Supreme Court ends affirmative action in US universities.

The United States Supreme Court ended this Thursday, June 29, the programs of discrimination positive in universities, in a historic ruling one year after the setback to the right to abortion.

Contrary to the opinion of three progressive judges, six conservative judges ruled that admission procedures to colleges based on applicants’ skin color or ethnic origin are unconstitutional.

“The student should be treated based on their experiences as an individual, not based on their race”, founded the president of the Supreme Court, john roberts.

Conservative magistrates believe that universities are free to consider an applicant’s personal experience, for example if he suffered racism, when weighing his application against others more academically qualified.

But deciding, mainly based on whether you are white or black, is not allowed, it is itself racial discrimination, they said. “Our constitutional history does not tolerate that option.Roberts added.

Following the civil rights movement of the 1960s, several highly selective colleges introduced racial and ethnic criteria into their admissions procedures to redress inequalities stemming from America’s segregationist past.

This policy, known as “positive discrimination,” has increased the proportion of black, Spanish-speaking, or American Indian students in classrooms but has always been criticized in conservative circles as opaque and racist.

The Supreme Court has ruled against quotas on several occasions since 1978but it has always authorized universities to take into account racial criteria, among others.

Until now, I had considered “legitimate” the search for greater diversity on campus, even if it meant breaking the principle of equality among all Americans.

On Thursday he made a 180 degree turn, as he already did on June 24, 2022, by annulling the federal right to abortion that he had guaranteed since 1973.

carmine on a pig

“This is a great day for America”, “We’re going back to everything based on merit, and that’s how it should be!”, Wrote former Republican President Donald Trump (2017-2021) on his social network -Truth Social-, who during his tenure clearly leaned the composition of the court to the right.

Conversely, the Democratic leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumerestimated that the decision “puts a gigantic roadblock in the way of greater racial justice”.

More restrained, Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States, stressed that “positive discrimination has never been a complete response to the need to build a more just society”. But “it gave us a chance to show that we deserved more than just a seat at the table.””, he added on Twitter.

The harshest criticism came from within the court itself, from the mouths of the three progressive judges, who disagree deeply.

The court is “reversing decades of jurisprudence and immense progress”, wrote the judge sonia sotomayor in her name.

“In doing so, the court consolidates a superficial standard“of indifference to skin color”as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society“, wrote.

Although universities are allowed to take applicants’ “personal experiences” into account, this is tantamount to putting “carmine on a pig,” he said, a phrase that means that no matter how hard you try to disguise something, it will always remain true. what it is. An equivalent to although the monkey is dressed in silk monkey remains.

Apple,Google

The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed in 2014 against the oldest private and public universities in the United States: Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

A neoconservative activist, Edward Blum, led an association called “Students for fair admission” and accused them of discriminating against Asian students.

He argued that Asian students, whose academic results are well above average, would be more numerous on campus if their performance were the only selection criteria.

After several defeats in court, he turned to the Supreme Court, which, ironically, has never been as diverse as it is now, with two African-American justices and one Hispanic.

But it has six conservative judges out of a total of nine, including African-American Clarence Thomas, a critic of the affirmative action programs that he benefited from to study at the prestigious Yale University.

The Democratic administration defended the status quo to no avail. President Joe Biden is scheduled to speak on the issue this afternoon.

Along the same lines, large companies such as Apple, General Motors, Accenture and Starbucks stressed that “having a diverse workforce improves performance” and that “they depend on the country’s schools to train their future employees.”

Source: AFP