[News] Positive discrimination in US universities is brought before the Supreme Court

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After abortion and the use of firearms, the US Supreme Court is considering "affirmative action" in universities, a divisive policy designed to improve opportunities for racial minorities in higher education.

The conservative Supreme Court appears poised to make a historic turning point, as it did in June by overturning a ruling that had guaranteed an American woman's right to abortion for half a century.

 

 

For two hours, the court's nine judges will study the mechanics of student selection at Harvard and North Carolina universities, the two oldest private and public higher education institutions in the country, respectively.

Like many others in the United States, these two universities take into account racial criteria to ensure the diversity of their students and to correct for the underrepresentation of black and Hispanic youth in them.

These so-called "affirmative action" programs were developed in the late 1960s and "aimed at reforming the automatic inequalities inherited from the past," said Yasmine Kader of the civil rights organization ECLU during a recent press conference.

The right has long protested vigorously against these programmes, and white students who say they are victims of "reverse discrimination" regularly lodge complaints against these mechanisms that their critics view as opaque and ineffective.

These programs have been banned by nine states, including California, after a referendum on them, but the Supreme Court is still upholding them.

In a series of rulings, the first dating back to 1978, the court banned the use of quotas, but ruled that universities can take into account the skin color or ethnicity of applicants, among other criteria, with the aim of promoting diversity on their campuses.

Students for Fair Admission, set up by Edward Bloom, a neoconservative anti-affirmative advocate, adopted a new angle of attack.

In 2014, the association filed two complaints denouncing "discrimination" against Asian students at Harvard and North Carolina universities, saying that these students are relatively underrepresented in the two institutions compared to their above-average academic results.

After losing several trials, the association went to the Supreme Court and asked it to draw on these cases to declare that the constitution prohibits all forms of discrimination, including affirmative action.

The administration of Democratic President Joe Biden said that "the future of our country depends on its ability to have leaders of diverse character, able to lead an increasingly diverse society," defending the status quo.

In the same context, major companies - including "Apple", "General Motors", "Accentor" and "Starbucks" - indicated that "having a diverse workforce improves their performance", and that they "rely on schools across the country to qualify their future employees." ".

However, analysts expect a major turnaround. "I think the court will review its rulings," Justice Elijah Shapiro of the Manhattan Institute of Conservative Thought said recently, predicting that the six conservative justices would unite against their three progressive colleagues.

Three of them expressed their opposition to the programs in question, and the other three were appointed by former President Donald Trump, who tried to undermine these policies during his tenure.

"If we want to end racial discrimination, we must stop discrimination based on race," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in 2007.

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