July 3, 2023

                                     

Advocacy groups chant outside U.S. Supreme Court in October as justices hear arguments in affirmative action cases that could affect university admissions. (Photo: Corinne Dorsey/HUNewsService.com)

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Howard University News Service

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Education officials, civil rights leaders, employers and students are debating the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s stance on affirmative action, which is forcing colleges and universities to brainstorm and implement new policies that ensure racial diversity on campus is consistent.

Janai Nelson, president and director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, reminded students and admissions officers that the Black story still matters and that diversity on college campuses is not an afterthought.

“While we are all disheartened and dismayed by this decision, we are also clear about the mandate we’ll have before us,” Nelson said. “And that is not to abandon the project of diversity, but to double down on it because that is what our democracy requires.”

“The court said nothing in today's opinion about a student or applicant not using their race as part of their admission submissions to explain their lived experience and to talk about how it has impacted their lives,” Nelson said during a press conference held by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, following the courts’ decision on Thursday. 

In a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court deemed race-based affirmative action unlawful, prohibiting colleges and universities from considering race as a factor in the admissions process. 

In October, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. In 2014, conservative activist Edward Blum sued Harvard University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill over their use of race-conscious admissions.

Armando Gimenez believes race played a factor in his acceptance to Columbia University based on the demographics of the Ivy League school in New York City.

“I would like to believe that I would have still been admitted into Columbia if they did not consider my race, but I cannot deny the facts,” Gimenez, a first-year student, said.

“Looking at the demographics and my fellow peers I believe race played a large role in my admittance, and I may have not been admitted if not for the consideration.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling affects not only predominantly white institutions like Columbia, but also HBCUs.

Howard University President Wayne A.I. Frederick fears the ruling will create an immense burden on HBCUs in terms of enrollment -- one too cumbersome to carry. He revealed those fears on CNN following the breaking news.

“Historically Black colleges and universities are carrying an outsized burden to diversify so many industries in America. We represent only 3% of the higher [education] institutions, but we are responsible for 25% of the bachelor’s degrees,” Frederick said.

“By not allowing race to be considered in admissions elsewhere, you can put an even more outsized burden on historically Black colleges and universities who don’t have the capacity to carry that type of a burden.”

According to a Best Colleges study, “an overwhelming majority of college students believe racial/ethnic diversity improves the social experience (62%) and learning environment (59%) of schools.”

However, the study also reveals that one-third of Black students are actually against affirmative action. More students from racial and ethnic groups than white students “report negative impacts of race-conscious college admissions.”

Though its intent may be to create opportunities, its impact, according to some Black students, has not been the best. Jerry Charleston, a recent graduate of the University of North Carolina, agrees to an extent, but believes affirmative action hasn’t been around long enough to access its impact.

“Although affirmative action has been extremely beneficial for the minority groups that it applies to, it has also had some issues in its productivity for these groups,” Charleston said.

Charleston does believe affirmative action’s intent to provide equal opportunity will not be reached because of the court’s decision.

“The problem now, I believe, is that it is being repealed severely prematurely before its effects can really be seen universally among all groups of people.”

“An even bigger issue is that it is starting with two schools that are historically ‘white legacy’ schools,” Charleston said. “It has only been around since the ’60s which is on average two to three familial generations of people who would actually experience the effects. That isn’t long enough to create a legacy within an institution or business. I don’t believe it has actually been around long enough to produce lasting effects or changes to overwrite a longer history of inequalities in education and occupation.”

Chief Justice John Roberts condemned Harvard University and the University of North Carolina in the conservative majority opinion.

“The Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause [14th amendment],” Roberts said. “Both 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 endpoints. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.”

The three justices who voted in favor of affirmative action included Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. Jackson and Sotomayor wrote fierce dissent opinions in response to the conservative majority.

“The best that can be said of the majority’s perspective is that it proceeds (ostrich-like) from the hope that preventing consideration of race will end racism,” Jackson said. “But if that is its motivation, the majority proceeds in vain. 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 added, “today, this Court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress.”

Sotomayor defended her claims with statistics from University of California, Berkeley. California was the first state to ban affirmative action at public universities.

“At the University of California, Berkeley, a top public university not just in California but also nationally, the percentage of Black students in the freshman class dropped from 6.32% in 1995 to 3.37% in 1998,” Sotomayor said.

The decline in diversity now seems inevitable, observers say.

Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce examined the success probability of six admission models. “When it comes to the goal of equalizing college opportunity across advantaged and disadvantaged racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups, there is no good substitute for the consideration of race,” the center reported.

Following the court's decision, Howard University released a statement warning of a ripple effect across the country.

“The decision will not only have a devastating impact on the diversity of colleges and universities across the country, but will also decrease access to higher education for students of color everywhere,” the university said. “Education is still a top driver of economic success for all Americans, and this decision will have far-reaching ramifications for those seeking equity in the college admissions process and beyond.”

Charleston said he would have applied to an HBCU if race-based affirmative action had been removed during his college application season.

“If my race, ethnicity or specific background is viewed as a hindrance by reviewers when processing an application, then I would rather attend a school that would accept the potential benefits and drawbacks experienced from a certain upbringing and see that the accomplishments of what I or any other minority are capable of are worth investing in to see growth, such as an HBCU dedicated to that very thing,” the recent UNC graduate said.

Gimenez said his decision to apply to an Ivy League school would have remained the same if race was not a factor on his application; however, his pool of HBCU schools would have expanded.

“If affirmative action was illegal, it would not have stopped my pursuits for an Ivy League college and Columbia. I would have applied to more HBCUs and put more consideration into my environment and peers.”

Proponents of affirmative action say the burden falls back on the Black race -- the Black race that shouldn’t be considered when education is at stake. However, they point out, race had a role in what water fountain one drank from, how long one went to jail because of crack-cocaine disparities and whether a hoodie deems one worthy of death.

So much, they say, for “post-racial” America.

Joshua Heron is a recent graduate of Howard University and reporter for HUNewsServie.com. He will be pursuing a master’s degree at Arizona State University in the fall.

July 2, 2023

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The National Museum of African American History and Culture opened its permanent home in 2016 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Among the museum’s many exhibitions is one that explored slavery and enslaved people in America through the lens of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello plantation. The exhibit, “Paradox of Liberty,” highlights two critical elements in American history. The first is the paradox of the American Revolution—the fight for liberty in an era of pervasive slavery.

The second element is the self-contradiction of the man who was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. When we look at national unity from patriotic and moral lenses, it can best be described by the paradox of five powerful words authored by Thomas Jefferson: “All men are created equal.” And yet Jefferson was an owner of slaves.

Jefferson was a complex man who was an oppressor (slave owner) while at the same time, he was oppressed by the British. He was a man who achieved a degree of freedom when the American colonies gained their independence from Great Britain. However, he chose not to extend independence and liberty to all his slaves when he denied their freedom after his death. There were over 600 enslaved men, women, and children during Jefferson’s lifetime on his Virginia plantation. Jefferson would set only two of them free.

As the facts of Jefferson, the oppressor, are disheartening, he wrote those five powerful words from the perspective of being an oppressed citizen at the hands of King George III of England. As our nation celebrates Independence Day, we should remember that Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence to inform a “candid world” about the “long train of abuses” the American colonies were subject to the rule of King George III. It listed and explained, in point-by-point detail, the “patient sufferance of the colonies,” which justified their reasons for public protest. With an unsuspecting world being part of his written audience, Jefferson exposed the truth about the oppressor and the truth concerning the oppressed.

The anger, humiliation, and pain oppressed people must endure (then and now) were evident in his words. He understood the divine rights of kings is the belief that the right to rule comes directly from God and is not derived from the people. It is believed that kings are not answerable for their actions to the people whom they are led to govern. As the author of the Declaration of Independence, a disrespected Jefferson was focused on King George III, who saw himself as superior to everyone. In his “No Justice, No Peace” message to the world, he made it clear that despite one man’s position as ruler and another as subject, in God’s eyes, Thomas Jefferson and King George III were both created equal as human beings. In principle, he stressed that the divine rights of kings were wrong. Despite being an oppressor, our primary focus, in this case, should be on the everlasting contribution of Jefferson’s written words rather than the hypocrisy of his immoral actions.

Jefferson’s words spoke for all oppressed people throughout all eras of time. To those considered “others,” he gave them fighting ammunition against men and women who considered themselves superior because of race, religion, class, level of education, gender, or for any unjust reason. Any type of injustice, unfairness, or social inequality cannot, in good faith, stand up against the moral weight of “All men are created equal.” Jefferson’s words were a deep commitment to human equality. They were ultimately used by future men and women to oppose slavery, justify the right of women to vote, end segregation, and fight income inequality. Despite Jefferson’s understanding that oppressed people will always need to be vindicated, as an oppressor and slave owner, he reminds us how America started and remains a nation filled with shameless hypocrisy.

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling in favor of striking down affirmative action and the consideration of race in college admissions is another example of self-contradiction, this time by Justice Clarence Thomas. While Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Ketanji Brown Jackson both benefitted from affirmative action, Justice Brown Jackson voted to uphold it, and Justice Thomas voted to strike it down. In the 1970s, Yale University followed an affirmative action policy to increase minority college admissions and achieve a goal of 10 percent minority enrollment. In 1971, Clarence Thomas was admitted to Yale’s Law School as part of its affirmative action program.

Thomas later became chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where he spoke of the importance of affirmative action. Thomas told fellow staffers at the EEOC that “God only knows where I would be today” if not for the legal principles of equal employment measures such as affirmative action that are critical to minorities and women in this society.” Thomas continued, “These laws and their proper application are all that stand between the first 17 years of my life and the second 17 years.” Both Jefferson and Thomas were self-centered men at times, but the contrast is clear. At least Thomas Jefferson gave future generations something to work with, while Clarence Thomas chose to take it away.

David W. Marshall is the founder of the faith-based organization, TRB: The Reconciled Body, and the author of “God Bless Our Divided America.” He can be reached at www.davidwmarshallauthor.com

July 2, 2023

 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Some legal analysts have assessed our current Supreme Court as being “the most conservative Supreme Court since the 1930s.”  The first question that needs to be asked is, “Who among us would want a return to the status that they and their people endured in the United States in the 1930s?”

 I’m guessing that the only people whose hands would be up would be rich white men. I cannot imagine any other category or group within our society believing that the 1930s was better for them than the current era. Not women. Not ethnic minorities. No one who is concerned with human rights, worker’s rights, voting rights, or the environment. That’s not to say we don’t have problems now, but thankfully, we are not living in the 1930s.

Speaking personally, I can certainly recall life in a “simpler time.”  Growing up in the 1960s and 70s things “made more sense,” from my perspective.  But that’s just it…MY perspective isn’t the only perspective.  I share this country with 332 million other Americans, and this planet with 7.8 billion other human beings.  It’s simply not all about me, my perspectives, my opinions and my wishes. 

Sadly, I think the current Supreme Court, and the billionaires who paid for them to be there, don’t understand that it’s not all about them! Rather than use the word, conservative, I think regressive is more appropriate for this court. Regressive means “becoming less advanced; returning to a former or less developed state.” Several recent court rulings have undone decades of established law simply because of the personal ideology of the conservative activists on the court.  Those rulings threaten to make us a less advanced and less developed nation. 

In life, things move in one direction. There is no rewind button. Life does not afford us the opportunity for reruns. And yet this court has determined that it wishes to revisit an earlier time that is largely unacquainted with the changes that have occurred in our nation and the world over the last century. That sort of backward movement is simply unsustainable and wholly undesirable for a significant majority of our fellow Americans. 

This is a direct result of the Supreme Court appointment and around 100 other judicial appointments, stolen from President Obama by Mitch McConnell and his cohort in the US Senate. Rather than fulfill their constitutional duty of “Advise and Consent” for court appointments, they simply chose to put their fingers in their ears and ignore the nominations the twice-elected President of the United States was attempting to make, because they wanted someone else to make those appointments. As a result, we have a court that is rendering rulings that are so contrary to the lives and wishes of large majority of our citizens that it is unsustainable. 

In an Op-Ed, I wrote in mid-May, “The Choice Is Ours,” I wrote “we can either decide that maintaining what we have, imperfections, and all, is worth preserving, or we can determine that since I am not getting my way, I choose to burn it all down, wage war in whatever form against my fellow citizens, and assume that whatever comes next will be better than what we have now.  I promise you that will not be the case.”

We must learn to share every aspect of this constitutional republic with one another. No one is entitled to dominate and have their way all the time. We cannot continue to go backward. That’s just not how life works!  We must return to some governing “norms” where everything does not play out like a knife fight.  Having one’s so-called “opponent,” lying wounded or dead on the floor is not a sign of victory, but rather, of an avoidable cliff that is fast approaching.

In the 1980s, in response to widespread violence in our communities, a collection of rappers came together to record a song of warning. The refrain of the song was “Self-destruction, you’re headed for self-destruction.”  Uh-huh…

Submitted by Rev. Stephen Tillett, Pastor of Asbury Broadneck United Methodist Church in Annapolis, MD, author of Stop Falling for the Okeydoke: How the Lie of “Race” Continues to Undermine Our Country, Political Analyst for The Lavonia Perryman Show (910 AM Superstation, Detroit, iHeart Radio, Apple Radio, Roku)

June 30, 2023

U. S. Supreme Court: Front row, left to right: Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and Associate Justice Elena Kagan. Back row, left to right: Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, Associate Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. PHOTO CREDIT: Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Defying more than 45 years of legal precedent, the United States Supreme Court – in a widely-expected ruling – declared that colleges and universities can no longer consider race in their student admissions, ending decades of an affirmative action push in higher education.

The court, dominated by far-right conservative Republican judges, voted 6-2, against the admissions program at Harvard University and 6-3 against admissions policies at the University of North Carolina. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, asserted that both institutions violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, thus rendering their programs unlawful.

This is the second time in two years, that the super-majority Republican court has reversed almost 50 years of precedent on an issue that had gone a long way toward leveling the uneven playing field for non-white students in higher education. The ruling – which came after a decades-long effort by Republicans – is out of step with the 63 percent of Americans who in a May AP/NORC poll - support Affirmative Action.

Reaction was swift and fierce, particularly from two liberal justices who rebuked the idea posited by the majority that programs designed to offset racism by increasing racial diversity are themselves racist.

“Gulf-sized race-based gaps exist with respect to the health, wealth, and well-being of American citizens. They were created in the distant past but have indisputably been passed down to the present day through the generations,” said Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in a blistering 29-page dissent. “Every moment these gaps persist is a moment in which this great country falls short of actualizing one of its foundational principles –the “self-evident” truth that all of us are created equal …”

Jackson sparred with Justice Clarence Thomas, who during oral arguments said college admissions have become a “zero-sum game” in which Asian students “suffer because of an outdated overcorrection by courts during the civil rights era.”

“This is not 1958 or 1968. Today’s youth do not shoulder moral debts of their ancestors,” added Thomas while criticizing Jackson personally.

“As she sees things, we are all inexorably trapped in a fundamentally racist society, with the original sin of slavery and the historical subjugation of Black Americans still determining our lives today,” Thomas wrote.

One section of Jackson’s dissent that caught fire on social media was her savaging of the court majority.

“With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat,” Jackson said. “But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life. And having so detached itself from this country’s actual past and present experiences, the Court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America’s real-world problems.”

Although the toppling of the law was expected, a wide spectrum of observers were left angry, distraught and frustrated.

“My frustration is the feeling of powerlessness and being unable to press a button to make things better. If I could, I would,” said James Haywood Rolling, Jr., chair of Arts Education at Syracuse University since 2007. “This outcome was set up by the fools who couldn’t play chess well enough to not get Donald Trump elected. He had no interest in governing ... folks allowed him to get the levers of power. There will be reverberations that will affect people we love and will continue to.”

Michelle Marks-Osbourne, a Christian minister, scholar and an equity expert, echoed Rolling’s displeasure.

“I am upset but I expected nothing more from this court. Just to know that this self-loathing man who spoke Gullah Geechee knows he has received so much affirmative action and voted in the manner he did,” she said. “I’m pissed, not pissed. I wrote on Facebook: ‘Dear Black students, HBCUs are waiting ...’”

Little will change for African Americans until the composition of the court shifts, Marks-Osbourne said.

“It’s not until the (high) court changes that this harm will stop. Alito and Thomas are two oldest on court. It’s a waiting game,” said Marks-Osbourne who grew up in Harlem but now lives in North Carolina. “I am aware that the court struck the law down based on race not gender. If it did, white women would be screaming because they are the beneficiaries of the most affirmative action.”

While encouraging universities to double down on new ways to promote opportunity, Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, lamented the far-reaching impact the court’s decision will have on already disadvantaged prospective students.

“Through a tortured interpretation of the law, history, and current-day reality, today’s decision threatens to make higher education less accessible, less equitable, and less attainable for students of color,” said Hewitt in a statement.  “While seemingly leaving existing precedent undisturbed, the majority’s logic will make it more difficult for all students to have a fair shot at getting the quality education they deserve, especially America’s most marginalized students. This Court is clearly on the wrong side of history.”

Republicans like former President Donald Trump, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and former Vice President Mike Pence applauded the ruling.

“I’m grateful to see the conservative majority that we have built on the Supreme Court of the United States bring an end to most of affirmative action. We want to live in a color-blind society,” said Pence, during an interview in Kyiv, Ukraine Thursday. “There may have been a time, 50 years ago, when we needed to affirmatively take steps to correct long-term racial bias in institutions of higher education, but I can tell you that as the father of three college graduates, those days are long over.”

Pence also said he’s grateful too, “that the Supreme Court took us one step back to that America that will judge every man and woman on the content of their character and on their own achievement and leave race out of the consideration of admissions to higher education.”

Affirmative Action supporters chastised the court’s radical right majority and rebuked Republicans’ hypocrisy and dishonesty.

“America doesn’t look like it looks by mistake. Old Miss doesn’t look like the way it does by mistake, Princeton doesn’t look like the way it does my mistake,” said Dr. Eddie Glaude, Chair of the Center for African American Studies and the Chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. “It’s the result of deliberate policy. And if we’re going into a world where we’re not defined by racial inequality then we have to be as deliberate in dismantling it as we were in creating it. Declaring color-blindness is not being deliberate.”

Glaude said America is in the midst of relitigating the 1960s and extremist Republicans in high places are rolling back all the considerable gains of marginalized sections of American society over the past 60 years.

“We’re relitigating the world that was created as a result of the Black freedom struggle, as a result of the women’s movement, as a result of the gay liberation movement and the court is clear where it stands on these issues,” said Glaude, during an MSNBC interview Thursday.

Anika Trahan said she is left infuriated by the ruling.

“I'm not surprised, but still very angry,” said Trahan, an IT Program Manager with a private company based in Silicon Valley. “The leaning of the court is what it is. But, given the information that has been disclosed in recent months about Clarence's and his wife's goings-on, makes his concurrence in this that much more bitter a pill to swallow. Additionally, and beyond the nefarious actions of this one justice, the level of willful ignorance of his own ascension via Affirmative Action is so ... I can't even find the words for it.” 

Observers fear that eliminating race as a factor in college admissions will inevitably lead to a considerably smaller pool of applicants if the past is any indicator. In the nine states that have barred race in consideration of admissions to their public colleges and universities, there has been a precipitous drop, said Georgetown University Law Professor Paul Butler.

“We’ve already known the dramatic and negative impact this will have from the nine states who outlawed diversity in college admissions,” said Butler during an MSNBC interview. “A brief presented to the court shows that Black student representation will go down to 2 percent. They overturned one of the most successful racial justice policies of all time.”

Butler said America is at risk “of returning to those old days when Blacks, Latinx and Native folks, who built this country, (will be) shut out of the opportunity to learn at some of our countries elite educational institutions.”

President Joe Biden expressed his disappointment while adding his voice to widespread criticism of the ruling.

“The Supreme Court is not normal. They have done more to unravel basic rights and basic courts than any time in recent history,” he said. “They are so out of sorts with the basic value system of the majority of the American people. Across the board, the majority of the American people do not agree with the decisions they’re making. Their value system and respect for institutions is different.”

Derrick Johnson, of the NAACP, was more forceful.

“Today the Supreme Court has bowed to the personally held beliefs of an extremist minority. We will not allow hate-inspired people in power to turn back the clock and undermine our hard-won victories,” said Johnson, the legacy organization’s President & CEO in a statement. “The tricks of America's dark past will not be tolerated. Let me be clear - affirmative action exists because we cannot rely on colleges, universities, and employers to enact admissions and hiring practices that embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion …”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor was defiant, warning her colleagues that this issue would not simply disappear, arguing forcefully too that the court is "entrenching racial inequality in education."

“The majority’s vision of race neutrality will entrench racial segregation in higher education because racial inequality will persist so long as it is ignored,” the court’s only Hispanic member said. “Despite the Court’s unjustified exercise of power, the opinion today will serve only to highlight the Court’s own impotence in the face of an America whose cries for equality resound.”