Supreme Court Gutting Affirmative Action Is an Attack on Black Life
Yesterday, our country continued its tradition of maintaining an unequal and unjust society, where racism not only exists — it thrives. With the Supreme Court ruling that colleges and universities may no longer factor race into admissions, more than 60 years of policy is reversed and a devastating blow is dealt to the decades of progress we’ve seen. Unfortunately, it’s a predictable setback, to say the least.
For centuries, the US has created and upheld systems that are structurally racist and have contributed to the persistent racial disparities in opportunities, wealth, and the quality of life between Black and white households. More recently, from book bans and the outlawing of critical race theory to yesterday’s overturning of affirmative action, those in power have made it clear that they intend to do whatever it takes to set our country up for a future plagued by even more inequality.
White students have benefitted from special consideration during admission processes far longer than the amount of time that some Black students have benefitted from affirmative action. Due to the systems and structures of our country, many white students are descendants of folks who graduated from elite institutions or have the generational wealth to pay for resources that remove the obstacles that many Black students are forced to overcome — obstacles that exist largely because of race and racism.
A study published in 2019 found that 43% of white students who were admitted to Harvard were legacy students, recruited athletes, children of faculty and staff, or students whose parents or relatives had made donations to the university. Of course, the long tradition of legacy admissions and rich people donating their way to admission for their kids disproportionately benefits white students. When Harvard was founded in 1636, Black people were still enslaved and remained so for more than two centuries. We went from conversations about long overdue reparations to gutting the few systems that attempt to somewhat level the playing field.
The broad attack on education that has been taking place over the last several years is a systemic approach to creating a society that not only fails to support the advancement of Black Americans, but it’s also actively working against our efforts to obtain a peaceful and healthy quality of life. Reproductive justice, climate justice, and social justice all rely on folks obtaining the necessary training and education in order to shape and reshape the systems that currently inhibit justice. For example, looking at health care, consider the fact that Black women are more likely to die during childbirth than women of other races, and also the reality that only 5.7% of US physicians are Black. Further limiting access to education for Black students is an attack on Black life.
Three justices dissented from the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn affirmative action: Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. In her written dissent, Jackson, the first Black woman to hold the seat, wrote, “With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.” She continued, “And having so detached itself from this country’s actual past and present experiences, the Court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America’s real-world problems.” A powerful and unequivocally true statement.
