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“This is not a normal court,” US President Joe Biden said on Thursday after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions. In their decision, the six conservative justices agreed that affirmative action amounts to unfair discrimination based on skin color, the three progressive justices pointed to the continuing imbalance of opportunity in the United States between residents of different backgrounds.
“Discrimination still exists in America,” Biden said three times in response to the ruling. “Our nation’s colleges and universities should be engines of increasing opportunity through social mobility. But today, this is too often not the case.
Affirmative action, Biden pointed out, is discrimination in favor of students from underrepresented groups in higher education, who, like all other students, have met other admission requirements, such as high grades. or a good test. These groups certainly do not include Asian Americans. They are overrepresented in universities, and surveys show they are less enthusiastic about affirmative action than black or Hispanic students.
“An idea informs injustice”
In a country with a long and painful history of institutional racism and a long and painful history of its denial, the ruling is a milestone, as are the precedents for arguing that the ability to consider ethnicity in admissions was in accordance with the constitution.
The last time the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on this was in 2016, when a majority still believed affirmative action was legal. But that was before President Donald Trump could name three conservative justices to the court in a row. The former president therefore called the latest statement a “great day for the country”.
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Read also: US court: Education can no longer ‘positively’ discriminate on the basis of ethnicity or race
Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the decision, endorsed an earlier decision in which a white student successfully challenged his rejection at the University of California. At the time, four judges advocated affirmative action as a remedy against discrimination in society. But the majority of the five judges considered that this was an insufficient reason to authorize discrimination based on origin.
One wrote that it suggested a “shapeless idea of injustice that could go back indefinitely into the past”. This, he said, cannot justify “racial classification that penalizes some people who bear no responsibility for the injustices allegedly suffered by those who benefited from admissions programs” – denoting affirmative action.
“Many universities have for too long erroneously concluded that the pillar of an individual’s identity is not the barriers they have overcome, the skills they have acquired or the lessons they have learned, but the color of his skin,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.
Accordingly, the fundamental distinction between conservative and progressive views on inequality in society was given unambiguous formulation in the Court’s decision. The conservative majority does not want to know about the structural discrimination against black Americans in particular – the group that is relatively least represented in higher education in states where affirmative action has already been banned and, in part in because of this, is also relatively lagging behind in terms of income during the year their lives. She only sees individual discrimination that falls under the “overcoming of barriers”, and universities are still authorized by the Court to take these qualities into account.
stubbornly separated
At the other end of the spectrum, progressive politicians and lobby groups point to the still substantial disadvantage of African Americans in society. “This Court,” Judge Sonya Sotomayor wrote in a dismissal of the decision, “is elevating a superficial rule of color blindness to a constitutional principle in a stubbornly segregated society in which race has always played and still plays a role. important role.”
In a response, Barack and his wife Michelle Obama wrote that they regretted the decision. Affirmative action, the former president wrote, “has made many generations of students, including Michelle’s and mine, feel included.” Michelle Obama wrote, “We often accept that money, power, and privilege are fully justifiable forms of affirmative action, while children like me are expected to compete on a less than level playing field. .
President Biden called on universities to persevere in their quest for diversity within their student population. “What I’m proposing is a new standard, where the board takes into account the issues the student has overcome before reporting back to the pool of suitably qualified applicants.” With which Biden came very close to the letter of the Court’s decision, but was very far from it in spirit.
A version of this article also appeared in the July 1, 2023 issue.
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