Affirmative Action never meant affirmative access for Black folks

Get the Point!

Alas, affirmative action is dead!

Just as I predicted in this blog last February, the United States Supreme Court on yesterday abolished nearly 60 years of affirmative action programming by ruling in favor of Students for Fair Admissions (S.F.F.A.), a group that challenged diversity admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

Writing for the 6-3 conservative majority, Chief Justice John Roberts inscribed:

"The student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race...Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.” CJ Roberts, June 29, 2023

Well, pardon my strong language, but Chief Justice Roberts is telling a god damned lie in his historical perspective!

As I have stressed for many years in my blogs and articles, from the time that Democratic Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson first started issuing executive orders in the 1960's to affirmatively remedy past discrimination against Blacks, all the way through to Republican Richard Nixon who expanded the same, many whites immediately began crying "foul" while introducing what I often call a legal oxymoron: "reverse discrimination against whites.” Oxymoron, I submit, because I ask you to answer when have Black people ever had the power to prevent white people from attending school, obtaining bank loans, buying property, eating in a restaurant, trying on clothes, or being treated at a publicly funded hospital?

Save your strength because I assure you that Black people never had such power nor have Black people, under color of law, ever held lynching parties of white victims or mounted up posses to destroy whole white neighborhoods—only to then substitute their names on the property rolls as lawful owners! (See Tulsa and Rosewood for reference) 

But we know that such is the sick and twisted history of the Black experience in America, and no matter how often right wing conservatives seek to dilute or deny what their recent ancestors did to my Black ancestors, and what many whites are still doing to Black people to this day, it doesn't change the fact that Constitutional history, specifically the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision that made Black people second class citizens, did happen and set Black people back by every discernable measuring tool!

The skinning and grinning Justice Clarence Thomas has been the “Black Face” of white attacks on affirmative action for over 30 years…

And in twisted irony, while affirmative action was developed to be one remedy to 256 years of slavery and nearly 100 of Jim Crow segregation, the oft unstated reality is that the greatest beneficiaries of such programs were white women, many of whom found their husbands, fathers, and friends using their feminine names to win lucrative contracts with federal agencies and private corporations!

Thus, Chief Justice Roberts and his detestable lie fails to boldly acknowledge in plain terms that he and his fellow conservatives have finally accomplished what they have vowed to do since 1978, back when Allen Bakke sued the University of California system claiming that he has been denied admission to medical school in favor of less qualified Black students. 

Yes, it has been a slow journey to this point, but as America grows more racially diverse each decade, conservative whites, fearful that the day will soon come when they are the numerical minority, are following the lead of their old European cousins in South Africa who designed an apartheid system to wrest real political and economic power within themselves from the Black majority! 

Of course, these American conservatives are rarely explicit, as they draft slogans like "Make America Great Again" and rile up their base by casting Black and Brown people as the bane of white existence and economic mobility in America. But what really angers me about yesterday's court decision, one that was applauded by the madding MAGA crowd, is that with regards to the top public PWI's like the Universities of California, Texas, Michigan, Virginia, Florida, and the original defendant North Carolina Chapel Hill, is knowing that those schools are primarily funded by tax revenue derived from ALL citizens and tourists in those states—not just the well-off white citizens and tourists. Indeed, there's something perverse in the idea that Black and Brown folks can help fund these schools via taxes, but their kids and grandkids may not get accepted—unless they are a football or basketball player that can help cull even more revenue to "State U."

What's Next

So, I arise this morning—one day after affirmative action ended—to remind that all is not doom and gloom!

First and foremost, it is important to remember that there are over 100 Historically Black Colleges and Universities that have educated the overwhelming majority of Black professionals since their inception in the 19th Century.

Morehouse College, my undergrad alma mater

When I was a high school senior in 1990, I had my choice of PWI's that I could have attended, including the home state University of Florida which sent so many recruiting letters to my house that I could have covered all of my Janet Jackson, Vanessa Williams, Jody Watley, and Karyn White posters with them! But my “final five,” if you will, were Morehouse, Howard, Tuskegee, Southern, and hometown Florida A&M because I knew the rich academic and civil rights legacies of the same! To that end, I strongly suspect that these hallowed HBCU's will find their applications increasing even more in the years to come…

I also predict that many PWI's will still enroll a number of talented Black and Brown students by paying more careful attention to the personal statements of applicants; instead of a points system that factors in race, the admissions director or committee could "mentally" factor in what's said in the personal statement to glean that little Jaquan, Jacquelle, or Javier would bring some cultural diversity to their campus. 

My last comment is as follows: Lest we forget that many pundits, including yours truly, predicted in 2016 that the next president would select three Supreme Court Justices. I was no fan of Hillary Clinton at all that year, but as a longtime lawyer, historian, and college level civics and constitutional law adjunct professor, I knew that the Republican nominee, which turned out to be Donald Trump, would change the courts in ways that would hurt people of color if elected. So, despite my personal issues with Clinton, I voted for her because the bigger picture—the courts—“trumped" all else.

We cannot go back in time and change the past, but I implore my readers who share my politics to think long and carefully before voting against your permanent interests simply because you dislike a temporary political party standard bearer in 2024 and beyond!