In a critical ruling, the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina on Thursday, upsetting a 45-year precedent and putting an end to the systematic consideration of race in college admissions.
Ruling that the programs at both schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, the court voted 6-3 in the UNC case and 6-2 in the Harvard case, in which Justice Ketanji Brown was recused.
The decision could have serious implications on the college admissions process, with the NAACP calling it a “willful ignorance of our reality.” The effects of the ruling could stretch as far as race-conscious workplace programs.
Weighing in on “The View” Thursday morning, Whoopi Goldberg denounced the Supreme Court decision.
“The 14th Amendment is supposed to promise equal protection,” Goldberg said. “But if everyone was actually treated equally, we wouldn’t have had to put in affirmative action.”
Sonny Hostin added, “The group that has been most successful in accessing diversity initiatives are white women. When we’re talking about preferential treatment, we have to look at that. Are we also going to take away legacy, sports, people with disabilities?… Why is this just about race?”
Goldberg and Hostin’s conservative co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin offered a different perspective, responding, “Diversity is always a noble goal, and it’s always something we should strive for… But I think that we need a system that looks at the full spectrum of diversity more.”
In a press conference following the ruling, President Joe Biden said, “The court has effectively ended affirmative action in college admissions, and I strongly, strongly disagree with the court’s decision.”
Issuing a statement on social media, Michelle Obama wrote: “So often, we just accept that money, power and privilege are perfectly justifiable forms of affirmative action, while kids growing up like I did are expected to compete when the ground is anything but level.”
Representative Alexandra Oscaio-Cortez echoed that sentiment, writing on Twitter: “If SCOTUS was serious about their ludicrous ‘colorblindness’ claims, they would have abolished legacy admissions, aka affirmative action for the privileged.”
In a tweet encouraging people to vote in the upcoming presidential election, “Supernatural” and “Gotham Knights” star Misha Collins wrote: “The Trump Supreme Court just ruled against affirmative action at colleges. This will mean far fewer black students on campus… To argue that hundreds of years of systematic racial oppression doesn’t impact present day USA is blind to reality (or it’s simply racist).”
Nikole Hannah Jones, creator of “The 1619 Project,” wrote on Twitter, “An elite, white majority determining after just 50 years of weak, half-hearted affirmative action efforts, that they are the ones to decide that enough has been done to address centuries of explicit racial exclusion against Black people is the most American ruling ever.”
