Affirmative Action Is Gutted, and I'm Tired of Defending My Worth

Back in high school, I remember vividly having to defend affirmative action as part of my final grade for my speech and debate class. I remember that feeling of having to defend a policy interconnected to why I deserved to be placed in my AP classes, and at the same time feeling hypervisible as one of two Black students in the class. Sadly, the same comments that were made about affirmative action decades ago are still mirrored today, heard by Black students in white spaces, but with much more spite and indignation. Years later, here I am again, defending affirmative action, but now as a mother of a soon-to-be college-bound daughter.

The cumulative effect of my defense of affirmative action can be summed up in one word: TIRED.

I am tired of the anti-Blackness that permeates the conversation whenever one expresses why they didn't get into their college of choice; tired of being the most vulnerable in the relentless fight for justice in a country that continues not to see my humanity; and tired of still having to explain what affirmative action is and what it is not after years of experiencing systemic racial discrimination within the institution of education. Now, once again, the work of so many that came before me has been undone, resulting in a looming future of further exclusion from the walls of private and public institutions of higher learning.

Today, the Supreme Court voted in a 6-3 and 6-2 decision against affirmative action programs at the University of North Carolina and Harvard, respectively, per NBC News — putting an end to the consideration of race in the admissions process.

Affirmative action was originally established in 1961 in an executive order by President Kennedy that included a provision that government contractors "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin." It was later adopted by colleges and universities to increase diversity in order to provide a significant, course-correcting antidote to the systemic discrimination that Black people faced, and still face, within higher education. Historically speaking, the main form of discrimination meant being excluded completely from attending colleges and universities due solely to their Black racial identity.

Since affirmative action has been in place, it has only barely scratched the surface of providing a true remedy for equitable access to education. For example, "Black students make up 9 percent of the freshmen at Ivy League schools but 15 percent of college-age Americans, roughly the same gap as in 1980," The New York Times reports. And when admitted, these students are often perceived as not deserving of their place, experiencing racialized harm at the hands of the predominantly white institution even before they have entered the classroom. "It was a shadow that students like me couldn't shake, whether those doubts came from the outside or inside our own minds," former first lady Michelle Obama recently wrote about her experience at Princeton and the stigma surrounding affirmative action.

The false notion that somehow Black students are taking away spots from other more deserving students again relies on anti-Blackness tropes, aligned with stereotypes of inferiority, as historically, white women have been the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action, as reported by Vox.

The recent Supreme Court decisions set a new precedent that will have grave implications for the future of higher education. These implications will continue to create more barriers of racial injustice in the pursuit of education, in what many consider the great equalizer within American society. Additionally, these decisions continue to undermine the infrastructure of the Civil Rights Movement, and the advancement of the rights of all historically excluded people. This ruling is a win for privileged white students, who often comprise the majority of legacy admissions as shown by a recent study about Harvard published in the National Bureau of Economic Research. With race now omitted as one of the many considerations of a college admissions process, institutions will become more homogenous, exclusive, white, and elite — just as they were designed to be.

On the not-so-upside, we can still be educated on how to give our lives to a country that refuses to give us access to an equitable education. That's right, race isn't banned as a factor in military academy admissions. As Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson noted in her dissent, "The court has come to the conclusion that racial diversity in higher education is only worth potentially preserving insofar as it might be needed to prepare Black Americans. . . for success in the bunker, and not the boardroom."

SCOTUS has also come to the conclusion that unbridled nepotism is more important in higher education than equity, as legacy admissions remain untouched in today's ruling, despite accounting for the highest consideration of preference within the college admission process.

"These elite institutions were founded upon exclusion, and this decision is yet another blow to Black and Brown students and their families who do not have the same access to college admission privileges, such as legacy or large capacity giving," Latoya Allen, educational consultant and founder of Admission Consulting & Educational Services (ACES) told POPSUGAR. "Without tools such as affirmative action, the opportunity gap in education only widens."

As our nation's history has shown us, in order for racial inequity to prevail, a white elite class and a Black underclass must be maintained. Once again, as it has been throughout the records of American history, today's SCOTUS decision solidifies the preservation of white elitism.