The Supreme Court only outlawed the kind of bias that its rightwing supermajority dislikes

The first thing you need to know about Thursday’s ruling by the United States Supreme Court, striking down the use of race in college admissions, is this: affirmative action affected a small group of people, and would have continued to affect a small group of people had the high court decided to leave it be.

Remember that we’re talking about elite institutions. Very few colleges are so picky that they must use race to cull applicants. As Rod Graham once said, most clamor for enrollees. Only the elites “are in a position to use race as a factor and choose some students over others,” he said. “Your average State U, liberal arts college or local community college does not have that luxury.”

The second thing you need to know is that all colleges, elites included, will continue racially diversifying their student bodies, because it’s in their interest to continue doing so. They won’t do it as they have been, now that the justices have decided. Indeed, the means will change. The goals, however, will not.

The third thing you need to know is that the Supreme Court did not outlaw affirmative action, as action in the affirmative is going to continue to be taken whenever the sons and daughters of the very obscenely rich apply for admission to the elite schools that their very obscenely rich parents went to.

This third thing is, I think, the most important thing.

The court did not take up the question of admissions policies that give a leg up to the sons and daughters of the very obscenely rich. It took up the question of admissions policies that give a leg up to nonwhite people. It did not ban bias, but a kind of bias – a kind that’s disliked by the court’s rightwing supermajority.

Bias in favor of the very obscenely rich may continue.

Bias in favor of nonwhite people must stop.

In writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts seems blind to actions taken in the affirmative for the sons and daughters of the very obscenely rich. Students, he said, should be considered on the merits alone, not the color of their skin. “Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice,” he said.

But students are never considered for admittance on the merits alone.

Harvard’s acceptance rate was 6 percent between 2014 and 2019. (By contrast, the acceptance rate of the University of Connecticut was 55.6 percent.) Of all the kids who applied, Harvard accepted less than a tenth. Of that number, the sons and daughters of the very obscenely rich represented 33 percent.

Contrary to Roberts’ belief, our constitutional history has tolerated bias and continues to tolerate it. The question is, and always has been, bias in favor of whom and why? For this court, the question is closed to nonwhite people.

Is affirmative action reverse-racism? No. It arose from the 1960s, a time in which one kind of politics defeated another kind – specifically, agents of the civil rights movement defeating agents of Jim Crow apartheid. The hope was to ameliorate some of the injuries wrought by slavery and its racist vestiges.

According to Allison Wiltz, affirmative action aimed initially “to ensure equal employment opportunities among contractors working for the federal government.” Instead of “retroactively mitigating discrimination,” she wrote, the Kennedy administration ordered contractors to “take affirmative action.”

In its proper context, one can see that the consideration of race in college admissions is the point of affirmative action. It is not reverse racism. It is an attempt to amend for the country’s long history of racial discrimination.

That’s the problem for affirmative action’s critics. Their aim has always been to replace programs, like college admissions, that were intended to consider race in an attempt to amend for the country’s long history of racial discrimination with programs that are “colorblind.” That way attempts to amend for the country’s history of racial discrimination seem like racial discrimination.

Americans have never been colorblind. We only makebelieve we are. With this ruling, however, the Supreme Court has given makebelieve the force of law. Not only may bias in favor of the very obscenely rich continue. Bias in favor of makebelieve must replace bias in favor of real attempts to make things right.