Affirmative Action, D.E.I., Voting Rights, They Want It All – Addendum

A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual, not on the basis of race. — Justice Roberts Students for Fair Admissions Supreme Court Decision 2023.

The decision by Justice Roberts and the five concurring justices is what the segregationists have been waiting and hoping for since Lee surrendered to Grant in 1864 at Appomattox.

Roberts’s decision on affirmative action is not limited to college admissions. It has become the fulcrum for attacking all things related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. A case in point is Edward Blum’s organization, which brought the case Roberts ruled on that struck down Harvard’s and UNC’s race-based admissions practices.

The ink was barely dried when Blum’s organization filed suit against the Atlanta base Fearless Fund, claiming they were discriminating against white women because a program that awarded $20,000 to women entrepreneurs was discriminatory, claiming the contest was for Black women own businesses only. Essentially, this was a split decision as the Fearless Fund won their case at the District Level

Federal level but lost at the Circuit level and agreed to settle it. Some wondered why Aran Simone provided a very cogent business answer, as you can see from this link:

From a business perspective, Ms. Simone’s reasons have a solid business basis when considering all the problem elements. Some would believe she and her partners should have fought, but to what extent? As Ms. Simone pointed out, had they decided to fight, she and her partners would have to shut down their business while the case worked its way through court. And their work for women of color-owned companies would be in limbo. The decision she and her partners made was the right for several reasons.

The most important one, Edward Blum and his organization showed his hand from the standpoint of what and why he was coming after the Fearless Fund, which is pure subterfuge on his part, and other organizations who have the same nefarious motives to attack anything they feel promotes Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

As Sherlock Homes would say, ‘The game is afoot, Watson.’ The game I’m referring to is this: things have shifted in this country. The support for affirmative action, civil rights, and voting rights for nearly seventy years is gone. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, at best, is nebulous. The mood of the country has changed. It has become more self-centered, moving away from democracy toward autocracy, as evident with the election of Trump.

Do not be fooled; Trump and his billionaire friends want to undo our democratic republic form of governance into an autocracy with Trump at the head and various billionaires having control of different parts of the government. Just look at the people he is populating his cabinet with: Elon Musk, Tilman Fertitta, Warren Stephens, Linda McMahon, Jared Isaacman, Howard Lutnic, and Kelly Loeffler. Each of these individuals is a billionaire. Each of these individuals has something they want from Trump. It’s not the continuation of Civil Rights, Affirmative Action, or Voting Rights, and no way in Hell do they want Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

These are not people who care about a democratic republic form of governance. For them, giving people rights is non-conducive to what they want to do, dominating and controlling everything they see in their sight line. They believe this will enhance their bottom line and make them even more decadent than they are currently.

Trump hasn’t built a cabinet. He created his version of a royal court, the foundation for autocratic rule. It’s like a court of wealthy dukes, earls, and countesses. With this cast of characters, he has the means of keeping the Republicans in the House and Senate in line and having them write and pass legislation he wants. Any attempts made to buck their whims and desires by Republicans in Congress or the Senate will result in well-funded primary challenges against them as they have the financial where-with-all to do it and not miss a beat.

We will see issues around legislation that will be very interesting if not overtly outlandish, as it will likely be things around tax cuts for uber-wealthy individuals Trump has filled his cabinet with, the privatization of schools, relaxing or eliminating laws that impact their business entities and ventures, reestablishing racial hierarchy where discrimination along racial and ethnic lines will be the law of the land and rigid distinctions between haves and have nots, where arguments about equality and fairness are laughed at and ignored.

Essentially, what is happening before our very eyes is the disassembling of 250 years of our democratic process by a 78-year-old narcissistic man-child who has no skill in managing or governing and is obsessed with destroying our democratic process because he has evil in his dark heart.

What is most disturbing is that there is no reason for this occurring in the United States. Blum’s illogical self-generated crusade with his unfounded racist attack on universities and colleges attempts to rectify the decades of denying Black students to attend their institutions of higher learning because of their skin pigmentation. That in itself directly contributes to the wealth gap among Blacks. It’s the type of harmful efforts of individuals such as Blum who claim to be doing this for the good of the country. Still, in reality, it is to settle a long-term grudge or the belief in flawed racial superiority nonsense, which is nothing more than abject racism of the ugliest sort.

In 2022, Citi GPS conducted a study and made the following point on what racial inequity has cost the country in real economic terms:

“If racial gaps for Blacks had been closed 20 years ago, U.S. GDP could have benefitted by an estimated $16 trillion. If we close gaps today, the equivalent add to the U.S. economy over the next five years could be $5 trillion of additional GDP or an average add of 0.36 percentage points to U.S. GDP growth per year and 0.09 percentage points to global GDP growth per year.” — Closing the Racial Inequality GAPS, source Citi 2020

But not for this country’s racism, the government would have a far more robust economy that would have benefited the country on the whole. Image that. I can only imagine what things would be like if, as a country, we had taken a different course instead of the one it pursued, which has given us this continuing shitstorm we can’t seem to get out of.

Instead of embracing the diversity we naturally have, individuals like Trump use it as a weapon of division for their greed. Never wanting to see a Black person as their equal has placed this country on a path to Hell. Pointing one’s finger at a Black child, man, or woman and saying they are inferior because they are Black is a denunciation of God’s creation. It wasn’t God who implemented racial discrimination. It was humankind. Remember, we were made in the image of God and given the attributes of love, power, justice, and wisdom; for those who are religious, understand these are the attributes of the Creator.

So when Roberts wrote, “The student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual, not on the basis of race,” that is all any Black person wanted. Black people didn’t make it about race. It was white people who did. They were the ones who demanded separate but equal schools and teaching. Black and white children had no problem being in classrooms learning together. It was their parents.

Their parents had what I can only describe as a form of a nervous brain tick that kept saying to them that little Jonnie or Jennie would become less brilliant by being in the same classroom, sitting and learning from their Black friends. As if intelligence was a transmutable process, and their children would have it sucked out of their brains by being in the same classroom with Black children, and their precious little ones would become less intelligent by the mere proximity of their Black friends.

I believe this quote from Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folks says it best:

“The Negro dimly personifies in the white man all his ills and misfortunes; if he is poor, it is because the white man seizes the fruit of his toil; if he is ignorant, it is because the white man gives him neither time nor facilities to learn; and, indeed, if any misfortune happens to him, it is because of some hidden machinations of “white folks.” On the other hand, the masters and the masters’ sons have never been able to see why the Negro, instead of settling down to be day-laborers for bread and clothes, are infected with a silly desire to rise in the world, and why they are sulky, dissatisfied, and careless, where their fathers were happy and dumb and faithful.” — The Souls of Black Folks, W.E.B. Du Bois Writings Library America, p. 470.

So when Justice Roberts writes, “the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual, not based on race.” When considering what Du Bois wrote, Robert’s statement is ironic: “Instead of settling down to be day laborers for bread and clothes, are infected with a silly desire to rise in the world.” The silly desire to rise in the world, to not accept the only path for them, as Du Bois wrote, being day laborers, in our time that hasn’t changed much, but the opportunity to better their lives through higher education, something that should be automatic but denied because of their race, what Roberts willingly ignores, is every Black person in this country is judge based on their race.

The push by those who have always been adversaries of Affirmative Action, Equal Rights for Blacks and women, essentially anything that seemed to diminish their rights to do whatever they wanted to those who were not white or male, is the cornerstone of many of their problems for a simple reason. When they find out that they are not the most intelligent person in the room, or the most capable, or the most athletic, and that individuals possess those qualities, their mommy tells them such people are inferior instead of embracing and accepting the fact it isn’t skin color that makes a person intelligent, it is their intellect. One’s skin pigmentation does not generate intelligence.

Whiteness does not equal or generate intelligence. However, belief in it does and has given the country the belief that any programs structured to help Black people are dangerous and have to be eliminated by any means necessary for a straightforward reason. A sound and solid education provides the tools that allow them to determine their path and develop in a way they can gain wealth. Enough wealth could place them on par with their white counterparts. In a sense, this makes them equal based on their wealth, a concept many white individuals cannot accept.

Education is a tremendous equalizer. People know and understand this. It is why Southern states that practiced and implemented their version of apartheid, we call Jim Crow, made sure to deny that opportunity to their Black citizens through the fallacy of separation and not equal schooling in their states. Dilapidated buildings and woefully outdated textbooks, if they had books. As children of sharecroppers, they had sparse time in the classroom. And yet, many of them prevailed. They managed to learn, and many left and made their way into the world, becoming successful.

In her dissenting opinion, Judge Jackson wrote:

“The only way of this morass — for all of us is to stare at racial disparity unblinkingly and then do what evidence and experts tell us is required to level the playing field and march forward together, collectively striving to achieve true equality for all Americas. It is no small irony that the judgment the majority hands down today will forestall the end of race-based disparities in the country, making the colorblind world the majority wistfully touts much more difficult to accomplish.”

While working in Corporate America, I started this series from my experience dealing with diversity, equity, inclusion, and affirmative action issues. As a Black male working in an environment where I was often the only Black person in the various organizations I worked in, I witnessed firsthand what and how Affirmative Action worked and sometimes didn’t. I count myself fortunate the problems I faced were manageable. Still, I know from friends who had similar experiences that things were difficult for them, but their stubborn persistence prevailed. But, there was a significant factor allowing the success I and others had: the willingness of management to do the right thing, not always because they had to by law, but because they were decent human beings and recognized the evilness and wrongness of discrimination. Essentially, they looked at the content of my character, not my skin pigmentation.

With individuals like Donald Trump, Edward Blum, Stephen Miller, and a host of others, judging a person by ‘the content of the character’ no longer matters unless the person’s character is a mixture of hate and an overt sense of entitlement because they are white. All they care about is fulfilling their greed, satisfying their hate of all things related to Affirmative Action, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, wrapped in their warped view of Christianity. Along with believing Trump and pledging allegiance to Trump, foolishly thinking he cares about them and will give them what they want. Not only will we lose our democratic republic, but many in the country will internalize Orwell’s words: WAR IS PEACE; FREEDOM IS SLAVERY; IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, and all we have will indeed be lost.