Joe Biden spoke out against the ruling as well, saying that colleges should get to decide for themselves how to admit students, and that it is wrong for the Supreme Court to say that race should not be a factor in admissions. He believes that it "rolls back decades of progress," and that he "strongly disagrees with the court's decision."
Biden remarked that affirmative action doesn't admit unqualified students, but simply adds race as a factor to the admissions criteria for qualified students. What he neglected to say is that this actively harms those who are qualified but are not of the preferred race.
"Like any policy," Obama said in a statement, "affirmative action wasn't perfect. But it allowed generations of students like Michelle and me to prove we belonged. Now it's up to all of us to give young people the opportunities they deserve–and help students everywhere benefit from new perspectives."
Michelle Obama also weighed in, saying, "Today is a reminder that we've got to do the work not just to enact policies that reflect our values of equity and fairness, but to truly make those values real in all of our schools, workplaces, and neighborhood."
For so many on the left, the sudden ruling that they are not permitted to discriminate based on race was a big blow. Much of the demand for reparations comes from the left as well, with proponents of those policies saying that black Americans are due masses of cash to make up for the centuries of discrimination, and the legacy of slavery.
When affirmative action was first enacted, the idea was that it would do its job of diversifying student bodies, and the profesisons, but that it would someday come to an end. The Supreme Court has rightfully decided that this time is now. It's notable that Justice Clarence Thomas, who grew up black, poor, and worked hard to attain his position, has opposed affirmative action for his entire career.
It was the appointment of conservative justices to the court by President Donald Trump that made the ruling possible.
But it turns out that the progressive elites in America really like to use racial discrimination as a means to create their utopian society, and when a pesky little thing like the constitution of the United States stand in the way, they themselves scream that that is discriminatory.
Pundits on MSNBC expressed concern that there would be a decline in black professionals. And they complained about Trump having filled the court with conservative judges. They complained that race-based admissions is necessary in order to bring more diverse views to the table–as though skin color diversity and viewpoint diversity are synonymous.
On CNN, pundits said that society is racist, and so college admissions should be racist as well.
Another ludicrous pundit on MSNBC claimed that those who brought the case, who argued that Asian American students lost out on opportunities due to the unverities' preference for black students, were wrong, and that Asian students weren't discriminated against by affirmative action.
They all seemed to agree with Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who said in a dissent with the majority, that the ruling "rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress."
A private and a public school, Harvard in Massachusetts and the University of North Carolina, faced suits claiming that their admissions policies were discriminatory. And both schools said that yes, this was intentional.
They had used race as one of many factors, they said, to assemble a student body that looked like the population of graduates they wanted to see in the nation. They argued that without using these factors, there would not be enough minority black students, and there would be too many white students, or, in effect, minority Asian American students.
Many schools, however, had attested to the importance of race-based admissions, and have already come up with work-arounds to bypass the ruling. Among these concepts are demanding that students also submit photos of themselves, or write essays about their marginalized experiences.
Conservatives are routinely smeared by leftwing activists and Democrat politicians as racist, but it turns out that the only ones who want to discriminate and enact race-based policies are the ones saddened by the fact that elitist colleges and universities are no longer permitted to do it.
