From Pulpit To Public Square

In ending affirmative action in college and university admissions, the United States Supreme Court exempted the military academies from their ruling. That seems to be the case, because this nation values diversity in its military in general and its officer corps in particular.

The Supreme Court and those who approve of today’s ruling seem to forget that the military was severely segregated through the end of World War II. Even the illustrious Tuskegee Airmen served in all-black units because they were denied admission to the whites-only Army Air Corps. That changed only in 1948 after what can only be called Affirmative Action when President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9981 ending racial segregation in all branches of the military.

How can the court protect the value of diversity and maintain affirmative action in one set of schools while outlawing it in others?

The principle is the same in both instances. Racial and ethnic diversity can be achieved only by the aggressive actions of a country that spent hundreds of years working by law and by lynch mobs to exclude certain groups of people from advancement and opportunity. This is what hypocrisy and ignorance of history looks like in today’s ruling.

What makes this ruling so hard to accept is that five of the Supreme Court Justices have no understanding of this nation’s history of racial segregation. They were comfortably tucked away at elite, private boarding schools and colleges. The sixth Justice, Clarence Thomas was himself the beneficiary of affirmative action at both Holy Cross and Yale Law School. Now he wants to tear down the bridge that carried him from poverty in Pin Point, Georgia to a seat on the Supreme Court.

Today, we have seen the history of America’s racial divide on full display. We will still overcome, but the opponents of a truly multiracial society will not go away quietly.