Affirmative action started as a genuinely well-meaning effort to offer black Americans equal opportunities after facing centuries of enslavement and oppression. President Lyndon B. Johnson articulated this sentiment back in 1965:
“You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”
These words really embody the core of affirmative action: an initiative aimed at uplifting black Americans, a group with a history deeply marred by slavery and systemic oppression.
The idea was to remedy the disparities, to level out a fundamentally uneven playing field. Yet, it had a troubling inherent issue: attempting to solve racism by applying more racism. It favored one race by penalizing another, shifting from a vision of equality to one of racial preferences. Instead of creating a colorblind society, it taught a generation to view skin color as a determinant of opportunity rather than character or merit. Rather than eradicating Jim Crow, we merely reframed it. We poured the same toxicity back into American life and labeled it “progress.”
For years, America grappled with this paradox. Can a nation built on the principles of equality justify discrimination based on race, even as a means to correct historical wrongs? Many felt justified in doing so, arguing that the outcomes—greater diversity and representation—validated the methods used.
However, as time went on, it seemed the Democratic Party lost sight of the actual victims of historical injustices—black Americans. They began to view the civil rights movement as more of a political maneuver than a moral cause, exploiting the sacrifices made by black Americans for political gain.
The current progressive left transformed affirmative action into “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” a broad concept that, arguably, sought to create new victims to expand their voter base. Various groups were drawn into this narrative: liberal white women, immigrants, LGBTQ activists, and even affluent individuals claiming to be marginalized. Affirmative action, initially meant to benefit black Americans, ended up accelerating the careers of privileged white women in prominent roles and educational institutions, leaving many black students behind. That’s the legacy attributed to the Democrats.
And they weren’t finished. The DEI movement adapted to include every emerging identity concern, creating an endless cycle of grievances. Minor issues, like a change in pronouns or a social media conflict, were exaggerated to represent significant struggles. The severe realities of slavery and segregation became reduced to mere hashtags, and notions of “oppression” became a trendy badge of honor, granted by the self-appointed progressive gatekeepers.
Meanwhile, the authentic civil rights struggle—the raw, painful fight that black Americans engaged in—got buried under layers of academic jargon, virtue signaling, and political negotiation. The Democratic Party didn’t just neglect black Americans; they commodified our historical struggles for profit.
Yet, something shifted. People began to notice.
There appeared to be a constant stream of grievances, with everyone—except straight white men—playing the victim card. Preferences were being distributed not on the basis of genuine injustices but through identity politics. Even white women, who benefited the most, started to oppose affirmative action. What began as a tool for equity seemed to devolve into a spectacle of quotas, tokenism, and growing resentment.
Then came the reckoning.
In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled against race-based college admissions, signaling that the public and the courts had reached a breaking point after years of distortion. However, it’s crucial to note that this collapse wasn’t motivated by a disdain for black Americans among conservatives; it emerged primarily because the Democrats had so poorly managed the concept of affirmative action, turning it into a problematic DEI scheme.
The unfortunate reality is that black Americans may bear the brunt of this fallout. We’ve already seen indicators of this—the prohibition of affirmative action in California during the 1990s led to a nearly 40% drop in black enrollment at leading universities. Now, as the left continues to play identity politics, the very doors that affirmative action had once opened are beginning to close again.
So, who really gets the blame for this mess? It’s easy to point fingers at conservative judges or upset white parents, but liberal Democrats must carry some responsibility as well. It’s the activist elements, the woke university administrators, and the DEI movement that diluted what began as a righteous cause, watering it down for political gain. They rode the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. like a ride at a carnival, only to crash it horribly.
The demise of affirmative action wasn’t due to court decisions; it was largely the result of the woke left misunderstanding justice, equating quotas to fairness and portraying victimhood as virtue. In doing so, they betrayed the very black Americans whose struggles were foundational to the civil rights movement.
The Democratic Party must be held accountable for this—they owe much more than just an apology.
Ohio State Representative Josh Williams represents Northwest Ohio, currently serving as the first Black Majority Whip in Ohio history.
