Former news anchor Dan Rather slammed the Supreme Court's decision against affirmative action in university admissions on Thursday in a blistering substack post with Elliot Kirschner.
"We may wish we lived in a society where the color of one’s skin and one’s ethnic and cultural background didn’t matter, where we were solely judged by what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously called the 'content of our character.' But we are not there," wrote Rather and Kirschner. "We’ve improved, we’ve learned, we’ve made progress. But we’re not there. Not nearly."
"The Supreme Court’s ruling today largely banning affirmative action for race in college admissions is based on a fundamental distortion of American reality," they continued. "The court’s majority stipulates that the consideration of race as one of many factors in whom a college admits poses a grave constitutional injustice. To be sure, the tool is an imperfect remedy for centuries of systemic racial hatred, exclusion, and violence. But to measure its worth, we can’t ignore the history that necessitated it. Or the reality of what persists."
The fact is, they continued, "race has always been a factor" in the opportunities available to Americans — the product of centuries of laws and systems that robbed Black Americans of wealth and reduced them to an underclass. When it comes to freedom and equal justice, they wrote, "Black Americans, Native Americans, and other groups to some extent were the ones who were excluded. That should be the rightful historical framework for any court action."
The Supreme Court's decision today leaves open some minor avenues, like individualized consideration of an individual's story of racial prejudice — but the truth is, Rather and Kirschner wrote, much more needs to be done, much earlier in people's lives, to correct these injustices.
"Perhaps this moment can usher in a new era of commitment and innovation," they wrote. "Let us hope that we will now focus on creating new pathways for those needing to overcome the odds to reach the full measure of their potential. Doing so necessitates a much earlier start than college admissions. It means investment in health and welfare, a renewed commitment to public education, and opportunities for those of every race confronting the hurdles of generational poverty."
