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The Supreme Court’s decision to stop the use of race in college admissions was not unexpected. But President Joe Biden has expressed his outrage, actually claiming the court has watered down the constitutional guarantee that “all men and women are born equal.”
Declaring the court not “normal,” Biden went on to argue that these admission decisions and Dobbs’ abortion decision overturned the profits he had secured “fighting the war in 1860.”
In an interview on MSNBC’s “Deadline: The White House,” President Biden said that the court said, “Constitutional mandate: We think these truths are self-evident, that all men and women are born equal by their Creator, I was accused of ignoring the content of “I was given by This was actually a reference to the Declaration of Independence, but what was most puzzling was the content of the issue.
Liberals lament series of Supreme Court rulings: ‘This really sucks’
Courts believed that by prohibiting the use of race in admissions screening, they were protecting that very “obvious” guarantee. The ruling erased what the court considered a clear anomaly in the case regarding the treatment of racism in education, not employment.
President Biden has accused the Supreme Court of ignoring a “constitutional mandate.” (Getty Images)
This was Chief Justice John Roberts’ best opinion in 2017. “The way to stop discrimination based on race is to stop discrimination based on race,” he declared. In 2006, Roberts also said, “This is a nasty business and it divides us by race.”
The court thought it had done a job begun (but unfulfilled) with the declaration that all men and women would be created equal in both education and employment.
The president is not alone in making such exaggerations. In fact, celebrities such as ABC’s Whoopi Goldberg have asked, “Will the decision soon result in banning women from college? Who knows?”
Actually we know. An opinion that refuses to use racial classification to determine who goes to college will not be taken by anyone as an endorsement of the exclusion of other groups.
The really baffling statement was Biden’s claim about the Civil War. By delegating issues such as abortion to the states, Biden claims the courts reversed what they gained in that war. The criticism was made in response to comments that claimed there was no room for racism in higher education. That doesn’t seem like an argument the Confederates would accept.
Biden has long handled constitutional history liberally. Many of us have repeatedly challenged his arguments in areas such as the Second Amendment. One of his most repeated lines is that the Second Amendment was passed with the understanding that certain guns would be banned, and he said, “When the Second Amendment is actually passed You can’t buy a cannon,” he added.
It turns out to be completely false. But even after the Washington Post declared that Biden’s understanding of the Second Amendment was erroneous, he continues to repeat the same erroneous allegations.
Now Biden has moved on to the Civil War, and his revisionism is as nuanced as Sherman’s searing March.
ABC’s Whoopi Goldberg says silly Asked Will the court’s decision “soon end women’s college admissions”? (ABC/”The View”/screenshot)
The Civil War did not end federalism or state rights. It denied the states the right to secede and ultimately fulfilled the pledge of equality first made in the Declaration of Independence.
There may be disagreements in good faith as to whether racial criteria should be used in admissions. But with these sweeping and false claims, Biden downplays our ongoing fight for equality.
In his interview the president also claimed “You have to look at how it’s being judged on a lot of issues that sometimes have precedents for 50 or 60 years, and that meant I wasn’t normal. ”
In practice, court rulings on affirmative action in education have been confusing and conflicting for decades. In 1977, in California Trustees v. Bakke, a court banned affirmative action in higher education. However, some consideration of race as part of the overall admissions process was permitted.
In the decades that followed, the court remained heavily divided. By 2003, in Glatter v. Bollinger, then-Judge Sandra Day O’Connor submitted a fifth vote in favor of the University of Michigan’s exploitation of race.
However, O’Connor writes, the court “expects that 25 years from now it will no longer be necessary to use racial preferences to further the interests recognized today.” That was about 20 years ago.
It’s also ironic to hear the president lament the reversal of precedent, as the greatest advances in racial equality were the reversal of Plessey v. Ferguson and the “separate but equal” doctrine. This was the Supreme Court precedent from 1894 to 1954, but few criticized the Supreme Court for overturning that precedent and eliminating separate or differential treatment based on race.
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The president also asserted that “the majority of Americans do not agree with many of the decisions this court is making.” The majority clearly opposed the Dobbs decision, but not the affirmative action decision.
There may be disagreements in good faith as to whether racial criteria should be used in admissions. But with these sweeping and false claims, Biden downplays our ongoing fight for equality.
Polls consistently show (including this week) that a majority of the public disapprove of the use of race in college admissions. In fact, voters in even the most liberal states like California have repeatedly rejected affirmative action in admissions.
We need to discuss these issues firmly and passionately. But rather than distort and weaponize our shared history, the president should seek to foster dialogue. This is a continuation of an earlier declaration that members of Congress who oppose his electoral reform to block state legislation are voting for “Jefferson Davis” and the Confederacy.
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Biden proclaimed a return to the “Jim Crow” South based on distorted explanations of these laws, even though the laws of states such as Georgia are upheld as constitutional. Even against these state laws, the claim was once again historically and legally ridiculous.
We should not allow the president’s distortion of the Constitution and history to become “normal,” as he describes the courts. We have fought hard to address the scourge of slavery and racism in this country. That struggle is still going on, but distorting the past will not address those issues in the future.
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