Former First Lady Michelle Obama issued an emotional response to the Supreme Court’s decision to curtail affirmative action policies at two major American Universities in a 6-3 decision. “My heart breaks,” she said in the wake of the decision.
Obama, who identifies as a “Girl from the South Side” (of Chicago), uses her personal story to assert that the impact of affirmative action in higher education — a set of policies created to counteract systemic racism — has been a force for good.
When she got to her “respected school,” Obama writes, “the shadow” of affirmative action was something she “couldn’t shake.” As one of the few people of color on campus, she wondered if people thought her race was the chief reason she was admitted.
Obama worked to ignore the shadow, proving her mettle in the classroom. “The fact is this,” she writes, “I belonged.”
But first she needed the chance to prove she belonged, and that chance was the ladder affirmative action provided.
Obama also widens the lens on affirmative action’s benefits as she makes her case. Obama asserts that affirmative action delivers advantages that are not confined to the minorities who receive the so-called preferential treatment.
Obama flatly declares “it wasn’t just the kids of color who benefitted either.”
Explaining her stance by pointing out the more macro benefits of diversity, she writes: “Every student who heard a perspective they might not have encountered, who had an assumption challenged, who had their minds and their hearts opened gained a lot as well.”
In other words, white kids like Jeff Bezos — like Michelle Obama, a 59-year-old Princeton University alum — also benefitted from a University experience that reflects America’s racial complexity.
But with her “shadow of affirmative action” admission, Obama hits on one of the reasons conservatives — even and especially Black and minority conservatives — disagree with affirmative action: They believe that by conferring a race-based advantage, the policy diminishes the accomplishment of those who, like Obama, achieve at high levels.
These conservatives say the “shadow” of affirmative action never goes away — that it is in fact a stain on those high achievers going forward. This belief is maintained with special fervor by many who, like Justice Clarence Thomas, were given advantages by affirmative action. Notably, Thomas voted with the majority.
Obama admits affirmative action “wasn’t perfect.” But liberals argue that the shadow cast by a history of racism is the much larger shadow that hasn’t yet gone away, and affirmative action is one imperfect way to counter it.
I wanted to share some of my thoughts on today's Supreme Court decision on affirmative action: pic.twitter.com/Wa6TGafzHV
— Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) June 29, 2023
The timing of Obama’s reaction and the fact that it hardly reads like a “hot take” signals that it was prepared far in advance of the SCOTUS decision.
Though it wasn’t leaked like the Dobbs decision that scuttled Roe v. Wade, Democrats suspected a SCOTUS decision to knock out affirmative action was written on the wall.
