The Supreme Court just acted to get rid of decades-long practices at colleges and universities that have been an illegal, unconstitutional, unprincipled means of discriminating against qualified applicants wanting entry as students. Some instead granted admission in accordance with skin color, which happened in this case to be Black, the exact opposite of white preferences that have assaulted human decency for so, so long in this country.
Philosophically, this thing called affirmative action joined the Jim Crow past in reducing humans to their pigmentation as the core of their being. Legally, it has done away with equality under the law. As a practical matter, it reduces the role of merit facilitating accomplishments. Emotionally, it has been experienced as a lifetime downfall for highly qualified applicants who arrive in all kinds of skin colors.
There’s an ideal behind it all, of course, namely to help lift Black Americans out of the racial discrimination that has constantly encircled them, leaving so very, very many so very, very poor and left out and cursed. But affirmative action, which got started under President John F. Kennedy, has been pursued through what itself is an unjustified, discriminatory technique of judging hardship and talent by what is seen on the surface instead of what resides deep within.
A principle, after all, is not something ripped apart for the sake of intended results but an attempt at fairness, justice, integrity and an improved society. Consider, for instance, that Black Americans are hardly the only poor people in America.
