color for the best jobs and leadership positions in the U.S.
America was conceived in racism, and whites who arrived on these shores murdered native people, stole their lands, and created an overarching democratic Republic. For 400 years, these white rulers enslaved African people, stole their labor, and were forced to cut them loose with just the clothes on their backs.
At the time of the Plessy v. Ferguson case, the U.S. Supreme Court was helmed by white men who decided “separate but equal” was the law of the land. American apartheid, we thought, ended with Brown v. Board of Education. Theoretically, it did, but in reality, segregation persisted due to white flight and laws created by whites to disenfranchise Blacks and white terrorist organizations like the KKK that used fear, loathing, and death to keep Black people from voting.
Affirmative Action programs were supposed to address racial inequities and allow Black Americans a seat at the table. Indeed, many whites believe this has been accomplished in light of the tokenism seen in various levels of society: Black mayors, Black congresspeople, Blacks leading corporations…. window-dressing. But we know better.
For all those who claim America is a colorblind nation and affirmative action, quotas and economic reciprocity – much less reparations – are no longer needed, guess what: America is being held hostage by whites who engage, consciously or subconsciously, in institutional racism, and all facets of American society are steeped in structural racism.
Even though he refuses to admit it, one of the most visible beneficiaries of affirmative action is Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas. Reports are that he has always resented being thought of as having gained the privilege and position he holds based on affirmative action. Rather than expressing gratitude for doors flung open because of affirmative action, his ego won’t allow him to accept the fact that he is where he is because he is Black. And because Justice Thurgood Marshall retired.
To be clear, Thomas and many others who have benefited from affirmative action at institutions of higher education were deserving of admission to the nation’s top universities. They earned good grades, worked hard and earned their degrees.
The same can be said of contractors who were as skilled or even more capable than their white counterparts who had been awarded contracts for decades.
But to do away with affirmative action programs is to falsely believe that America is in a post-racial era.
Even without reading the majority’s opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion, with which Clarence Thomas concurred, it’s crystal clear that there continues to be a need for affirmative action no matter how much Republican justices believe the time for such remedies has passed.
The idea that America ever achieved a post-Racial Era is wishful thinking, as is the notion that we live in a colorblind society.
Vice President Kamala Harris, a woman of color, said as much during the Essence Festival in New Orleans. Saying the narrative suggesting the ruling was about color blindness in admission, Harris commented, “In fact, it (the ruling) is about being blind to history, being blind to data, being blind to empirical evidence about disparities, being blind to the strength that diversity brings to classrooms to boardrooms.”
Indeed, the majority failed to point out in its opinion that the recipients of affirmative action in college admissions are overwhelmingly white donor-connected or legacy students. Friends and family members of people who donate significantly to universities and students whose families attended universities are overwhelmingly admitted to those institutions.
An AP survey of legacy students at top universities, including the University of Notre Dame, University of Southern California, Cornell University, and Dartmouth College, found that up to 23 percent of the first-year class were legacy students. The survey also found that legacy students were five times more likely to get admitted than others.
An investigation by the Lawyers for Civil Rights, which is suing Harvard University over its select preferences in admissions, discovered that 34 percent of students admitted by Harvard from 2014 through 2019 were legacy students, while only six percent were non-legacy students.
Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, the organization’s executive director, told MSNBC’s Ari Melber that legacy admissions are “inherently racist” and that “policies must be tweaked” to allow for fair admissions for all.
Both SCOTUS Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote dissenting opinions. Read their opinions here: https://www.scribd.com/document/656189604/SFFA-v-Harvard-Dissents.
Melber, a lawyer and host of MSNBC’s “The Beat with Ari Melber” podcast, encouraged viewers to listen to actress Alfre Woodard reading the dissenting opinion of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is thought to have given a master class on Affirmative Action. Jackson called the SCOTUS opinion “a tragedy for us all.”
“With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat,” Jackson wrote. “But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.”
The fact that SCOTUS added the caveat that “nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university,” is totally absurd.
Hopefully, Congress and President Biden will figure out how to hold the SCOTUS accountable for their actions. Not only for this ruling but for all of the opinions the Court has made that attack the sovereignty and civil rights of individuals in the U.S., from the overturning of Roe v. Wade to the stripping of LGBTQ access to services, to the capitulation of the “Supremacy Clause.” Democracy as we know it is a stake.
This article originally published in the July 10, 2023 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
