The Supreme Court’s Wonderful Independence Day Gift to America

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All men are created equal.

— Thomas Jefferson, July 4, 1776

July 4. Jefferson’s most important words from our founding document. Words fully validated for the first time in 45 years, after a near half-century of affirmative action telling us that some Americans are really more equal than others. Affirmative action prolonged the unequal treatment of races that marked most of America’s history from slavery to ending Jim Crow laws with the 1965 Civil Rights Act.

The Fourteenth Amendment, passed in 1868 to make ex-slaves legally equal, says no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” In Chief Justice John Roberts words last week, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

More than anything this blog, “America from its multiracial edge,” is about recognizing America’s real progress away from racial bigotry toward multiculturalism. America is increasingly a mixed ancestry nation. An overwhelming 94% of U.S. adults in 2021 approved of marriages between blacks and whites, up from 87% in 2013 and just 4% when Gallup asked in 1958. And it’s not just opinions that have changed. In 1967, only 3% of marriages in the U.S. were mixed race or ethnicity; those rates had increased over five-fold by 2015. Among U.S.-born Americans of Asian or Latin American ancestry, marriage to a person with different race or ethnicity has reached 46% and 39% respectively.

Affirmative action is the enemy of melting pot multiculturalism. To justify elevating certain racial groups at the expense of others —affirmative action — one needs both a target (white) and friends "of color." Bi-racial Obama began as a uniter. But when he badly lost the 2010 midterms, he fell back on that old Southern Democratic saw: race-based politics. With a big twist, however -- not white over black, but colored over white. The more Congress obstructed Obama after 2010, the more reverse racism — not anything you did but something you were — came to the fore.

Affirmative action, in the words of fired CNN chief Chris Licht, may offer “[a] black person, a brown person, and an Asian woman that all graduated the same year from Harvard” a certain “diversity.” But that’s not people of any color or shade joining across class lines — rich, working class, poor — to form a real July 4 America rainbow.

I followed the advice of several, and read in full Chief Justice Roberts’ 40-page Majority opinion.

Here are key points, with page numbers:

from Harvard: “[A]n African American [student] in [the fourth lowest academic] decile has a higher chance of admission (12.8%) than an Asian American in the top decile (12.7%).” p. 5

The conclusion reached by the Brown Court [on desegregation] was thus unmistakably clear: the right to a public education “must be made available to all on equal terms". . . no State has any authority under the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities among its citizens. p. 12

“full compliance” with Brown required schools to admit students “on a racially nondiscriminatory basis.” . . after Brown, we began routinely affirming lower court decisions that invalidated all manner of race-based state action. . . Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it. pp.13-15

respondents would apparently prefer a class with 15% of students from Mexico over a class with 10% of students from several Latin American countries, simply because the former contains more Hispanic students than the latter. Yet “[i]t is hard to understand how a plan that could allow these results can be viewed as being concerned with achieving enrollment that is ‘broadly diverse.’” pp. 25-26

We have time and again forcefully rejected the notion that government actors may intentionally allocate preference to those “who may have little in common with one another but the color of their skin.” [W]hen a university admits students “on the basis of race, it engages in the offensive and demeaning assumption that [students] of a particular race, because of their race, think alike.” [T]he university furthers “stereotypes that treat individuals as the product of their race, evaluating their thoughts and efforts—their very worth as citizens—according to a criterion barred to the Government by . . . the Constitution.” pp. 29-30

“the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection lies [in] the simple command that the Government must treat citizens as individuals, not as simply components of a racial, religious, sexual or national class.” p. 32

the Harvard and UNC admissions programs . . . lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today. p. 39

universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today. [W]hat cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly. "The Constitution deals with substance, not shadows,” and the prohibition against racial discrimination is “leveled at the thing not the name.” pp. 39-40

Many universities have for too long . . . concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice. p. 40

The Court’s crisp, clear words overturning affirmative action are wonderful. Certainly so to Peter W. Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, founded in 1987 to oppose the Supreme Court’s 1978 Bakke decision that allowed for affirmative action:

[Diversity is] a deep matter of America’s culture war: indeed there is none deeper. Either we are a profoundly racist society that needs to be reordered top to bottom by those who possess the superior insight of “woke” radicalism, or we are a fair-minded republic founded on the principles of liberty and equality — and determined to treat one another according to our merits. The diversity doctrine was a wrong turn that took us nearly fifty years in the wrong direction.

Douglas Murray is another strong affirmative action opponent writing after the Court acted:

[R]ace above all else. . . is an ideology which has done profound damage to this country’s ability to achieve . . . America in this generation has led the way in obsessing about peoples’ personal characteristics[, prioritizing] everything except excellence. In the process we have done an injustice to people of all races.

We have called Obama “Affirmative Action Man.” His response to the Roberts Court Decision seems quite measured:

affirmative action . . . allowed generations of students like Michelle and me to prove we belonged. Now it’s up to all of us to give young people the opportunities they deserve.

Michelle Obama’s response is noteworthy for covering the principal affirmative action shortcoming awaiting those who benefit from it:

I sometimes wondered if people thought I got there because of affirmative action. It was a shadow that students like me couldn’t shake, whether those doubts came from the outside or inside our own minds.

She added she overcame her doubts through hard work.

An ABC/Ipsos poll early readout of the public response to affirmative action’s demise was positive:

A little more than half of Americans -- 52% -- approve of the U.S. Supreme Court decision on restricting the use of race as a factor in college admissions, while 32% disapprove and 16% saying they don't know.

But Ilya Shapiro & Renu Mukherjeet, two conservatives who oppose affirmative action, caution that we are far form hearing the last word on its demise:

As the last several decades have shown, affirmative action can’t fix the educational achievement gaps that exist between underrepresented minority children and their white and Asian peers, which open up years before a student applies to college.

this is only the end of the beginning of the fight for equality in educational opportunity. Higher-ed grandees have long interpreted the Court’s cautious approval of the temporary use of race (as one of many factors) as a green light for a permanent diversity-industrial complex. They will not go quickly into the color-blind night of merit-based admissions.

Chronology of Blog Entries on Affirmative Action*

Outline for Victory (III): Minorities*

Affirmative Action Splitting America

Affirmative Action is a bulldozer plowing under elite opponents.

Obama: Affirmative Action Man*

The Religion of Affirmative Action

The new religion: Affirmative Action Joins Climate Change

Maoism Comes to America

Overcoming Obama*

Biden’s “Equity” Belongs to Obama*

Joe Biden: Broken Puppet in the White House*

Obama Steps from the Shadows*

Taking Down Critical Race Theory

Wokeism is the New Religion’s Name