When it comes to expressing my thoughts on the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action in college and university admissions, it is clear to me that there are so many voices calling out today with first-hand experience that are far more educated and eloquent than mine. I can only speak from my heart, and it is hurting now.
Its hurting because I know that for centuries, the elite colleges and universities in our great nation openly discriminated against all sorts of people – women, Blacks, Asians, Latinos, Jews, the neurodivergent, the LGBTQ+ community, the disabled, and so many other under-represented peoples – for all sorts of reasons – but mostly because they could. Nobody stopped them.
This is not in dispute. It was real. It happened, it was pervasive, and a kept a lot of our best and brightest from getting world class educations, from getting access to influential and powerful institutions and people, from achieving and succeeding in so many uncountable ways.
Then in 1978 (the year I graduated high school) along came Affirmative Action in university admissions. Yes, AA was heavy-handed, often unartfully applied, and not nearly as effective a means of diversifying student bodies and reflecting our society as originally hoped. In fact, in many ways, AA fell far short of expectations. For example, according to the Guardian at the University of North Carolina, in a state where 21% of people are Black, just 8% of the school’s undergraduates are Black.
But nevertheless, AA did make a positive difference. It exposed whites to those who are different, who are from other cultures, experiences, and beliefs, and it gave those others – always in the minority – access to opportunities, and power, and influence that were denied to them in the past. This is also true, it was real, it can’t be denied.
But now Affirmative Action is gone. Once again, it will be that much harder for anyone different to have access to the best educations that America offers. There will be so many children – who believed the system was fairer with Affirmative Action, who thought they had a shot at the best – who will now see that that door is once again closed to them. Their possibilities, and the contributions they could be making in every part of our society, are now more limited.
We could be so much more than we are, we could be so much richer and successful, and bountiful, and prodigious and exciting if we keep opening the door to education wider, if we accept the truth of our history of discrimination and its negative impacts on our society, and if we reject the pernicious myths of race-neutral and colorblind admissions and that somehow whites are being discriminated against when in reality they still continue to be far more represented among the student bodies of elite schools than all others.
But now that door has been slammed shut again by a gang of unelected “movement” jurists determined to roll back the clock in our great country in so many ways. And for all of these reasons and so many more, my heart hurts.
That’s today, my heart hurts today. Tomorrow, I’ll steel it, and get back into the fight.
