How The Overturn on Affirmative Action Ties into Why Some Black Americans Don’t Celebrate the 4th of July
As I am writing this, it is currently the famed day in the U.S.’s history known as the Fourth of July. I can hear eruptions of fireworks, detonating in the name of burgers, bald eagles, liberty, and in the names of the founding fathers of this country separating from the tyranny of the monarchy. People are having cookouts, celebrating nearly two hundred and fifty years of continuous freedom for every citizen of the United States.
And yet, freedom for all was one thing that wasn’t explored in the early days of the United States, something that wasn’t even considered to be needed to be explored, for those who didn’t have it was decidedly not even human beings and were not treated as such by those who believed they were of a higher race.
Though, as the years went on, progress was made. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued, and African Americans were supposedly given their freedom, with the stroke of a pen. They were given amnesty for the color of their skin, for the sins of being black.
And yet, 160 years later, African Americans are still the targets of outright racism, whether it be being slaughtered in the streets by the people who proclaim they protect, or as recently as one week ago when 60 years of progress for education for underrepresented communities was struck down with the Supreme Court’s all holy gavel.
Affirmative Action
The recent overturn of Affirmative Action by the Supreme Court sets back decades of progress in an instant. Some people argue that the ban on Affirmative Action is a step in the right direction, stating that the U.C. system, which has held up a ban on Affirmative Action for almost 30 years, had its most diverse freshman class in 2021. These same people somehow forget what happened to Black and Latino enrollment at UCs the year it was initially instated.
That year, enrollment among Black and Latino students at UCLA and UC Berkeley fell by 40%, according to a 2020 study by Zachary Bleemer, an assistant professor of economics at Yale and a research associate at U.C. Berkeley. As a result of the ban, Bleemer found that Black and Latino students who might have gotten into those two top schools but were rejected because of the ban enrolled at less competitive campuses.
“If you follow them into the labor market, for the subsequent 15 or 20 years, they’re earning about 5% lower wages than they would have earned if they’d had access to more selective universities under affirmative action,” Bleemer said.
Not only did the ban exclude thousands of Black and Latino students from top universities, handicap them resume-wise, and lower their wages by a very visible amount for the rest of their lives, it led them to be discouraged to try and apply to schools where minorities were underrepresented.
“Most do not want to attend a university where there’s not a critical mass of same race peers,” said Mitchell Chang, the associate vice chancellor of equity, diversity and inclusion at UCLA. That’s because attending a school made less diverse by an affirmative action ban, “puts them at greater risk of being stereotyped and being isolated,” he said.
There is no telling how the decision on Affirmative Action will pan out, but based on previous data, there is a very likely path in which thousands of kids’ lives are going to be impacted heavily, and in all likelihood, for the rest of their lives.
Oxford’s English Dictionary defines “free” as “not under the control or in the power of another; able to act or be done as one wishes.”
Free? What freedom is there in being racially discriminated against in one of the most pivotal milestones in your life, and living a life of less from there onward because of it? The rest of your life was impacted because a few people in power in the U.C. admissions offices hid behind a document that granted them a free pass to sustain the generational hate and racism that has targeted African American communities for roughly four centuries.
Justices Barrett, Kavanaugh, Thomas, Gorsuch, Alito, and Roberts should all be ashamed of themselves. This is not what the American public should look for in its hour of need, a court that is a testament to and upholds the racism that Black America has faced since the first African Americans stepped on the shore at Old Point Comfort in Virginia.
If you were to tell me with a straight face that these people should uphold the name of freedom of the country that has hated, discriminated against, and at a point enslaved them, I would probably laugh in your face.
“When you think of how those in power controlled and manipulated the mindsets of the enslaved for material gain, it’s sickening and disheartening. So, while the government said that all men were created equal, the reality was that the state of the nation was only being changed for certain people. For that reason, the Fourth of July has always been complicated for me,” said Karen Greene Braithwaite, an African American who doesn’t celebrate the Fourth of July.
The controversy over the Fourth of July is perfectly encapsulated in the quote above. The African American community was manipulated and enslaved for monetary gain, from which’s progress laid the foundation for the country that hated them, slaughtered them, and proclaimed that liberty, justice, and democracy for all is what the United States stands for.
All of this reminds me of an excerpt I read while doing research for this article from Frederick Douglasses’ 1852 poem, “What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?”
What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.
Echoing the very words of those who protest the overturning of Affirmative Action, Frederick Douglass spoke the truth and nothing but it. And yet, we have to ask ourselves, why are we still fighting for the same things after so many years? Why does a quote from before the Civil War feel so relevant to the current situation of the same group of people in the same country?
The system is and always has failed the African American community, but at this point in the progression of DEIJ in America, it is still stunning to see the setbacks that are being made by the people who supposedly uphold the highest level of justice in the nation. The African American community should have no obligation to carry an unrequited love to this country, and especially to a day that, in part, celebrates the hypocrisy of the supposed pillars of American democracy.
Works Cited
Bowman, Emma. “Here’s what happened when affirmative action ended at California public colleges.” NPR, 30 June 2023, https://www.npr.org/2023/06/30/1185226895/heres-what-happened-when-affirmative-action-ended-at-california-public-colleges. Accessed 4 July 2023.
Bowman, Emma. “Want To See The National Impact Of The Affirmative Action Ruling? Just Look At California.” LAist, 2 July 2023, https://laist.com/news/want-to-see-the-national-impact-of-the-affirmative-action-ruling-just-look-at-california. Accessed 4 July 2023.
Cavazzi, Giovannni. “The 1619 Landing — Virginia’s First Africans Report & FAQs.” Hampton.gov, https://hampton.gov/3580/The-1619-Landing-Report-FAQs. Accessed 4 July 2023.
“Current Members.” Supreme Court, https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/biographies.aspx. Accessed 4 July 2023.
Greene, Karen, and Lynnette Nicholas. “I’m a Black American — Here’s Why I Don’t Celebrate the Fourth of July.” Reader’s Digest, https://www.rd.com/article/im-a-black-american-heres-why-i-dont-celebrate-the-fourth-of-july/. Accessed 4 July 2023.
Kaustuv, Vihaan. “An Impartial Take On The Supreme Court’s Ruling on Affirmative Action.” Medium, 2 July 2023, https://medium.com/@vihaan-kaustuv/the-pros-of-the-supreme-courts-ruling-on-affirmative-action-34a081db3b7b. Accessed 4 July 2023.
Linton, Caroline, and CJ ROBERTS. “SFFA v. Harvard Dissents | PDF | Equal Protection Clause | Fourteenth Amendment To The United States Constitution.” Scribd, https://www.scribd.com/document/656189604/SFFA-v-Harvard-Dissents#. Accessed 4 July 2023.
Moore, Natalie. “For Many Black Americans, The Fourth Of July Means Something Other Than Independence.” NPR, 3 July 2020, https://www.npr.org/local/309/2020/07/03/887069521/for-many-black-americans-the-fourth-of-july-means-something-other-than-independence. Accessed 4 July 2023.
