America’s leading civil rights organizations condemned the conservative-dominated Supreme Court for ending affirmative action programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina on Thursday, with one top group accusing the high court of turning back the clock on the nation’s history of racial progress.
In a pair of rulings, the court’s conservative majority struck down the programs at two of the country’s oldest institutions of higher learning. But the justices did not completely rule out race in admissions programs, writing in part that nothing “prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life.”
“Today the Supreme Court has bowed to the personally held beliefs of an extremist minority,” NAACP President and Chief Executive Derrick Johnson said in a statement. “We will not allow hate-inspired people in power to turn back the clock and undermine our hard-won victories. The tricks of America’s dark past will not be tolerated.”
“Race plays an undeniable role in shaping the identities of and quality of life for Black Americans,” Johnson added. “In a society still scarred by the wounds of racial disparities, the Supreme Court has displayed a willful ignorance of our reality. The NAACP will not be deterred nor silenced in our fight to hold leaders and institutions accountable for their role in embracing diversity no matter what,” he added in part.
Johnson said another NAACP official would lead a group of students and activists in a “mobilization” on the steps of the Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, the president and founder of the National Action Network, said that the Supreme Court had “stuck a dagger in the back of Black America.” Sharpton, who hosts a weekend news program on MSNBC, defended race-conscious admissions policies as a bulwark against centuries of racial injustices and social inequalities.
“Affirmative action was a commonly embraced policy because it served as a…
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