The United States Supreme Court ruled this week that colleges and universities could not use Affirmative Action as a part of the admissions policies because it violates the Fourteenth Amendment which requires equal protection to all. Under Affirmative Action, which had been legal since 1978, preferential treatment for admissions could be granted to African-Americans without violating the Constitution.

Progressive and liberal politicians have said that as it is made-up today, the Supreme Court is too radical. I think they have this one backwards. It seems to me more likely that the Supreme Court in 1978 made a ruling that was too radical. Preferential treatment in college admissions for African-Americans, without a doubt, kept better qualified White applicants from receiving the education to which they were entitled, and for which they were better qualified.

Forty-five years have passed. Average achievement test scores and grade point averages are still lower for African-American students than for White students, and the are lower than for other minitority ethnic groups like Hispanic and Asian. Perhaps if all of the effort and expense that had gone into trying to make Affirmative Action effective had gone to improve the quality of education for African-American high school students the problem of their lower acheivement averages could have been solved more equitably. Alas.

Furthermore, the problem isn't with the grading system or the tests. Other minority groups, including immigrants from Latin American and Asian countries typically do better than African-American students. If you want to fix the problem... improve the schools. schools in predominately black neighborhoods

African-American students need the same opportunities as White kids. However, they are not entitled to more opportunities. None of these students were ever enslaved in this country, neither were their parents.

I can't believe that intelligent African-Americans needed help from Affirmative-Action policies to get into excellent colleges and universities. I'm talking Barak and Michelle Obamas, Sonia Sotomayor. Ketanji Brown Jackson, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Colin Powell. The list could go on. They talk a good line about the benefits of Affirmative Action, but they got to the top on their own.