(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Supreme Court’s Rightwing War on Racial Justice [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-07-05 The majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina ruled that Harvard and UNC’s admissions policies violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. In dissenting opinions, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor described the ruling as “destructive” and “devastating” and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote “If the colleges of this country are required to ignore a thing that matters, it will not just go away. It will take longer for racism to leave us. And, ultimately, ignoring race just makes it matter more.” Sotomayor and Jackson are right. The Constitution was never color-blind. In her dissent, Sotomayor derided the decision’s attempt to impose a “superficial rule of colorblindness” in a segregated society “where race has always mattered and continues to matter.” As originally written, the Constitution permitted race-based slavery. The authors of the post-Civil War 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments saw the impact of racism in American society and were very clear that these amendments permitted legislation to redress racism. Unfortunately, racism has continued to persist with frequent support from Supreme Court decisions. The attack on affirmative action and school diversity programs injures American students and American society, not just members of minority groups. All students benefit from attending universities with diverse student populations. It better prepares them for life and work in a diverse world. It also benefits the United States in a world where people of European ancestry constitute only about 15% of the global population. In a bizarre acknowledgement that the decision by the rightwing controlled Court is illegitimate, the conservative majority determined that U.S. military academies are exempt from the ruling because of their “special nature.” In 2022, although 19% of the military’s enlisted personnel were Black, African Americans made up only 8% of the officer corps. Nowhere does the law state that college admissions should be based only on test scores and grades. The Supreme Court majority has established its own criteria for discrimination that benefits students who attended schools in more affluent communities and whose families could afford private schools, tutoring, and test prep. No one has demonstrated that because of affirmative action anyone has been denied the ability to attend college. The plaintiff in the case, Students for Fair Admissions, is a rightwing legal activist group. No students who were denied admission to Harvard or the UNC were named in the case so we don’t know where they ended up attending college. Students for Fair Admissions is actually a front for rightwing foundations including DonorsTrust, the Searle Freedom Trust, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the 85 Fund. DonorsTrust contributed $2.5 million to SFFA between 2017 to 2019. Most of its donors remain anonymous, although the Koch Foundation has contributed millions of dollars to DonorsTrust since the mid-2000s. DonorsTrust money goes to the National Rifle Association, the Cato Institute, the Federalist Society, and the Heritage Foundation, al rightwing groups, and between 2002 and 2010, DonorsTrust channeled over $100 million to groups denying climate change. The United States has always had affirmative action. It was affirmative action that benefited affluent white men from certain ethnic and religious groups. Legacy affirmative action got George Bush into Yale and Donald Trump into the University of Pennsylvania. In 1998, real estate developer Charles Kushner pledged $2.5 million to Harvard University prior to his son Jared being admitted. This is another decision where Supreme Court nominees who pledged to respect legal precedent violated their own oaths. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett should be removed from the Supreme Court for lying under oath during their confirmation hearings. The population of the United States has significantly changed since the 1960s when Affirmative Action programs targeting African Americans were first implemented. On the 1960 federal census, less than 4% of the population identified as Latino and fewer than one million people identified as Asian. On the 2020 federal Census, over 18% of the population identified as Latino and more than 20 million Americans identified as Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander. The Republican Party has tried to use Affirmative Action as a wedge to divide ethnic minorities and potential Democratic Party voters. American diversity is now different and affirmative action policies need to be rethought, but racism has not ended and affirmative action should not be discarded. In 1920, after World War I, W.E.B. DuBois, published a revised version of his essay The Souls of White Folks. It should be required reading for Supreme Court Justices and those who question the need for programs like affirmative action. DuBois could have written the essay today. In this excerpt I include ethnic slurs that were in the original. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/5/2179393/-Supreme-Court-s-Rightwing-War-on-Racial-Justice Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/