(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



Wow, I knew this one would hurt, but... [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-06-29  

I’ve heard the phrase “gut punch” a few times this morning in discussions about the Supreme Court’s affirmative action rulings. I suppose I knew it was coming, but it didn’t seem to lessen the blow.

All I can say at this moment is that I believe race should matter in college admissions because, unfortunately, race still matters so much in our society. Let me give you just one example.

In 2016, a man was elected president who had essentially zero political profile just four years before his election. He began his political career by styling himself as “King of the Birthers”, and he developed quite the following in the Republican Party. This was no “dog whistle.” We’d been hearing those for years from the Republican Party. No. this was a hateful howl, a scream of white rage at the idea a black man had been elected president. It was the single most overt display of racism in our political discourse since the civil rights revolution of the ‘60s.

In 2020, this man lost a presidential election because of an epic collapse in support from the exurbs/suburbs, particularly among white women. He reacted to this loss by claiming the election had been stolen by election officials in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, and any other major swing-state urban area where black voters are disproportionately represented. He asked courts in each of these swing states to in effect disenfranchise millions of black voters on the basis of nothing at all. There was no evidence of fraud the could have effected the election outcome. This was the most racist action taken in the context of a presidential election since the Civil War. And, to this day, he enjoys massive support in the Republican Party and is the prohibitive favorite for that party’s presidential nomination in 2024. For these voters, disenfranchisement of blacks is simply not a problem.

During his four years disgracing the Oval Office, this man — this stone-cold, unabashed, racist piece of filth — made three appointments to the Supreme Court. These three justices were the difference in erasing and reversing decades of racial progress in this country.

And so race matters. It mattered when this racist rode to prominence on the “birther” fraud, and it mattered when this racist was elected president. It mattered when he warped the Supreme Court with justices whose hostility to affirmative action was as much a litmus test as their willingness to overturn Roe v. Wade.

But the Supreme Court apparently believes that although the issue of race pervades this society, we must pretend it doesn’t exist when we are considering college applications.

It really is just that simple for me. To pretend that there are not people systematically disadvantaged by racism in this nation, at the very same time one of our two major political parties is completely in thrall to an overt racist, is Alito-ism run wild.

I think this is CJ Roberts’s deal: we’ll swat down this ridiculous independent state legislature theory, and let you keep your democracy. But it has to remain a “white” democracy. That’s the deal.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/29/2178344/-Wow-I-knew-this-one-would-hurt-but

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/