Affirmative action primarily benefited white women, not black Americans

Evidence

If affirmative action had permitted quotas and remedies for past discrimination that were available only for black Americans, I might have considered it a valid offset. But it didn’t, so it isn’t. (Also, if affirmative action were a blacks-only program, we might be closer to where Felix Haywood predicted we would be today.) As Justice Lewis Powell made clear in California v. Bakke, “Ethnic diversity…is only one element in a range of factors a university properly may consider in attaining the goal of a heterogeneous student body.” In other words, admitting black applicants solely because of race was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. And thanks to a 2023 Supreme Court decision, race can no longer be considered as even “one element” in college admissions. Affirmative action has never been blacks-only, so it cannot be considered an offset for blacks-only reparations. Finally, the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action have been white women. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 573

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Baker v. Bakke and the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions decision; also parallels the Lex Oppia discussion of who actually benefits from nominal race remedies.