King, Ed.D., is president of the San Diego College of Continuing Education.
Nearly a month has passed since the U.S. Supreme Court turned a blind eye to the injustices suffered by communities of color by banning consideration of race and ethnicity in college admissions. The pain will not soon dissipate. The decision follows a litany of opinions ignoring entrenched practices robbing Black and Brown Americans due process under the law.
The rightward tilt of the high court also affirms why our mission at San Diego College of Continuing Education and San Diego Community College District is so important.
San Diego College of Continuing Education is the largest provider of noncredit, adult education in California and welcomes every immigrant, every refugee and every underserved San Diegan seeking to fulfill career and/or educational goals. We are proudly rooted in a 109-year history of providing accessible, equitable and innovative quality education and career training to adult learners. The success of such policies can be measured not just by the nearly $250 million our career education programs contribute to the San Diego County economy each year, but also by the thousands of families whose lives are being transformed daily.
Some people may believe our history and unshakable commitment to equity and open access is not directly impacted by the ruling, correctly pointing out that we are not an elite university seeking a diverse student body to fill a limited number of open seats. But make no mistake: All communities of color are impacted by this decision. What the Supreme Court is essentially saying is that the more than 70 percent of our students who are not White do not belong in highly selective institutions. The message being heard throughout our public colleges and universities is that they don’t matter.
It also must not be lost that noncredit education is often the first point of entry into a college for immigrants, the economically disadvantaged and adults looking for marketable job skills. Many of our students transfer to one of our three, for-credit sister campuses in the San Diego Community College District before moving on to selective universities like San Diego State University, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Columbia University and the like. As a result of this ruling, many of our students seeking to continue their educational journey will be denied such access.
Diversity is not a dirty word. People of color who are admitted to a four-year college or university are every bit as qualified as their White counterparts. What affirmative action does is allow a school to consider the importance of campus diversity when deciding who to admit into its classrooms. Legacy admissions — a decades-old tradition of giving preferences to applicants whose parents attended the same school — is also affirmative action. The difference, however, is that legacy admissions disproportionately benefit White and wealthy families.
What’s more, this ruling did not happen in a vacuum. The history of our great nation is marked with an unquenchable desire by many to keep people of color in their place. With slavery’s abolishment after the Civil War, Southern states resorted to Jim Crow laws to continue racial segregation. Redlining has robbed communities from building generational wealth. The justice system disproportionately incarcerates people of color. According to an NAACP study, one out of every three Black males born today can be expected to be sentenced to prison, compared to one out of six Latino males and one out of 17 White males. The Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was followed by a cavalcade of state laws aimed at keeping people of color from fully and freely participating in the voting process. White representatives can call Barack Obama a liar with impunity during a State of the Union address, but when Black representatives speak out, they can be stripped of their seats by White conservatives, as evidenced by what happened in the Tennessee House of Representatives this past April.
For educators, the Supreme Court’s ruling is both frustrating and infuriating. It also regresses important progress and civil advances that were earned on the backs of ancestors and trailblazers who paid the ultimate price for justice. I assure you the San Diego College of Continuing Education will continue to fight for academic equity and excellence. We will continue to welcome every student to our college. We will continue to help our students’ overcome barriers, so they have an equal opportunity at socioeconomic mobility. We will continue to dream with our students.
