Affirmative action ruling reactions

The reactionary ruling by six regressive justices on the Supreme Court disregards our systemically racist history [“Supreme Court outlaws affirmative action,” News, June 30].

However, the ruling still hypocritically allows such policies at the U.S. military colleges. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her dissent, the court concluded “ . . . that racial diversity in higher education is only worth potentially preserving insofar as it might be needed to prepare Black Americans and other underrepresented minorities for success in the bunker, not the boardroom.”

Opposition to affirmative action is supposedly based on “merit.” U.S. history clearly shows that race, economic class and college legacy connections have always given the lie to that myth of merit.

Where was merit when real estate agents were legally allowed to “redline”?

Long before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier, the Negro leagues had many players of his comparable great ability who were not allowed into the major leagues, so it took affirmative action by Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey to finally integrate baseball.

“Merit” is as much a myth as being “race-neutral” and “color-blind.”

The current regressive, reactionary Republicans seem determined to repeat the horrific injustices and cruelties of the past.

— Ed Ciaccio, Douglaston

What should universities committed to diverse student bodies and social mobility do now? Discriminate.

Not based on race but on class — to give economically disadvantaged students who have done well in poor schools and rough neighborhoods a leg up. Class-based discrimination is not unconstitutional. It has broad public support.

All major religions prioritize helping the poor. It is more objective; it is easy to create a consistent policy based on class. And it has already been successfully implemented at Israel’s most elite universities to great effect.

Why don’t elite universities leap at this chance to diversify? Because it costs big money to be an elite university? Harvard University has 23 times more students from high-income families than low-income families.

According to Harvard’s own statistics, the great majority of minority students on its campus are socioeconomically advantaged, not disadvantaged, and thus don’t require large amounts of financial aid.

Class-based affirmative action will not achieve racial diversity to the same degree as race-based affirmative action, but it will be more effective at achieving both racial diversity and social mobility.

— Todd L. Pittinsky, Port Jefferson

The writer is a professor at Stony Brook University.

In reacting to the affirmative action ruling, President Joe Biden said, “This is not a normal court.” I counter by noting that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights leader, preached in 1963 his “dream” that his own children would grow up in an America “where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Isn’t that one reason we celebrate his Jan. 15 birthday every year?

Isn’t affirmative action a direct contradiction of King’s civil rights tenet? Isn’t a level playing field for people of all races and creeds what he stood for when he famously marched in 1965 against racist extremism in Selma, Alabama? Wouldn’t any rational person applaud the Supreme Court’s decision, believing it was long overdue?

Now that this decision has been handed down, wouldn’t it have made King happy that his dream is coming true?

— Eugene R. Dunn, Medford

If two applicants have the same grade-point average in high school and one is white and the other is a minority, then the minority student should be selected. If a white student has a higher GPA than the minority student, then the white student should be selected [“Reset on race and opportunity,” Editorial, June 30].

The main problem is that minority high school students don’t receive a better quality of education than white students.

My physical anthropology textbook says that all homo sapiens have the same physical and mental abilities, on average.

Give minority students the same quality education as white students and you will have diversity in colleges without giving minorities an unfair advantage to be accepted based only on the color of their skin.

— Robert M. Martin, Mineola

While former President Donald Trump tries to destroy democratic principles, rules and behavior, the Supreme Court has been driving the country into a swampy ditch.

Here’s conservatism: “Fair is foul and foul is fair. Hover through fog and filthy air.”

— Gus Franza, Setauket