History Repeating

Over the past 10 years I have been watching episodes of discrimination happening around the world, but especially in America. Yet, I am still shocked at how horrible things are globally, but not surprised at all. When I look at elected leaders, it's apparent that greed, power, and control is their priority. Don't be fooled, most elected officials care less about the overall population or trying to make things better for them. There are only a few that continue to fight for the people, although it may feel like a losing battle for them.

What exactly is Affirmative Action? Affirmative action is defined as a set of procedures designed to; eliminate unlawful discrimination among applicants, remedy the result of such prior discrimination, and prevent such discrimination in the future. In my opinion, discrimination never disappeared in education, employment, housing, or medical care for people of colour. Organisations just learned how to work around it without violating the law or being sued for breaking the law.

Back in 2017, the New York Times reported?that the Trump administration intended to take on affirmative action?in the higher education admissions process, investigating and suing institutions that, it believed, employ admissions criteria that discriminate against Caucasian applicants. Finally, white kids who want to go to college catch a break. Donald Trump's pitch to the proverbial White working-class voter in 2016 can be summarised as "Scary, scary brown people?are coming for your jobs and your communities and your country." Make America Great Again was the biggest scam to date. The fear he created, helped him to become President, yet the worse President in history. Under Trump's direction, the Department of Justice made a big show of insinuating that seats in the classroom are being unfairly taken from the more deserving real Americans, White Americans. Whether you believe affirmative action is good or bad boils down to whether you think that higher education is a public good or a commodity that should simply be sold to the highest bidder.?

The court’s ruling impacts future generations of college students, declaring race can no longer be a factor in the college admissions process. Prior to this ruling, several states prohibited any consideration of race in admissions to their public colleges and universities, including Florida along with Arizona, California, Georgia, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Washington. On June 30th the U.S. Supreme Court issued a historic ruling declaring affirmative action in college admissions unconstitutional. With this new ruling, higher education institutions will need to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies if interested in doing so.

Supreme Court judge, Clarence Thomas benefitted from Affirmative Action to achieve his education, but he voted to end it along with several other judges that are benefitting from their ruling. I grew up thinking that judges were chosen because of their open minds, but once I became a man, lessons in life taught me that it was another lie. Depending on who appointed them to the lifetime position of being a supreme court judge is who they took orders from to do their dirty work under the table and make money.

The last thing we should want is a world in which underrepresented students are given less opportunity while the wealthiest and most privileged students have their own special form of affirmative action. Selecting applicants to universities based off family names, connections, or the size of their bank accounts creates an unlevel playing field for students without those built-in advantages, especially minority and first-generation students.

Once I graduated from high school, I told my mother and school counsellor what my goals were for the future. When I announced them, everyone laughed at me, and I couldn't understand what was so funny. My goal was to become a physician, a paediatrician helping children. My student advisor tried to convince me that it was a bad idea to go to college and that enrolling in a trade school to become a plumber, or a mechanic would be a wiser choice. My family laughed and told me that it was a ridiculous idea because I would never be accepted into any college due to the colour of my skin, even though I worked extremely hard to maintain a 4.0-grade average. My mother worked as a maid for a wealthy White woman who was a fighter for equal rights, but I didn't understand any of it at the time. She took an interest in me and my brother. She paid for my brother to go to college to become an architect. Interest was placed on me because I never stopped asking questions, so she helped me to get a scholarship into a community college and then to a Catholic University. She believed in me. To this day I wonder what power she had to get me accepted into an all-White university with only 8 Black students enrolled out of 2500 students. I was terrified and never understood why I couldn't get into any college on my own. Being able to get an education changed my life and encouraged me to explore life outside of a ghetto where most of my friends never finished high school and were happy to commit crimes to survive, get pregnant, live on welfare, and spend time in prison. It was believed to be a medal of honour. Education is a great equaliser.

Why is it a bad decision to destroy Affirmative Action? Eliminating Affirmative Action goes with everything that is happening today. Giving colleges and universities the power to select students, wealthy students from privileged communities will be the only students attending classes. Parents with money and power have always paid for their children to enter the best universities and get the best jobs available. Privileged families have always been able to make large donations to colleges, universities, and to the campaigns of politicians so they can return the favour. It starts early, beginning with kindergarten and primary schools. Affluent parents often start before a child is born to get them into the best schools. Poor families are too busy struggling to pay rent and put food on the table.

So, what happens now? Without Affirmative Action, companies and educational institutions have the right to discriminate at will. Having Affirmative Action as a law never stopped companies from violating the law which has always been difficult to prove. Every company or organisation where I worked always practiced discrimination to prevent qualified staff of colour from being heard or promoted into key positions of leadership. Discrimination prevailed in housing and in medical facilities. With the elimination of Affirmative Action companies no longer need to pretend they may hire you during job or college interviews, or when applying for an apartment or a housing loan. The law is on their side and many of them probably paid lots of money to corrupt politicians to return America to the Jim Crow era again. What's next, a?Green Book?to help African Americans and other people of colour to survive their travels around the United States? Known as the?Negro Motorist Green Book?popularly known as the?Green Book ?was?a travel guide intended to help African American motorists avoid social obstacles prevalent during the period of racial segregation, commonly referred to as Jim Crow. The Green Book listed businesses that would accept African American customers. There is also a?film ?by the same name that you may want to check out. In 2010, Michelle Alexander wrote an amazing book entitled,?The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age of Color-blindness ?that exposes the criminal justice system, exposing racial discrimination from lawmaking to policing to the denial of voting rights to ex-prisoners. I highly recommend reading this incredible book.

Every day I think of my parents and grandparents, and wonder how they survived all the hatred, racism, and discrimination without showing any anger to their children. I can only imagine the difficult times they experienced trying to survive and encourage us children to be ambitious. When I listen to music of many great artists like Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles, Fats Domino, Duke Ellington, Harry Belafonte, Chuck Berry, Ruth Brown, Sarah Vaughan, and so many others, I contemplate on how difficult times were for them to survive and thrive. I survive each day with their resilience, toughness, and the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. I will keep fighting for equal rights for the next generation.