The Affirmative Action Illusion

One byproduct of a half-century of affirmative action is that it has given many Americans the impression that blacks can’t advance without special treatment.

The response to last week’s Supreme Court decision banning the use of race in college admissions suggests that even some very accomplished black professionals have internalized this belief.

Joy Reid, the MSNBC host, said in response to the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard ruling that racial preferences were the only reason black people like her had access to elite schools such as Harvard. Eddie Glaude, who teaches African American studies at Princeton, said affirmative action was “the only remedy to the legacy of discrimination in admissions in American higher education” and “they’ve taken it away.”