COURT DECISION A WIN FOR EQUAL PROTECTION

Last month’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling on race-conscious college admissions is a resounding victory for America. By overturning race-based affirmative action in higher education, the decision reaffirms our nation’s long-standing commitment to equality. As Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. concisely states, “eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

It is long overdue that we as a nation re-examine the meanings of such basic concepts as equal protection, discrimination and racism. Roberts defines equal protection as “doing away with all governmentally imposed discrimination based on race,” which is in line with the Anti-Defamation League’s current definition of racism: “prejudice and/or discrimination against people because of their racial group.”

However, in the name of diversity — an increasingly amorphous political fashion statement that connotes proportional representation — proponents of racial preferences have advocated for remedying past discrimination with present discrimination, which dilutes the definition of racism. In 2020, the ADL had changed its definition of racism to “the marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges White people.” That definition itself demonstrates textbook discrimination, which presumes the status of oppression or privilege based on race and skin color. The progressive case for “race qua race” (using race for race’s sake) has unintended consequences and feedback loops that inherently and inevitably lead to insidious racial discrimination. The ADL has since changed the definition again in February 2022 due to external pressure.

Thanks to the ruling, treating individuals disparately on the basis of race in college admissions is no longer constitutionally permissible, because racial classifications of any sort are fundamentally antithetical to the heart of equal justice. Five justices who joined Roberts in the majority opinion unambiguously argued against using “a mosaic of shifting preferences based on inherently unmeasurable claims of past wrongs” to perpetuate discrimination.

Rather than being a conservative rallying point, colorblind equality is both “defining statements of law,” as the court opinion explicates, and a broad-based public consensus. The American people, regardless of race, have rejected race-based government action: a 2023 Pew survey shows that only 33 percent of Americans approve of raceconscious college admissions, and over 9.6 million California voters rejected a proposal to repeal an existing ban on race-based affirmative-action in 2020.

Sadly, those supporting racial affirmative action rush to mischaracterize those on the other side as “allies of White supremacy.” And with a partisan fervor, they are committed to prolonging governmentsponsored racial discrimination, both directly and indirectly. Examples abound in California. State lawmakers are considering ACA-7, a constitutional amendment to allow future public policies “based on race, color, ethnicity,” which is in direct conflict with this latest Supreme Court ruling. In June, the San Diego Housing Commission started a pilot program that hands out up to $40,000 to first-time homebuyers who fall under the category of Black, Indigenous and people of color. In San Francisco, a consortium of public entities have rolled out a series of race-preferential guaranteed income programs, four of which are now being sued by my group, the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, and two individual plaintiffs. We are also challenging two race-preferential government contracting programs in Alameda County.

The Harvard and University of North Carolina ruling is only the beginning of an ongoing battle for equality. More efforts must be sustained to build public awareness and possibly a public consensus on what it means to be equal and what it means to combat racial discrimination. Even more needs to be done through policy monitoring, legal advocacy and voter education to ensure government-sanctioned racial discrimination is weeded out in all public policies.

To clarify, there is a commonly accepted definition of racial discrimination and that is racism to treat people differently on the basis of race. Any effort to divert, dilute and distort that definition is not only disingenuous, but also discourages the society from developing innovative and constructive solutions to assist its most disadvantaged members. Notably, 71 percent of Harvard’s Black, Hispanic and Native American students come from “the richest one-fifth of those groups,” exposing the irony of racecentric thinking. UNC’s new pledge after the ruling to waive tuition and fees for lowincome students, a policy that engages in race-neutral alternatives focused on individuals facing real obstacles rather than race, is a welcoming step towards progress. Need-based programs to help lift up individuals in education and other arenas are qualitatively better than race-based measures because they focus on real-life obstacles rather than immutable skin color.

In the wake of the court ruling, we can now turn to the real work of devising and implementing policies and initiatives to help those in need, regardless of race.

This ruling is only the beginning.