Ending affirmative action promotes a fair and free society

In our nation’s 247 year history, issues around race have been prominent. From the treatment of the natives, slaves and others, our voyage toward a more perfect union has been fraught with internal conflict. 

The impact of these disputes rippled throughout time impacting us until this very day. America’s racial history presents us with an undeniable reality. state sponsored racial preferences are divisive and descriptive. They bring us further away from our natural unity and cohesiveness. Americans recognized this problem and sought to fix it with the ratification of the 14th amendment. This reconstruction era addition to our constitution declared that all people are entitled to equal protection under the laws. The Equal Protection Clause has been a primary basis for challenging racial policies nationwide, ever since it was written from segregation to the rights of women, there can be no doubt that the law must be applied fairly and equally. 

It was on that note in protecting the rights enshrined in the 14th Amendment of our Constitution that the United States Supreme Court recently declared race based affirmative action in college admissions to be unconstitutional. That’s right. Affirmative action has always been a shameful practice that plagued our educational system for decades. 

The practice mandated racial preferencing and it perpetuated the very discrimination the 14th amendment was supposed to eliminate. Merit and competence should be the fundamental criteria in any fair and free society. 

Affirmative action, like all racist policies, sets people apart based on their racial and ethnic backgrounds. It divides us, it marginalizes us as a society. And this practice stigmatized some of those of racial minority groups, ethnic backgrounds, and it disenfranchised others from less preferred groups. 

It allowed faceless and unacceptable operatives to tokenize people of color. Although America has often failed to live up to its values of a true meritocracy, ending affirmative action brings us closer to being a society that upholds individual responsibility and merit. And this is good news. Thank you, Supreme Court. And if we as a society continue in this direction, then we can truly build a future where the content of one’s character is the only measure that is worth our time, worth humanity to consider. It’s why we live free. It’s why we live wholesome. It’s why we are responsible with our choices. We don’t need government to get in the way of us living our humanity.