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With a pair of cases announced days before their summer retirement (Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger) the U.S. Supreme Court decided the constitutionality of affirmative action, at least for the next generation.
The issue had been long-awaited by conservatives, and dreaded by those of a more liberal persuasion, who feared that the notoriously right-wing jurists would sound the death knell to the practice. Affirmative action in higher educational admissions survived, if just barely, because of one vote: that of associate justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who provided the fifth vote to uphold the admissions program of the University of Michigan Law School.
Her 5-4 majority in Grutter was offset by the separate 6-3 vote garnered by the companion Gratz case, which struck down the university's undergraduate affirmative action policies.
For liberals, the decision was hailed as a "huge victory", in the words of one of the litigators, Maureen Mahoney, a former Supreme Court law clerk. Conservatives saw it as a betrayal of sorts, especially as it came from the pens of several Republican appointees (like O'Connor & David Souter).
But what moved Justice O'Connor to merge with, and create a bare majority, was hardly the lure of liberalism. As she explained both in her oral remarks and in her written text, the arguments raised by the U.S. military, top Pentagon officials, and military training academies made all the difference. What 'made' the case, in other words, were not the individual beneficiaries of affirmative action (meaning Blacks), but the institutional beneficiaries. The Army. The Navy. The Coast Guard. The Marines. These are hardly 'liberal' institutions.
Perhaps just as important, were the amicus curiae briefs filed on behalf of American businesses. For them all, Gratz and Grutter represented good business, and good military sense.
For it is in the interests of both corporate America and the imperial military to have Black faces projecting their messages to a predominantly multi-colored world. Look at the recent Iraq Adventure, and the faces of Black soldiers and generals formed an important element in selling the PR side of the debacle.
It's like putting a rap song on a car commercial; blackness is but another commodity to sell the system.
Lost in the sauce around the hoopla raised by Gratz/Grutter is the simple, inescapable reality that a relatively small percentage of Americans ever go to college; something like a fourth. In other words, 25 out of 100 Americans make it to college! What happened to the vast majority -- 75% -- who don't go? They don't go, not because they're "unqualified", or stupid.
Most simply can't afford the increasing costs of college.
That is an indictment of the American educational system -- certainly nothing to celebrate. Because education, so vital to job opportunities, is just another commodity, one that millions of Americans cannot afford.
The real scandal about all the hoopla surrounding the affirmative action cases is the dire state of secondary (elementary, junior high, middle school, high school) education in America. Social critic Jonathan Kozol has written movingly about the dreadful state of such institutions for years, but conditions continue to deteriorate. Nor is a Supreme Court case the be-all/end-all of a problem. It has been almost 50 years since the historic Brown v. Bd. of Education case that outlawed school desegregation in U.S. schools, yet a generation after Brown, this writer went to schools that were as Black as anything in Dixie. Such schools still stand, generations later, in Black, Puerto Rican, or Mexican ghettoes and barrios across the land, where millions of American kids get just as miseducated as their parents before them. They are just as segregated; but under the rubric of class, which hides the same racist character of the system. Indeed, Brown became 'law', in part, because a U.S. anti-communist campaign would've been harmed in the Third World if U.S. courts upheld racial discrimination. Similarly, Grutter serves other interests. Blacks are merely incidental.
Copyright 2003 Mumia Abu-Jamal
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a Pennsylvania death row prisoner who is a frequent writer and radio commentator. He was convicted in 1982 of killing a police officer in a trial that was rife with police, prosecutorial and judicial misconduct. Those involved in the trial and keeping him in prison include Ed Rendell, General Chairman of the 2000 Democratic convention, and Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge.
For further information about the case, contact:
Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
298 Valencia St.
San Francisco, CA 94103
415-255-1085
http://freemumia.org
This piece is accompanied by an Eric Drooker graphic showing Mumia sitting behind bars, with his hands reaching through the bars to type on a typewriter.
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