Ricky Jones: Did you know the death of affirmative action is near?
President John F. Kennedy started it all in 1961 when he signed Executive Order 10925 which included a passage mandating government contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated fairly during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color or national origin.”
On the heels of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson issued Executive Order 11246 in 1965 which also included “affirmative action” language to quell long-standing racial discrimination in governmental hiring and post-hiring treatment. While both orders included references to creed, color, religion, sex and national origin, it was clear they were primarily designed to address the mistreatment of Black Americans.
Of course, there was pushback from the very beginning of affirmative action policies. Opponents have created social movements, political initiatives and court cases to right the supposed wrongheaded thinking of Kennedy, Johnson and others who came after them. Now the opponents of affirmative action are finally on the brink of winning.
Americans are an increasingly distracted, disconnected, anti-intellectual and ahistorical lot. That opens the door for all manner of retrograde behavior to win the day with few people taking notice until it’s too late. That was the case with the Supreme Court’s recent destruction of Roe v. Wade. Many Americans didn’t pay attention or simply didn’t believe it could happen. It could and it did.
Now it’s affirmative action’s turn to take that long, lonely walk to the judicial gallows. Yes, that’s right - many of you may not know it and others may not care, but affirmative action is about to be snuffed out of existence.
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Lawsuits against universities
Ironically, its downfall will more than likely begin on the same battlefield upon which one of the most destructive Supreme Court rulings in history was corrected, education. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas in 1954 overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 and de jure American Jim Crow racial segregation. Now, a nonprofit group opposed to racial preferences in college admissions called “Students for Fair Admissions” has successfully moved two important cases through the lower courts since 2014 and are on their way to the highest court in the land.
One case alleges Harvard University has discriminated against Asian Americans in violation of, get this . . . the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The other case involves the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It makes similar claims as the Harvard case but adds white students to the grievances. Both cases argue Black students are receiving unfair admissions considerations which harm other, more qualified non-Black applicants.
The historical affront here is glaring for those who know the Fourteenth Amendment nullified the Dred Scott decision of 1857 which said Black people were never intended to be citizens and had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment granted former Black slaves citizenship and equal protection under the law. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was also implemented to address discrimination targeting Black people and as mentioned earlier, Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 Executive Order 11246 gave it teeth with affirmative action provisions.
Now, both the Fourteenth Amendment and Civil Rights Act of 1964 are being used in legal arguments to do Black people harm. Or are they?
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Is affirmative action still needed?
My conservative friends say I lack the capacity to think reasonably and see things from their more logical point of view. I can hear them now. At worst, affirmative action was a bad idea from the start. At best, it may have been needed at one time, but that time has passed.
Why isn’t it needed now? Well, America isn’t perfect but it’s doggone sure better than when it started. This country has made a steady march towards being more just and equal. We should stop talking about slavery. It’s been 157 years since slavery ended. One. Five. Seven! Let it go.
The playing field is basically level now and we have successful Black people across the board to prove it. Oprah. Denzel. Serena. Beyonce. Jordan. Jay-Z. Kamala. Predominantly white America even elected a Black president, twice! “Obama, baby! Drop the mic,” my conservative friends will say.
Anybody can be whatever they want to be in modern America if they just work hard enough. Affirmative action is no longer needed, because racism against Black people just isn’t as serious as some want to pretend. In fact, preferential racial programs like affirmative action create many more problems than they solve. Get rid of it and we’ll crush the reverse racism we see in the college admissions cases in question. We’ll also eradicate the stigmatization of Black students and professionals as “unqualified” because they were judged by “lower affirmative action standards.”
Maybe my conservative friends are right. Maybe they’re wrong. Who knows? Either way, the uber-conservative U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear the Harvard and UNC cases this fall. When they do, its highly probable that the old affirmative action party will be over.
Dr. Ricky L. Jones is professor and chair of the Pan-African Studies department at the University of Louisville. His column appears bi-weekly in the Courier-Journal. Visit him at rickyljones.com.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Ricky Jones: Did you know the death of affirmative action is near?
