During his confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court, now-Chief Justice John Roberts said the court’s role was to “call balls and strikes” and not engage in judicial activism. Oddly, SCOTUS has been judicially hyper-active of late. In the past weeks yet another precedent, bolstered by many decades of case law, was unceremoniously overturned. Affirmative Action (AA) in the college admission process has been the law of the land since the early 1970s, and passed its first Supreme Court challenge in 1977. Sadly, it is no more.

Per the ruling, colleges may not consider the applicant’s race as relevant for admission. Colleges are, however, allowed to consider–and give preferential treatment to–relatives of alumni. What’s wrong with this picture? Coming from a background of privilege entitles you to be, well, entitled. Coming from a background of slavery entitles you to get to the back of the line. But, they say, the students of color who are negatively affected by the ruling are actually from the upper middle class, so they will have lots of other choices of colleges. That might be true, but, they will be excluded from entrance into the ruling class. And note that five of the six members of the SCOTUS majority went to law school at either Harvard or Yale. This includes Clarence Thomas, who admits he was the beneficiary of AA, and he’s apparently still bitter about it.
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