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Will America Still Produce Black Professionals Post Affirmative Action?
It became public knowledge last Tuesday that this year’s incoming class at Harvard Law School included the lowest number of Black students it’s had in 65 years. Per Newsweek — “only 19 Black first-year students enrolled at the law school this fall — accounting for 3.4 percent of the total class, the data from the American Bar Association shows…the law school’s first-year class had 43 Black students in 2023 and 50 in 2022.” That’s a steep drop.
Last June, the Supreme Court ended affirmative action in higher education bringing an end to almost sixty years of the practice. The far-right Supreme Court ruled that “such policies violate the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution as well as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which is applicable to programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance, including most colleges and universities,” as reported by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. In short, the Supreme Court believes race-based affirmative action discriminates against white (and Asian) students.
Of course, affirmative action was needed in the first place because of the centuries of enslavement, segregation, and discrimination Black Americans have been forced to endure in the United States. Anyone with common sense knows that affirmative action was…
