Yesterday, our least favorite group of old robed nerds struck down affirmative action programs at the University of North Carolina (shoutout to the gang) and Harvard (afterthoughts) in a major victory for conservative activists that ends the systematic consideration of race in the admissions process. But it turns out all supreme court decisions are kinda like Timmy Turner and his wishes in the animated children’s TV show, “The Fairly Oddparents”. Anytime Young Timothy makes a wish, there are cascading unintended consequences.
You might be thinking, “but why would this be bad? Don’t we want to do away with racial considerations? Aren’t we becoming a post-racial society??” The only issue is that deeming race irrelevant in law doesn’t make it equally so in life, as we’ve sadly learned and continue to learn over the course of this nation’s bloody history. Also worth considering that not all forms of affirmative action were struck down: Admission preferences for legacies, donors, employee families and special recommendations are still allowed, so what the court really did was strike down affirmative action for anyone who’s not white or working at the university.
The months and years to come will illustrate how large the ripples from this judicial decision will spread. It’s possible that ten years from now higher education as a commercial industry will look very different. It’s also increasingly likely that ten years from now all these decisions will exist in a hazy backseat to the overdue realization that our planet is actively working to restore its natural balance by ending our known existence.
Side Items
French Protests: Police beat up protesters overnight just hours after French president Macron called the shooting death of a 17-year-old delivery driver by police “inexcusable” and pleaded for calm, an incredibly non-French request.
It was the second night of violent protests in the Paris suburb of Nanterre as the government heightened the police presence in Paris and other big cities, sending in about 40,000 troops to help calm things down after the killing triggered a night of scattered chaos
Yankee Perfection: It’s not often I mention the baseball diamond, but Domingo GermÁn managed to do the near-impossible and threw the 24th perfect game in MLB history for the Yankees yesterday. The Dominican was on fire in his performance, but he was also facing the woeful Oakland A’s, a team in complete managerial disarray. You gotta feel bad for true Oakland sports fans, robbed of anything resembling a serious sports franchise over the past few years
Broke Boi Bulls: Speaking of unserious sports organizations, the Jerry Reinsdorf-owned Chicago Bulls extended an offer to Nicola Vucevic, the incredibly overrated and increasingly useless center, offering him a three-year, $60 million extension. Might as well go ahead and deposit that money directly into the city dump