2023-06-29 15:28:33
A year after its historic reversal on abortion, the very conservative Supreme Court has ended affirmative action programs at the university. A decision that will reduce the share of black and Hispanic students.
It’s a new 180 degree turn, a new historic step back for many progressives, and certainly a very strong new symbol from the benches of the Supreme Court, now firmly padlocked by American conservatives. A year after ending federal abortion rights, sparking helpless outrage from a majority of Americans, the United States Supreme Court on Thursday ended affirmative action programs at universities.
Its six conservative magistrates judged, against the opinion of the three progressives, unconstitutional the admission procedures on campuses taking into account the color of the skin or the ethnic origin of the candidates.
Many universities “have wrongly considered that the basis of a person’s identity is not their probation, the skills acquired or the lessons learned, but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that,” wrote the president (“chief justice”) of the Court, Judge John Roberts, on behalf of the majority. “In other words, the student should be treated on the basis of their individual experiences, but not on racial criteria,” he adds.
In her dissenting opinion, progressive judge Sonia Sotomayor, appointed by Barack Obama, on the contrary hammered that “equal educational opportunity” was “a prerequisite for achieving racial equality in our nation”. Today, this Court “returns on decades of jurisprudence and immense progress” and “cements an artificial rule of indifference to skin color as a constitutional principle in a deeply segregated society, where the racial question has always had importance and will continue to have it”, she also asserts.
Neoconversational activist
Several highly selective universities had introduced racial and ethnic criteria in their admissions procedure in the late 1960s to correct inequalities stemming from the segregationist past of the United States and to increase the share of black, Hispanic or Native American students in their numbers. These policies, known as “positive discrimination”, have always been highly criticized in conservative circles, who consider them opaque and see them as “reverse racism”.
Referred to on several occasions since 1978, the Supreme Court had prohibited quotas, but had always authorized universities to take into account, among other things, racial criteria. Until now, she considered “legitimate” the search for greater diversity on campuses, even if it means violating the principle of equality between all American citizens.
The judgment rendered this Thursday, which will force American universities to review their admission procedures, finds its source in a complaint filed in 2014 against the oldest private and public universities in the United States, Harvard and that of North Carolina. . At the head of an association called “Students for fair admission”, a neoconservative activist, Edward Blum, had accused them of discriminating against Asian students. The latter, who have academic results clearly above the average, would be more numerous on campus if their performance were the only selection criterion, he argued.
After having suffered several defeats in court, he turned to the Supreme Court which, ironically, has never been as diverse as it is today with two African-American magistrates and one Hispanic. But the high court has been profoundly overhauled by Donald Trump and now has six out of nine conservative magistrates, including African-American judge Clarence Thomas, a defender of the positive discrimination programs from which he nevertheless benefited to study at the prestigious Yale University.
“Deliberate ignorance of our reality”
The government of Democratic President Joe Biden had pleaded in vain for the status quo. “The future of our country depends on its ability to have leaders with varied profiles, capable of leading an increasingly diverse society,” said his representative. In the same vein, large companies, including Apple, General Motors, Accenture or Starbucks, had pointed out that having “a diverse workforce improved their performance” and that they “depended on schools across the country to train their future employees”.
Unlike the federal right to abortion, defended by a large majority of Americans, positive discrimination in access to university caused more divisions within public opinion. According to a recent study by the Pew Research Centerhalf of Americans say they oppose the consideration of race and ethnicity in college admissions decisions, while a third approve of the practice.
But the survey in question shows precisely significant disparities according to racial and ethnic criteria. A majority of white and Asian adults disapprove of affirmative action, while black Americans overwhelmingly support it, and Hispanics split.
In a statement released minutes after the Supreme Court’s ruling, the landmark Black American rights organization, the NAACP, expressed dismay: “In a society still scarred by the wounds of racial disparity, the Supreme Court demonstrated a willful ignorance of our reality”.
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