Based on legal reasoning, precedents, and the justices’ sworn representations, the Supreme Court has no legal reason to end Affirmative Action in college admissions. But it had no legal reason to end a woman’s constitutional abortion rights. Yet the Court did so anyway.
Mend, do not end, Affirmative Action
Those arguing to end Affirmative Action insist that discriminating against Whites (and Asians) is no way to redress discrimination against Blacks. But, for this argument to make sense, they conveniently limit US history to events after millennials were born in the early 1980s.
Of course, Affirmative Action in college admissions aims to redress 400 years of slavery and institutional discrimination against Blacks. Yet opponents want to end it after just 50 years, claiming it benefits Blacks at the expense of Whites (and Asians). The irony in that is surpassed only by the gaslighting.
I mean, why pick on the historically disadvantaged Blacks? After all, unqualified Whites have benefited for centuries from affirmative action for whites. And it has been based variously on legacy and donor admission. For example, the real scandal of “Varsity Blues” was how White privilege prevails in college admissions.
And let’s be clear that Affirmative Action has nothing to do with quotas. You know, like the Jewish quotas Whites used to prevent too many of the smart “Chosen ones” from attending Ivy League schools in the early 20th century. Affirmative Action allows schools to consider race among other factors like musical talent, sports ability, and STEM aptitude.
This is more about politics than justice
Affirmative Action also helps schools honor the prevailing values of diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI). Of course, people in the racist MAGA world viscerally reject DEI. But they rely on big lies like replacement theory and critical race to justify doing so.
That’s why Justice Clarence Thomas came across like an Uncle Tom during oral arguments yesterday. That, of course, is a self-hating non-white who is so desperate to please whites that he champions more racist causes than any respectable white ever would.
Only that explains the way Thomas dismissed the lawyers arguing in favor of Affirmative Action. Most notably, he mocked them for intoning “diversity” to reinforce their arguments. Because, Thomas insisted, he does not even know what it means.
Except that was as disingenuous as it was disdainful. After all, Thomas has benefited more than any other black from schools championing diversity.
But I suspect the only thing he had on his mind when he said that was how well it would play on Fox News. Indeed, it must have imbued him with unbridled pride to imagine all right-wing media hailing him for “owning the libs” from the bench.
But if schools can’t use race as a factor, they can’t use other traits like gender, family legacy, or place of origin. If one cares about legal and logical consistency, that is.
More to the point, though, that would make it perfectly legal for schools to have a first-year class composed entirely of parochial White male geeks. You know, that White boys who think Jordan Peterson is the second coming of Jesus Christ.
What remedy, if not Affirmative Action?
If the Supreme Court had any judicial integrity left, it would require those petitioning to end Affirmative Action to answer this question:
- If we can’t redress four centuries of preferences for Whites with at least two centuries of preferences for Blacks (or with the reparations Blacks have been demanding for decades), then how do you propose we pay what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. might say is the billions, if not trillions, in promissory notes this country owes Blacks because of the singular way Whites enslaved and discriminated against them – complete with the discrimination we all know persists to this day? Another civil war?
But I warned in the blog post “Supreme Court: First they Came for Voting, then Abortion…” on June 25, 2022, that Affirmative Action would be next. And that the Court’s reasoning would be every bit as tortured.
Because the right-wing justices who now control the Court have crossed the Rubicon. They have given up all pretense of being mere “judicial umpires.” Instead, they are seizing every opportunity to rack up ideological wins for their partisan Republican team.
This Roberts Court is willfully sanctioning political divisions. As such, it’s aping the role the Taney Court played throughout the 1850s. Of course, that was when the country was marching toward the (first) Civil War.