Affirmative Action and Disparate Impact

Posted by Sappho on June 29th, 2023 filed in Race

I’ve been expecting today’s Supreme Court ruling for some time. Even pre-Trump, I’ve thought that affirmative action’s days were numbered, given the combination of Republicans getting more Supreme Court picks and “we’ve elected a black president” making it hard for most white folks to see why we’d need affirmative action.

I just want to point out why, back in the day, we got Griggs v. Duke Power Co. I want to point out that Duke Power Co. had openly discriminated against black people until the Civil Rights Act went into effect in 1965, and that the day the Civil Rights Act went into effect, they put in place new employment tests that had a disparate impact on Black people because Black people had inferior education opportunities, and that Black people in the employment pool at that time not only had inferior education opportunities but had inferior education opportunities because it was practically five minutes, historically speaking, since school segregation had been enforced by law (particularly when you consider the trouble getting compliance with Brown v Board of Education, once the decision went down).