Before liberals start doing backflips over the Supreme Court’s ruling against the states of Alabama and Louisiana’s bigoted voter district maps, a wary eye needs to be kept open. On the horizon is one of the most important decisions involving balancing the educational scales since it became legal for formally enslaved people to learn to read, Affirmative Action. The last time Affirmative Action was on the docket was in June of 2013. The court punted the decision back to a lower court—in a 7-1 ruling—against how the University of Texas’ affirmative action policy was considered. The court avoided what it knew would be another controversy after the Shelby County v. Holder ruling, essentially gutting the Voter Rights Act of 1965.
America needs to keep in place Affirmative Action as an arm of the body of reparations. Instead of being satisfied with a short month of celebration in February and recognition of a historical event in June featuring tv specials and cookouts, higher education has a financial advantage. African Americans are the only group not revisited once a form of reparations was established (40 acres and a mule) and reneged upon. It is evident that despite a few states’ movements to award cash reparations, the public will is not there. I have long proposed that a scholarship be awarded at birth for the descendants of enslaved people to be exercised within five years of their nineteenth birthday.
Coincidentally the same hindrances to college tuition forgiveness—why should someone get what I do not have, I anticipate would be the same argument against scholarships for black Americans. The duration of such a program and financial caps on the cost is up for debate, but the first step is acknowledging the need. Slaveholders realized that literacy was the most significant danger to the institution of slavery. Howard University political science professor Clarence Lusane wrote about the times; the belief was “ an educated enslaved person was a dangerous person.” It has long been known the conservative bent of the court has wanted to do away with Affirmative Action. Ironically, before the appointment of Ketanji Brown-Jackson, the only black justice, Clarence Thomas, would vote against Affirmative Action.
Justice Thomas, who admittedly benefited from Affirmative Action, once wrote universities only prize diversity “to obtain their aesthetic student body.” The insult of Thomas’ thinking would be to say that his predecessor Thurgood Marshall was only a symbolic gesture of diversity on the court, dismissing his long and distinguished accomplishments. Furthermore, Affirmative Action is less about admitting inferiority and more about recognizing institutional racism that has existed for four hundred and four years. Thomas, who once described the controversial hearings surrounding his appointment to the court as a “high-tech lynching,” is now quick to reject the prospect of correcting what has been an educational lynching.
I do not want to minimize the domino effect that hopefully arises from the rulings against racially gerrymandered voting maps in Alabama and Louisiana. At the same time, the reversal of Affirmative Action could mean the reversal of housing, financial and educational gains for many more years to come. Watch out for the Supreme Court.
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