Today's disturbing Supreme Court ruling demonstrates clearly the need for the very thing it strikes down: national redress for the ongoing legacy of enslavement, Jim Crow, and the court's 2013 disembowelment of the Voting Rights Act. In their dissents, Justices Jackson and Sotomayor told the truth that the majority has chosen to disregard.
"Ignoring race will not equalize a society that is racially unequal," Justice Sotomayor wrote. "What was true in the 1860s, and again in 1954, is true today: Equality requires acknowledgment of inequality."
And in the words of Justice Jackson, "gulf-sized race-based gaps exist with respect to the health, wealth, and well-being of American citizens…. 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 Court's majority has chosen to rob the country of its right to the truth of our own history, and in doing so, robs us of the most essential tool for building a just society. Affirmative action did not introduce the issue of race to the college admissions process; it served as a small and incomplete correction of a system that was designed to serve White people at the expense of everyone else. The destruction of Affirmative Action by a radicalized court moves us further down the road to a return of the worst forms of legalized White supremacy.
At the Center for Policing Equity, we are wholly devoted to dismantling the systemic racism that pervades this country's public safety systems, not least, its legal codes. Today's Supreme Court ruling underscores the urgency of our work, and strengthens our commitment to staying the course to advance the work of racial liberation.