There is a haze moving across this country. Its visibility index has risen from foggy, gradual and subtle to limpid, rapid and overt. This haze was not created by Canadian fires. This haze was created in sequestered rooms, strategic meetings and halls of power. This haze is filled with social, historical, economic and political pollutants. In these pollutants are eye-scratching and throat-clearing reversals, upendings and annulments.
The Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action June 29 stated in essence that certain colleges and universities cannot use race as a metric for admissions. Specifically, it struck down affirmative action programs at the University of North Carolina and Harvard University. The vote was 6-3 in the University of North Carolina case and 6-2 in the Harvard University case, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recusing herself because she is a graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law as well as a six-term member of Harvard’s Board of Overseers.
To many people in America and most African Americans, this decision is viewed as wrong. It is regressive — taking us backward and not forward. It further undermines and insults the resistance, toil, sacrifices, torment and ultimate advances experienced by those in the Civil Rights Movement. Thousands of people were jailed, hosed and killed in the movement that made affirmative action a reality in America. Finally, the decision serves to weaken Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, which speaks to equal protection.
On Sept. 24, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued Executive Order 11246 extending the spirit of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that all people should be treated equally. One of the purposes of affirmative action was to offer access where there had been denials, closed doors and walls erected to exclude others. Affirmative action did not simply benefit African Americans; it helped level the playing field for all people who faced barriers and obstacles as they sought to access education and employment.
Why would we not want to open every door, create opportunities and develop pathways for all to have access? Why would we even remotely consider reverting to a dark time in our history where we were divided, angry, misunderstood and afraid of one another? What’s at the core of this gutting?
For several years, politicians, economists and futurists have analyzed the census data that reveals that America is browning and within 15 to 20 years, people of color — specifically African American and Latino populations — will be the majority and no longer the minority in this country. This new majority will be at the table with ambitions and aspirations. Is that intimidating to some? Does this make the ground shift for others? Does this inspire defensive postures? Sure, it does.
Watch and wait for it — what now looks like a scalpel approach to affirmative action will have hatchet implications for years to come. Removing affirmative action is the first step in many steps to usher in again separate and unequal. It is the first action in a larger agenda to deconstruct that which has been constructed for fairness, equity and justice. It is the first message that the dismantling of basic democratic values and tenets are under way.
There is still so much work the United States must do to address racial inequality in policing, voting, housing and employment. Yes, we have experienced the ascension of Barack Obama and Ketanji Brown Jackson to the presidency and Supreme Court, respectively, but discrimination, oppression and racism is relevant, rampant and real in America.
Inasmuch as it is exhausting to imagine the work ahead of us to course-correct the derailment of this decision, there is good news. The good news is that there is a historical playbook. There is a solid template. There are strong warriors who marched and protested in the 1960s and never left the battlefield. The good news is that there are countless young champions — Black, white and Latino — who have taken up the cause and will carry the mantle for access, equality and justice for all.
The Rev. Theresa A. Dear is a national board member of the NAACP and a Deseret News contributor.