Violating the Constitution with Affirmative Action

© 2014 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. The Supreme Court of the United States recently made a bad ruling in a Michigan case, but at least it was not a horrible ruling. By a 6-2 vote the Court ruled that voters in Michigan could decide if Affirmative Action would be used in their universities.
     What makes this bad is that the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution is clear: …nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
     There is no wiggle room, “…the equal protection of the laws.” It does not say that United States citizens can be denied equal protection of the laws for a good cause.
     The creatures of evil in our society immediately started trying to undo the guarantee of this Amendment to the Constitution. In fact, in 1868 when the Fourteenth Amendment was passed the United States nationally and each of the states should have allowed all women of age to vote since they have an equal protection of the laws. Sadly the male citizens of that age did not nor did any court affirm the Equal Protection.
     In the 1896 Supreme Court case, Plessy versus Ferguson, petitioner Homer Plessy, a successful Louisiana businessman did not consider himself African-American since he was an octoroon, which means he had one grandparent who was of African-American heritage.
     Mr. Plessy was one-eighth African-American but considered himself white. He refused to sit in the segregated area of a train therefore he was arrested and fined. This went through the courts in Louisiana to their Supreme Court and then to the U. S. Supreme Court. In the worst ruling by the Supreme Court of all time the Court said that segregation was legal as long as the segregation was separate but equal.
     Further, they did not even rule what percentage of ancestry made someone an African-American which might have been of some use. Finally almost sixty years later a much better Supreme Court undid the harm.
       Things were looking up and then something equally harmful happened. Years later the forces of evil made a ruling that to end discrimination it was imperative to discriminate against some Americans. That is like ruling to end murder we must kill some innocent people. This ruling also ignored the “Equal Protection” afforded all citizens. The idea of Affirmative Action has always been tragically flawed by it being a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Read full column
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