Black students predicted minority enrollment at major universities will plummet in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday striking down affirmative action admissions policies.
Skye Alex Jackson, founder of the National Black Student Alliance, said she’d been dreading the decision and called it “backwards.”
“We have seen this coming for a long time, but it has been a difficult day for me as a student and it will continue to be difficult,” she told The Washington Times. “The court has continued to chip away at affirmative action and I am extremely disheartened despite trying to hold out hope that our government would protect Black and Brown students’ chance at equal opportunity.”
Ms. Jackson said affirmative action’s demise is a loss for inclusion and historically disadvantaged students.
“As a student to see this level of injustice and unfairness is disheartening as we are supposed to have a government that protects our opportunity to a higher education, not that tells us we don’t have a chance to succeed,” she said. “Taking away affirmative action, though not perfect, is taking away opportunities.”
The 6-3 decision struck down the policies employed by Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. The schools said they needed to consider applicants’ race in order to achieve a level of diversity that enhances the educational environment for all students.
The high court, though, said that reduces people to racial stereotypes, which violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing the key opinion, said students must be treated on the basis of their “experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race.”
“Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have 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,” he wrote.
The family of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. called the decision “unconscionable and infuriating.”
“The old saying, ‘kick them when they’re down,’ has never applied more,” said Martin Luther King III and Andrea Waters King, in a statement after the 6-3 ruling.
Former first lady Michelle Obama recalled her own school experience, saying she was one of the few Black students at Princeton University in the early 1980s and she wondered if people thought she got there because of affirmative action.
“But the fact is this: I belonged,” she said. “It wasn’t just the kids of color who benefitted, either. Every student who heard a perspective they might not have encountered, who had an assumption challenged, who had their minds and their hearts opened gained a lot as well.”
Okole Ngalla, a graduate school member of the National African Student Association at Ohio State University, said doing away with affirmative action policies elevates White students.
“This court’s decision echoes the incorrect sentiment that affirmative action disenfranchises White students in order to provide an equitable path for students of color, and the legitimization of this ideology sets a dangerous precedent for future admissions of minority students,” she said.
“Additionally, this decision only took into account admissions preferences based on race. Countless wealthy White students are admitted to schools based on legacies and donations yet they are not seen as affirmative action recipients. This proves that the court is not interested in equality, but maintaining White elite dominance in higher education.”
