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“The intentions of this melancholy country, as concerns Black people — and anyone who doubts me can ask any Indian — have always been genocidal. They needed us for labor and for sport. Now, they can’t get rid of us.” — James Baldwin, speaking at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1979
After the Supreme Court decision that struck down affirmative action in college admissions — and potentially elsewhere, too — I have absolution on my mind.
As in, the act of absolving one’s self from guilt.
I once believed this conservative-laden court embodied the white evangelical id. Today, I see it more as a sort of stand-in for the white evangelical god.
Where some people look to God or good deeds to absolve themselves of sin or wrongdoing, white evangelicals have sought, and received, absolution through the gavel. Assurances that wrongdoing committed in their name is all water under the bridge now.
The social progress we’ve seen in the United States over the past century — in everything from voting rights to abortion rights to affirmative action — has repudiated the racist, sexist power structure imposed by white evangelicals that predates our country’s founding.
Now, the Supreme Court is telling Americans the repudiation has gone too far. On Thursday, the Republican-appointed justices said that — in the name of the 14th Amendment, which was specifically adopted to stem anti-Black racism — affirmative action on college campuses must end.
In their longing for colorblindness — a racial neutrality that requires us to ignore the role that race plays in present-day systems — the six conservative justices effectively excused white people from consideration of their privilege and oppressive power. (Notably, the justices left in place many end-arounds, including priority admissions for children of alumni and donors that overwhelmingly favor white students.)
Justice Clarence Thomas, an opponent of affirmative action who has benefited from race-based preferences in his career, wrote this in his concurring opinion:
[U]niversities’ discriminatory policies burden millions of applicants who are not responsible for the racial discrimination that sullied our Nation’s past. ...
Whatever their skin color, today’s youth simply are not responsible for instituting the segregation of the 20th century, and they do not shoulder the moral debts of their ancestors.
And Bloomberg reporter Greg Stohr noted that Chief Justice John Roberts, a longtime opponent of affirmative action, had satisfied a yearslong quest by drafting the majority opinion Thursday.
In his opinion, Roberts repeatedly bemoans the continued use of affirmative action at colleges, complaining that “no end is in sight” for such policies, and he suggests there’s no way for a court to know “when the perilous remedy of racial preferences may cease.”
It’s as if the justices are saying to white people — and white men, in particular: You’ve done enough good for the world. It’s time for you to do well for yourself.
When I think about these kinds of ahistorical affirmations we’ve seen handed down by the court in recent years — on voting rights, abortion rights and now affirmative action — I’m brought back to the idea of absolution, and of repentance. These are difficult things to achieve. They require introspection, self-critique, empathy for people you’ve harmed, and reparative action. And rather than engage earnestly in this hard work, many white evangelicals seem eager to ignore its necessity. And this court will help them.
But as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said in her dissent, willful ignorance of racism only makes the problem more acute. She wrote:
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. ...
It is no small irony that the judgment the majority hands down today will forestall the end of race-based disparities in this country, making the colorblind world the majority wistfully touts much more difficult to accomplish.
(I told you Justice Jackson’s dissents would make for some powerful truth-telling.)
At some level, I pity the white evangelicals who keep returning to the court, wanting it to affirm their 19th-century worldview. People who seek absolution but, with souls so barren, will never get it from any god worth a damn.
So Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito will apparently have to do.
As I prepared for this ruling to come down, I wanted to learn more about the intersection of race and religion. Specifically, people of faith who subscribe to beliefs that compel them to do good.
I wanted to share some words from Abraham Heschel, the rabbi and civil rights activist, that really struck a chord with me. He said in a speech in 1963:
It is not within the power of God to forgive the sins committed toward men. We must first ask for forgiveness of those whom our society has wronged before asking for the forgiveness of God.
Daily we patronize institutions which are visible manifestations of arrogance toward those whose skin differs from ours. Daily we cooperate with people who are guilty of active discrimination.
How long will I continue to be tolerant of, even a participant in, acts of embarrassing and humiliating human beings, in restaurants, hotels, buses, or parks, employment agencies, public schools and universities? One ought rather be shamed than put others to shame.