July 5, 2023 Submitted by. James E. Claypoole
The Supreme Court has placed affirmative action as the primary means of student selection at our schools of higher learning directly in the wastebasket. Most people are sympathetic to the injustices forced upon blacks and other minorities over past centuries. One of the remedies which society contrived as a corrective measure to fix this inequity was to establish Affirmative Action as a primary component of the selection process for institutions of higher learning.
Clearly, this new court ordered mandate reverses the multi-year fiasco which began in 1978 with the Bakke decision, which declared affirmative action as an appropriate and constitutional selection process for admittance to our institutions of higher learning.
Universities are now required to consider the entire spectrum of a person’s intellectual ability as well as his or her life skills as the principal components for matriculation, not primarily skin color.
Since 1978, countless qualified applicants to many universities were summarily rejected in favor of minority candidates with lower academic credentials. The new verdict restores hope to many applicants to the college of their choice because admittance is now rooted on a level playing field. Gone is the confusion of a lopsided and pervaded application process, which for far too long, battered many otherwise qualified applicants into a state of scholarly oblivion.
The natural consequence of this illogical admission procedure caused many rejected students to be painted as racists simply because they were opposed to the Affirmative Action process. The question now is whether the administrative powers at our universities will accept the mandate of SCOTUS; or will they find ways to circumvent this decision in favor of perpetuating the flawed admission process of the past.
The leftist progressive crowd has been controlling our education apparatuses for years now. It will be interesting to see how they engineer ways to get around this ruling.
At the end of the day, I believe the great majority of Americans will wholeheartedly embrace this verdict…….one which many people have sought for a long time because it is simply the right and equitable thing to do.
I hope another case comes before the court soon which will extend this ruling to the private sector.
Many corporate institutions embrace a selection process based not on the most qualified applicant, but based on other factors in the interest of diversity. Diversity is good public policy so long as the applicant pool possess comparable talents, skills, social graces, technical qualifications, and other expertise imperative for the position.
After all, we want the Air traffic Controller candidates we hire to be selected on merit, not because of the color of his/her skin!
And the same could be said for cardiovascular surgeons, or members of Congress!!
Finally! Well stated Captain!
For decades, elite colleges and universities closed their doors to students of color. As a result, students of color remained vastly underrepresented at the country’s top-tier institutions. Affirmative action combats the effects of this discrimination by allowing colleges and universities to be more race conscious in the ways they evaluate applicants. Put simply, affirmative action ensures that colleges and universities provide opportunity to those historically shut out of the system because of their race, ethnicity, income, or identity. For this reason, it is critically important that policymakers and legislators work to protect the use of race-conscious admissions policies across the country. If not, inequality will continue to persist, and the American higher education system will fail to serve those that could benefit the most.
To the contrary, Mr. Claypoole’s opinions are essentially the same as those who opposed Affirmative Action from the days when the program first began. However his description of the program as “the primary means of student selection” is misleading. Race is but one of the considerations for an applicant. A black student from Shaker Heights whose parents are in a high income bracket would not be eligible simply based on his race, whereas a student from lesser means would be. Also, merit is an important factor for that student to be eligible. A strong work ethic and commitment to scholarship are also important factors.
I’m sure Mr. Claypoole would say that he is not motivated by racism rather the issue has to do with the unfairness of provided a benefit to one segment of the population that others do not have access to, and that doing so flies in the face of the Constitution. Such an argument is fraught with contradiction. For those familiar with Constitutional history, the Founders from the Northern states had to make concessions to the Southern states regarding race/slavery in order for the Southern states to ratify the new Constitution, so those who contend that the Constitution is color-blind, do not know their history. Race has been with us for a very long time, and those same Southern states that once insured that slavery would stay a part of the American economic model are the ones that squashed the rights of Blacks for a hundred years after they were supposedly freed after the Civil war. Call it what you will, but the Supreme Court’s decision to gut Affirmative Action is simply part of that grand plan.
After all our country has done to our black population over the years, giving black students a leg up is the right thing to do, the Constitution be damned.
As to diversity, which seems to have taken on a toxic image these days due to right wing attacks on wokeism. I’m sure Mr. Claypoole would acknowledge that his stint in the military, where whites and blacks lived in close quarters, was a worthwhile experience for him as well as his fellow soldiers both black and white. That same diverse experience in our institutes of higher learning can only be good for our country.