On the 28th of August, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr stood on the marble steps of the Lincoln Memorial, one century after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and gave his infamous ‘I have a dream’ speech, including those memorable words:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Today, that’s seeing fruition as the Supreme Court voted to end the affirmative action programs at UNC and Harvard in a 6-3 decision with Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Brown Jackson dissenting. These two cases, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina, and Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College were two of the “big” cases left in the current term.

Voting that those programs unlawfully violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection clause, the Supreme Court decision rendered null decades of precedent that emboldened those who believe melanin content in the epidermal layer somehow transferred to a person’s entitled them to a higher education than their intellectual aptitude.

That being said, Justice Roberts did say:

“nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise.”

Individual assessment. Who’d have think it? Instead of treating a group of people based on the same box(es) they’ve checked, looking at their individual experiences and circumstances – and not just of white kids, or even black kids. There are a whole plethora of other shades out there.

Colleges accept applicants based on their grade history, their extracurricular activities, and their community involvement. ‘How dark is your tan’ should never be included in those factors, and Justice Clarence Thomas refuses to assume that black people are a “seemingly perpetual inferior caste.”

Justice Clarence Thomas blasts Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's arguments in his concurrence:

KBJ "locks blacks into a seemingly perpetual inferior caste. Such a view is irrational; it is an insult to individual achievement and cancerous to young minds seeking to push through… pic.twitter.com/c3fUQPWETP

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) June 29, 2023

According to PEW Research, most Asians are against affirmative action (76% of adults polled) and don’t think ethnicity or race should be a factor in college admissions, due in large part to their overrepresentation when based on testing scores.

At the end of the day, either you want to be placed into categorized boxes based on skin tone, or you want all people to be treated equally. You can’t want some people to be more equal than others.

After all, racism is racism, and Affirmative Action is racism.

Featured image via succo on Pixabay, cropped, Pixabay license