SCOTUS bans racial discrimination in college admissions

Two former US presidents disagreed strongly on today's ruling by the Supreme Court striking down affirmative action in college admissons, declaring race cannot be a factor and forcing institutions of higher education to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies. President Donald Trump wrote on his social media network that the decision is "a great day for America. People with extraordinary ability and everything else necessary for success, including future greatness for our country, are finally being rewarded." 

His predecessor, President Barack Hussein Obama, wrote "Affirmative action was never a complete answer in the drive towards a more just society. But for generations of students who had been systematically excluded from most of America’s key institutions -- it gave us the chance to show we more than deserved a seat at the table." A little problem with the structure of that last sentence doesn't prove that the Prez was himself a beneficiary of reverse discrimination.

The SCOTUS decision to which the presidents referred His predecessor  overturned admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the nation’s oldest private and public colleges. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that for too long universities have "concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice." 

In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas, who had long called for an end to affirmative action (and who happens to be black), said that the decision "sees the universities' admissions policies for what they are: rudderless, race-based preferences designed to ensure a particular racial mix in their entering classes."

Both Justice Thomas and Justice Sonia Sotomayor -- a Latina -- acknowledged that affirmative action played a role in their admissions to college and law school. They took the unusual step of reading a summary of their opinions aloud in the courtroom. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sotomayor said the decision "rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress." 

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court's poster child for affirmative action, called the decision "truly a tragedy for us all." She took no took no part in the case against Harvard because she had been a member of an advisory governing board. In the UNC case, she wrote, "With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life."

The vote was 6-3 in the North Carolina case and 6-2 in the Harvard case. The third dissenter in the Harvard case was Justice (((Elena Kagan))). All six men on the Supreme Court joined in the majority decisions. 

Further reading: "Democrats Devastated As Supreme Court Bans Racism", from the Bablyon Bee (of course!), 29/6/23.

VIDEO coming later today: Thomas Sowell on the unintended consequences of affirmative action. 

Americans too sensitive about race (etc) sez Supreme Court justice

In her extended rant against reverse racism, Mugged -- reviewed here a few days ago -- Ann Coulter makes mention (several times) of US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Ms Coulter implies that Justice Thomas is a credit to his race. (He is black.) She didn't actually use that "racist" cliché, but does point out that the judge didn't get his position on the highest court in America because of some affirmative action programme.

Justice Thomas himself had something to say on Tuesday about America's preoccupation with race. He told a gathering of students at Palm Beach Atlantic University in Florida that Americans today are too sensitive about race. Justice Thomas, the second "person of colour" to serve on the Supreme Court bench, lamented what he considers a society that is more conscious of racial differences than it was when he grew up in segregated Georgia in the days before and during the civil rights era.

"My sadness is that we are probably today more race and difference-conscious than I was in the 1960s when I went to school. To my knowledge, I was the first black kid in Savannah, Georgia, to go to a white school. Rarely did the issue of race come up," said the judge. "Now, name a day it doesn’t come up. Differences in race, differences in sex, somebody doesn’t look at you right, somebody says something. Everybody is sensitive. If I had been as sensitive as that in the 1960s, I’d still be in Savannah. Every person in this room has endured a slight. Every person. Somebody has said something that has hurt their feelings or did something to them — left them out."

In his autobiography, My Granfather's Son: A Memoir, Justice Thomas recalled his rocky confirmation being worse than his childhood growing up under segregation, writing, "my worst fears had come to pass not in Georgia, but in Washington, D.C., where I was being pursued not by bigots in white robes but by left-wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony."

Click here to read "Clarence Thomas: Society is overly sensitive about race", from Yahoo! News.