On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the greatest majority opinion ever written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts. That one-time Obamacare savior, who in 2012 rewrote the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate as a “tax” in order to salvage President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy, this time penned a landmark ruling abolishing something the Left has been clamoring to abolish ever since the 2020 death of George Floyd and the subsequent “Great Awokening” that rocked the republic: “systemic racism” in America.
Oh, that wasn’t the way Thursday’s huge news was framed by MSNBC talking heads and New York Times editorialists? Curious, that.
It is true that the corporate media headlines emanating from Thursday’s consolidated opinion in this term’s twin affirmative action cases, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard College and SFFA v. University of North Carolina, would have you believe that the Court did something closely approximating the opposite of ending so-called “systemic racism” in America. Those wokesters, “identity politics” enthusiasts, Ibram X. Kendi-esque “anti-racism” proponents, Al Sharpton-style race hustlers, and the addlebrained president of the United States himself would all instead have us believe that a far-right, reactionary cabal of jurisprudential troglodytes on the High Court “set us back” on the issue of race. According to this popular narrative, the SFFA opinion is positively nightmarish; John Roberts might as well be a reincarnation of Roger Taney.
The fact that such a narrative exists — indeed, that it is so popular — says a great deal about the woeful state of intellectual honesty, and indeed basic ethical decency, on the American Left. (That very much includes the two vociferous dissenters in SFFA, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.)
The outcome of SFFA, which mercifully overturns the Court’s muddled mess of affirmative action precedents going back four and a half decades, is every bit as much a vindication of the U.S. Constitution’s colorblindness as was last century’s epochal desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. The “sordid business” of race-conscious admissions decisions in American universities, to borrow from one of Roberts’ earliest notable writings during his Court tenure (League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry, in 2006), has been vanquished in the name of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Even preceding the Constitution, the very equality principle — “We hold these truths to be self-evident …” — of Jefferson’s Declaration itself has been vindicated, as well.
In what world is that fundamentally just result not worth celebrating?
Admissions officers at both public and private universities shall never again be legally permitted to explicitly take race into account when they make admissions decisions. If they do so anyway, they will now face personal liability and be subject for monetary damages. Sure, some officers will try to get creative and toe a very careful line, but how far can they really go when it is their own personal savings on the line? And as the chief justice himself clarified, in a delectable shot across the bow fired at Sotomayor and Jackson: “(D)espite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today. (A dissenting opinion is generally not the best source of legal advice on how to comply with the majority opinion.)”
SFFA is also a vindication of Justice Clarence Thomas, the greatest living American, who has been sounding the alarm on the perils of affirmative action for decades. As Thomas has repeatedly pointed out, and which he reiterated in his magisterial SFFA concurrence, the liberals and progressives who seek to “help” black and Hispanic applicants via affirmative action policies oftentimes do the precise opposite of helping them.
First, there is “mismatch theory,” according to which meritocracy-undermining affirmative action policies empirically harm matriculants and set them up for failure by matching them with universities not reflective of their natural skills and aptitudes. Another word for “mismatch theory” is “common sense”: Anyone who has graduated from an elite university with his/her eyes open, and who is not blinded by voguish “anti-racist” dogma, would agree with the basic proposition. Second, and more important, affirmative action policies cast a presumptive badge of inferiority on minority students who do matriculate at elite institutions, causing both minority students to doubt themselves and other students to view their peers’ placement there with skepticism.
Ultimately, America can either have “equity,” as modern wokesters use the term, or it can have equality — real moral and legal equality under the rule of law. This is a zero-sum game — only one vision of the American regime can prevail in our roiling, cold civil war. In SFFA, the only one of those two visions that is in line with our nation’s colorblind Founding ideals was the one that prevailed; the impostor race-conscious regime vision, which Democrats have championed as far back as John C. Calhoun’s antebellum defense of the “peculiar institution” as a “positive good,” has suffered yet another grievous blow.
As Thomas, a black man who grew up dirt-poor in the Jim Crow South, concluded in his SFFA concurrence: “While I am painfully aware of the social and economic ravages which have befallen my race and all who suffer discrimination, I hold out enduring hope that this country will live up to its principles so clearly enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States: that all men are created equal, are equal citizens, and must be treated equally before the law.”
In SFFA, the Supreme Court took a giant step toward making Thomas’ “enduring hope” a lived reality. The last trace of genuine, government-legitimized “systemic racism” in America is no more. Good riddance.
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To find out more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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“Supreme Court Ends The Last Vestige Of ‘Systemic Racism’ In America” It is about time!!!
In 1964, Congress passed Public Law 88-352 (78 Stat. 241). The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing. The Act prohibited discrimination in public accommodations and federally funded programs. It also strengthened the enforcement of voting rights and the desegregation of schools.
But the woke Democrat Party only used this Civil Rights Act of 1964 to discriminate against the people who were not people of color.
African/Americans have been given advantages in EVERYTHING over other people.
This Democrat Party is so desperate to keep the people of color’s vote that they are importing multi-millions of illegal immigrants who are people of color.
Note the disgraceful woke, puppet president Joe Biden’s speech, where he ignored the Supreme Court and said to continue to discriminate against Whites, Just do it through the back door.
Ever notice when the scotus rules in a dem’s FAVOR On something, they Opine about how “WISE” they are.
BUT when they get a decision NOT IN their favor, they are “Not normal, extremists” etc.
BUT WHEN Republicans have a decision not go in their favor, they usually say things like “I feel they were wrong”..?!
Winston Churchill once said this about Socialism and Capitalism- Winston Churchill said, “Capitalism is the unequal sharing of Blessings, Socialism is the EQUAL SHARING oF MISERY.”
And as Thatcher said, “Socialism works, TILL YOU RUN OUT of other people’s money!”
Scruffy_USN_Retired ”…This Democrat Party is so desperate to keep the people of color’s vote that they are importing multi-millions of illegal immigrants who are people of color…”
”SLANG DICTIONARY
double-edged sword
[ duhb-uhl ejd sawrd ]
March 24, 2021
WHAT DOES DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD MEAN?
”Literally, a double-edged sword is a sword that has two sharpened edges. Figuratively, double-edged sword refers to something that has both good and bad consequences.”
”Even a BLIND SQUIRREL FINDS A ACORN ONCE IN AWHILE.” -and so the American Minorities are looking at the Republican party to see if they will be a better choice for them as welfare rolls are overloaded already.
Author Unknown
” WHEN MINORITIES HAVE BEEN GIVEN PREFERENCE, BEING TREATED EQUAL SEEMS LIKE DISCRIMINATION. ”
AUTHOR UNKNOWN.
I forget who came up with that quote too, but it is SPOT ON here..
Finally, we have a Supreme Court which is beginning to understand that you cannot legislate morality, nor jam it down THE PEOPLE’s throat who are government forced to posture as if they are Soviet citizens who all know the real world of what they believe but can only communicate it to other citizens with a truth affirming wink or a nod, never the spoken truth, unless you want to be totally condemned as racist and treated like an enemy of the State. People see with their eyes and believe what they see no matter what the enlightened social redistributors of the truth and the wealth insist upon, enforced by a corrupted guilt inducing American Pravda Style Main stream media, who like used car salesmen “Assume the Close” in the sale of their damaged ideological goods and ideas not worth the price of going into debt for in the purchase. American freedom was ALWAYS about realized earned opportunity, not forced promised outcomes that never appear, after 4 generations of living the lie, that forced legislating morality that does not match earned equality could ever do anything but take the United States of American and divide it by skin color, and political party into the Divided Democrat debacle party run city states of moral corruption, and American universities founded on Christian truths that set men free, now becoming the prisons of the American minds, currently manipulated into collective American state sponsored self-deluded states of mental mendacity.
Let’s hope this bodes well, for the 2nd amendment cases in their path.
It’s a shame that something so obvious as recognizing the racist basis for “affirmative action” has to be a “stunning” decision by the Supreme court (with three justices dissenting). Any moron on the street with any capacity for logical thought would make that decision in 15 seconds. I wonder if all of our idiotic corporate leftists can take a hint and reject the premise of “equity” as a premise to turn the population into socialistic drones.
Remember, to the left, it’s only racsm if done towards blacks/latinos. IF DONE TO WARDS whites or asians, its ok!
Democrat Joe Biden once said, to paraphrase him, said , “IF You Don’t Vote Democrat Your not Black Enough
” Illegal immigrants are just undocumented demcorat VOtERS.” Author Unknown.
”The more often a stupidity is repeated, the more it gets the appearance of wisdom.”
Voltaire
Supreme COURT- ” Courts are unquestionably the seats of politeness and good breeding; Were they not so they would be the seats of slaughter and desolation those who now smile upon and embrace, would affront and stab each other if manners did not impose.” LORD CHESTERFIELD-1694-1773
The Supreme Court Justices are Political appointees Nominated by a political parties president, How could they not be political.?
As the quote says of the character of the politicians,” My politics, like my Religion, are the most acommodating kind…” To paraphrase this Quote.
If you are white you ARE justified to feel discriminated by blacks because you are – and you have every reason not to like black America – As Jussie Smollett case has shown for all of us to see its A VERY RACIST BLACK AMERICA pushing a very racist black supremacism and socialism that is influencing the behavior on these DAs and of the Democratic Party today and putting on display for all of us to see a culture that has been taught for the past 50 years in their homes and neighborhoods, hate and racism towards the white population – I have experienced racism and abuse from blacks Americans and im not the only one experiencing this abuse – people stop taking their abuse and its time to start calling it out and start calling out the racisms’ of a black community hell-bent at hate against the white, Asian and Hispanic peoples and excusing rampant crime by mostly black and woman
And about time! Affirmative action basically codified what had been banned by The Civil Rights Act, they couldn’t call it ‘reverse racism’ so they gave it a nice name. The fruits of which are very well documented, academia got its money but the the subsequent employers were burdened with employees who could not function at the level expected. This idea has been aspecially problematic for the Biden administration and the persons he has chosen (or been forced to nominate), the results have been dismal, agencies run amok, justices unable to define a ‘woman’, and lack of meaningful communicatiom at press conferences! WHAT A MESS!
” So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent and will devote themselves in the name of any number gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. ” VOLTAIRE
sotheseedsofliberty2 on 3:25 pm July 3, 2023 at 3:25 pm
WHAT DOES DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD MEAN?
”Literally, a double-edged sword is a sword that has two sharpened edges. Figuratively, double-edged sword refers to something that has both good and bad consequences.”
”Even a BLIND SQUIRREL FINDS A ACORN ONCE IN AWHILE.” -and so the American Minorities are looking at the Republican party to see if they will be a better choice for them as welfare rolls are overloaded already.
Author Unknown
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”SLANG DICTIONARY
double-edged sword
[ duhb-uhl ejd sawrd ]
March 24, 2021
WHAT DOES DOUBLE-EDGED WHAT DOES DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD MEAN?
”Literally, a double-edged sword is a sword that has two sharpened edges. Figuratively, double-edged sword refers to something that has both good and bad consequences.”
”Even a BLIND SQUIRREL FINDS A ACORN ONCE IN AWHILE.” -and so the American Minorities are looking at the Republican party to see if they will be a better choice for them as welfare rolls are overloaded already.
Author Unknown
”…Scruffy_USN_Retired…”
”…This Democrat Party is so desperate to keep the people of color’s vote that they are importing multi-millions of illegal immigrants who are people of color….”
Now, maybe, we will see college admissions based upon a students had work, studying and intelligence.
Maybe we will see a workforce that can add two and two without a cell phone or supervisor’s help.
Maybe now we will see an administration based upon competence instead of gender, sexual orientation or race.
Like a recent book title,” Race TRUMPS MERIT.” we get race based results. Or as John F. Kennedy once said, ” where opponents of CIVIL -RIGHTS went off the rails was when they (Justly ) demanded equal rights to ( Unjustly ) demanding equal outcome.”
Quote of John F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Vs Robert F. Kennedy. – “…Where civil-Rights went off the raills.”