The end of affirmative action is not the end of campus diversity, but HBCUs can't do all the work

The right has wanted to dismantle affirmative action for decades, and the new conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court has finally been able to deliver. A group calling itself the Students for Fair Admissions, which is made up of people who believed they could have been accepted to Ivy League schools if not for affirmative action, filed lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill claiming discrimination against Asian and white students.

On June 29 of this year, the right-wing block of SCOTUS struck it down using the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which was designed to protect Black Americans. Systemic barriers for marginalized groups, such as grossly underfunded schools, housing discrimination, and income inequality, have long prevented talented students from accessing higher education, but the right-wing justices twisted the protections afforded in the Constitution to deny certain people their civil rights.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson had a harsh dissent, saying the ruling striking down affirmative action “condemns our society to never escape the past that explains how and why race matters to the very concept of who ‘merits’ admission.”

Sadly, as a result, many colleges are expected to abandon their former mandate to prioritize diversity. This shift places a growing burden on historically Black colleges and universities to bridge the gap. HBCUs have nurtured exceptional talent that often went unnoticed by other institutions. With the ruling overturning affirmative action, HBCUs are expected to meet the mounting demand. This is problematic.

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