Here’s an embarrassing turn of events: The six rightwing ideologues now controlling the U.S. Supreme Court recently decreed that helping some students get into college through affirmative action programs is henceforth unconstitutional.
This is somewhere between clueless and cynical.
America’s higher education establishment has long promoted a self-serving conceit that entrance to its campuses is based on meritocracy. Blatant racial and gender discrimination, however, put the lie to that, so schools adopted affirmative to help rebalance the mix. The six supreme partisans have now killed this effort, replacing it with—nothing.
Meanwhile, our college system is becoming even more exclusive because of a deeply ingrained institutional bias that deliberately shuts out millions of the best and brightest, no matter their race, gender, or religion. That bias is economic class. From prestigious private schools to most big-name state universities, recruitment and admission procedures overwhelmingly favor those families privileged to have money and social standing. No matter how smart or promising working class and poor students are, they’re largely left out. New York Times columnist David Leonhardt reports that this class divide is sharp, with some colleges enrolling more undergraduates from the wealthiest 1 percent of families than from all the families in the bottom 60 percent!
These far-right political Justices, blind to the privileges they’ve been given in life, are imperiously negating our people’s hard-won progress toward . . . well, toward justice for all. Moreover, their elitist monkey wrenching of college enrollment eliminates a ladder of unimpeded opportunity that is essential for the well-being of our country as a whole.
All six need to be replaced, not merely with better Justices, but with better human beings.
Pro-Lifers Who Are Anti-Child Care
The political extremists demanding that the government control every woman’s personal reproductive decisions claim that they are “pro-life.” But that’s a rhetorical fraud.
Look at their overall policy agenda, and you’ll see that they are merely pro-birth. After that, adiós, baby, and good luck. They consistently join Republican lawmakers in killing public programs that deliver essential real-life needs to babies after they’re born.
Consider child care, a fundamental need in any society. The “leaders” of our rich, sophisticated nation that supposedly treasures family, work, and children have created a mingy system that literally is a crying shame, revealing that our society deliberately does not care for children.
Here’s reality for you: Ninety-eight percent of American workers are better paid than those we entrust to care for our children. Working at a nail salon, loading boxes at an Amazon warehouse, flipping burgers at McDonald’s—these jobs are given more pay and respect than most child care jobs!
This is not just a “poor people’s problem,” as the lack of child care availability, affordability, and quality is a looming crisis for the majority of American families. Nonetheless, Republicans, enabled by corporate Senator Joe Manchin, the Democrat of West Virginia, recently killed funding for a program intended to both raise worker pay and lower the prices families are charged. Such care is “too expensive,” squawked the same lawmakers who routinely dole out billions in welfare to corporate profiteers.
But wait—the GOP has come up with a genius, low-cost solution: Relax safety and educational requirements for child care centers (as Iowa and Montana have already done), which would allow things like sixteen-year-olds providing “care” for up to fifteen school-age children each! Also, why not automate the system—and do the little nippers really need that orange juice and daily snack?