As a teacher of a pre-law course at a local university, I was not surprised by the disappointing decision of the Supreme Court to strike down two University-administered affirmative action programs. Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard College, et al. For all its critics, in my view, affirmative action can work and it does fill a need. I graduated from Yale Law School in the early 1980’s and the only “affirmative action” I was aware of were for my white fellow law students who were related to famous politicians or whose families went to Yale.
Still, this article presents a helpful tonic to our collective obsession with selective colleges and how affirmative action, while needed, may have inadvertently led to “racial gamification.” I can tell you that I have been bested in court by adversaries who went to law schools you have never heard of. The Ivy League is wonderful–but there are many, many ways to succeed in this country; and there always were.
To the many of us who are saddened by the majority’s blindness to the legacy impacts of past discrimination, do the most important thing you can do, in every election (national, state and local): VOTE and get your friends and neighbors to vote. The recent Supreme Court decisions, striking down affirmative action, allowing a baker to not bake for a gay couple on “religious” grounds, overturning a much-needed student loan forgiveness program, and reversing established precedent recognizing a woman’s right to choose, were all made possible by former President Trump’s appointment of three right-wing zealots: Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett. Your vote is the only complaint that matters.
