2023-06-10 19:12:25
Will American universities still be able to practice positive discrimination in the future in an attempt to erase the inequalities of society? This is the question posed to the Supreme Court, whose decision is expected during the month of June.
One year later the annulment of the case law which guaranteed, for half a century, the right to abortion in the United Statesthe American Supreme Court, with a conservative majority, will deliver other highly anticipated decisions in the coming weeks, in particular on the thorny issue of positive discrimination.
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In the early 1960s, John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) was the first president to use the term “affirmative action”, the English expression to speak of positive discrimination, which amounts to favoring minorities, to erase inequalities.
“At the heart of the matter is whether all Americans should have the same rights and opportunities,” declared JFK in 1963as the stakes grew with the civil rights struggle and the race riots.
More black students
In 1968, four weeks after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Harvard University, one of the most prestigious in the country, promises to increase the number of black students. A policy still relevant today.
Individuals should be judged as individuals, not as members of a racial group
If the quotas are prohibited in the United States, ethnicity remains a factor taken into account in the candidacies. This is what is being attacked today before the Supreme Court by the conservative strategist, Edward Blum, met by the RTS in his village in Maine, on the northeast coast of the country.
“You can’t cure the racial discriminations of the 1940s and 1950s with new racial preferences today. Harvard, Yale, Princeton: you have to stop using race in your admissions process”, calls the man who challenges the great American universities.
“Diversity under threat”
“No racial group has a monopoly on talent or intelligence, but some students have a better chance at the start, and positive discrimination helps to take this into account,” retorts Muskaan Arshad, a Harvard student, activist for positive discrimination.
“The diversity on campus has changed my life. I come from a very homogeneous and very white region in Arkansas, and coming here, with people from all over, has increased my confidence in myself,” she says. at RTS. “If things don’t go well at the Supreme Court, diversity will be threatened on this campus, but also across the country,” she adds.
The Supreme Court will decide, but the days of positive discrimination seem numbered.
Gaspard Kühn/jgal
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