Jack Kemp Statement on Supreme Court Decision on Affirmative Action

I was pleased with the Supreme Court landmark opinion yesterday in Grutter v. Bollinger that higher education institutions may use race as a factor in admission decisions to achieve diversity. Also, President Bush’s statement applauding the decision is highly commendable. But we must not lose sight of the reality that the effort to create a more open and more just society continues today and in the foreseeable future.

Some of my conservative friends are disappointed with Justice O’Conner and the Supreme Court’s decision, as they hoped the Supreme Court would take a strong stand and rule, categorically, that race could never be a consideration, under any circumstance. In his most recent column George Will cited Justice Clarence Thomas’ dissent, who quoted an 1865 Frederick Douglass address: “The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us. . . . Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. . . . All I ask is, give [the Negro] a chance to stand on his own legs. Let him alone!” But the problem is that the “negro” was not left alone. People of color were denied their 14th Amendment rights.

While I agree that ultimately a color blind society should be our goal, we certainly are not there yet. Blacks were removed from the mainstream economy, denied access to education, job opportunities and access to capital and ownership. Thus, African-Americans have long been denied their full measure of justice under the law and while great progress has been made, we have a long way to go.

Race relations in the United States have also come a long way from the times of slavery, segregation and Jim Crow. However, the goal of affirmative action was meant not only to remedy the past discrimination associated with slavery, but the legacy of systemic racist practices such as “red lining.” Red lining was a practice, officially outlawed in 1968, whereby banks literally drew a red line on a map around certain areas, and if you lived inside the red line your loan application was automatically rejected.

As recently as 1992, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston published a landmark study showing why black mortgage applicants were rejected more often than white applicants were. Without access to capital it is near impossible to accumulate wealth. Franklin Raines, President and CEO of Fannie Mae, said during a speech at Howard University (where I serve as a Trustee), “Without wealth, it’s hard to send your kids to college. Without college, it’s hard to get a good job. Without a good job, it’s hard to earn a good income. Without a good income, it’s hard to obtain property. And, without property and the capital to leverage it, it’s hard to create wealth to send your kids to college. And the chain of denial continues.”

Within this context I applaud the Supreme Court’s decision and, as an American, I know that factoring diversity into these decisions can make our country stronger while continuing our progress in remedying past unequal treatment of African-Americans as well as other people of color.

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