Supreme Court’s Opinion Will Have Profound Impact
By CHRISTOPHER MANION
The Supreme Court’s decision on Affirmative Action came down two weeks ago, but the dust hasn’t settled yet.
The case addressed lawsuits filed by Students For Fair Admissions, a coalition of students and parents that opposes the acknowledged discrimination against Asian applicants on the part of admissions departments at Harvard and North Carolina universities. Both schools, like thousands of others, had been openly using race as a factor in consideration of admission for years, favoring some races while disfavoring others.
The practice has gone on so long, in fact, that today it pervades every aspect of American higher education and the wider culture as well.
“Many 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,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”
While the word “racism” does not appear in the Court’s majority opinion, it played a central role in the dissents. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson took the lead, attacking the majority’s “idealistic vision of racial equality” head-on:
“The best that can be said of the majority’s perspective is that it proceeds (ostrich-like) from the hope that preventing consideration of race will end racism. But if that is its motivation, the majority proceeds in vain. If the colleges of this country are required to ignore a thing that matters, it will not just go away. It will take longer for racism to leave us. And, ultimately, ignoring race just makes it matter more.”
“Our country has never been colorblind,” Justice Jackson continued. “Given the lengthy history of state-sponsored race-based preferences in America, to say that anyone is now victimized if a college considers whether that legacy of discrimination has unequally advantaged its applicants fails to acknowledge the well-documented ‘intergenerational transmission of inequality’ that still plagues our citizenry. It is that inequality that admissions programs such as UNC’s help to address, to the benefit of us all. Because the majority’s judgment stunts that progress without any basis in law, history, logic, or justice, I dissent.”
Justice Clarence Thomas, voting with the majority, responded directly to Jackson’s dissent.
“Justice Jackson’s race-infused worldview falls flat at each step,” he wrote. “Individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments. What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them. And their race is not to blame for everything — good or bad — that happens in their lives. A contrary, myopic worldview based on individuals’ skin color to the total exclusion of their personal choices is nothing short of racial determinism,” he wrote.
Is Affirmative Action
Catholic?
When the Court’s decision was announced, the Association Of Catholic Colleges And Universities (ACCU), calling itself the “collective voice of U.S. Catholic higher education,” responded immediately – and defiantly.
The ruling “ignores the more-than-apparent effects of continued racism in our society,” the group’s statement read. “In doing so, it undermines the work that higher education has voluntarily taken on for many decades to be a solution in a society that provides too few solutions for this social evil. At this moment of U.S. history, the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities chooses to be guided by its Catholic Social Teaching and will, within the bounds articulated by this latest decision, continue to create paths by which those in society who do not have opportunity find it at our institutions.”
The group’s brief statement didn’t mention that America’s Catholic bishops had endorsed Affirmative Action three times in Brothers and Sisters to Us, their 1979 pastoral letter on racism.
“We call for the adoption of an effective affirmative action program in every diocese and religious institution,” they wrote. “. . . We further recommend that Catholic institutions avoid the services of agencies and industries which refuse to take affirmative action to achieve equal opportunity. . . . Finally, racism is sometimes apparent in the growing sentiment that too much is being given to racial minorities by way of affirmative action programs,” they wrote.
The bishops’ conference repeated the call in their 1986 document, Economic Justice for All: “Concerted efforts must be made through job training, affirmative action, and other means to assist those now prevented,” they wrote.
And where do America’s bishops stand now?
We don’t know.
While the Catholic college group condemned the Court’s decision immediately, the USCCB was silent for over a week.
Finally, on July 7, Bishop Joseph N. Perry, issued the Statement of USCCB Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism on Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Decision.
“Education is a gift, an opportunity, and an important aspect of our democracy that is not always within the reach of all, especially racial and ethnic groups who find themselves on the margins. It is our hope that our Catholic institutions of higher learning will continue to find ways to make education possible and affordable for everyone, regardless of their background,” he wrote.
Curiously, Bishop Perry’s statement made no mention of either affirmative action or the Court’s decision. We do note that the plaintiffs who brought the case were Asian, and in recent years, the USCCB has developed “Asian Outreach” programs in addition to programs dedicated to other minorities. Perhaps someone reminded the bishop of a passage in the 1979 pastoral letter:
“Racism obscures the evils of the past and denies the burdens that history has placed upon the shoulders of our black, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian brothers and sisters. An honest look at the past makes plain the need for restitution wherever possible — makes evident the justice of restoration and redistribution.”
A Conflict Of Realities
The views expressed in Court’s majority and minority opinions reveal opposing views regarding two fundamental concepts: nature and history.
The majority opinion embraces the view that we all share the same human nature — as Chief Justice Roberts puts it, “the touchstone of an individual’s identity” — and we should be judged by our “challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned.”
As Martin Luther King put it, individuals should be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
Justice Jackson disagrees, finding a “well-documented ‘intergenerational transmission of inequality’ that still plagues our citizenry.”
Justice Jackson embraces a vision of human nature burdened by this indelible class distinction with a classical application of the dialectic: “ignoring race just makes it matter more,” she writes.
In the view of the Court’s majority, at the heart of history lie the free choices of the individual. “What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them,” Justice Thomas writes.
In contrast, Justice Jackson embraces a vision in which class consciousness fuels the engine of history. In her version of the class struggle, the racist cannot erase his racism any more than he can change his race.
The ACCU objects to the Court’s ruling, invoking Catholic Social Teaching. Do these hundreds of Catholic institutions, including Notre Dame and Georgetown, agree with Justice Jackson’s radical views?
Our Catholic bishops certainly do. “Racism has rightly been called America’s original sin,” reads the USCCB website.
Sound pretty indelible, doesn’t it?
The Court’s decision has opened the door to a conversation that has been forbidden for years. While Barack Obama and the radical Left stoked division and anger, critics were casually dismissed as “racists,” “bigots,” “xenophobes,” and the rest. Argument disappeared, epithets ruled.
In coming weeks, we will consider the repercussions. They are profound indeed.