Opportunity Based on Achievement

The Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action is not a conservative decision. Distributing opportunities in life based on heritage does not placate society.

Affirmative action, which the Supreme Court of the United States has now banned as a factor in college admissions, is sometimes translated in German as “positive discrimination.” The problem with it is readily apparent in that interpretation. The measure is supposed to have a positive effect, namely by opening a path to higher education for Black students in particular. At the same time, it discriminates against white students and, in the two cases at issue, against Americans of Asian heritage who are seeking admission to college.

The fact that the Supreme Court emphasized the second reading in its historic decision is not in and of itself a conservative position. The idea that a person’s achievements, not their skin color, should determine future opportunity is not a liberal one, and it is protected by the U.S. Constitution.

A Decades-Old Practice

Politically, however, the ruling seems reactionary because it reverses a decades-old practice at colleges and universities and was laid down by a majority of justices that Donald Trump appointed.

The now-discarded affirmative action guidelines have their roots in a time long before current identity politics. But the problem will continue to appear in the increasingly multicultural countries of the West. Distributing opportunities in life based on heritage, gender or other unchangeable features does not placate society.