Michelle Obama & Stars React To SCOTUS Overturning Affirmative Action – Hollywood Life

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Former First Lady Michelle Obama and many other stars were angered following the Supreme Court’s decision to rule affirmative action unconstitutional on Thursday, June 29. Chief Justice John Roberts penned the court’s opinion, which overturned the precedent that allowed colleges and universities to consider race when deciding admissions. “Both [Harvard and UNC’s admissions] programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today,” he wrote, per CNN. 

Both Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson penned dissenting opinions. Jackson expressed how she felt that the court’s decision didn’t do the proper work to solve the issue. “The best that can be said of the majority’s perspective is that it proceeds (ostrich-like) from the hope that preventing consideration of race will end racism,” she wrote, per The Hill. “If the colleges of this country are required to ignore a thing that matters, it will not just go away. It will take longer for racism to leave us.”

Tons of stars took to social media to show their disapproval of the Supreme Court’s decision. See reactions from Obama, Whoopi Goldberg, and more here.

Michelle Obama

I wanted to share some of my thoughts on today’s Supreme Court decision on affirmative action: pic.twitter.com/Wa6TGafzHV

— Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) June 29, 2023

Former First Lady Michelle Obama released a lengthy statement, sharing her experience as a college student, and her fears about wondering whether she “belonged” in her school. “Back in college, I was one of the few Black students on my campus, and I was proud of getting into such a respected school. I knew I’d worked hard for it. But still, I sometimes wondered if people thought that I got there because of affirmative action,” she wrote. “But the fact is: I belonged.”

Obama continued and said that there are “countless” students who felt like her, and she pointed out how there are tons of students who receive special consideration besides just race. “So often, we just accept that money, power, and privilege are perfectly justifiable forms of affirmative action, while kids growing up like I did are expected to compete when the ground is anything but level,” she wrote.

She concluded by saying that there was still so much work to be done to help young people who may be worried about their future and possible higher education after the SCOTUS decision. “Today is a reminder that we’ve got to do the work not just to enact policies that reflect our values of equity and fairness, but to truly make those values real in all of our schools and workplaces, and neighborhoods,” she said, before listing a number of charities to help.

Whoopi Goldberg

#WhoopiGoldberg: “If everyone was actually treated equally, we wouldn’t have had to put in affirmative action.” https://t.co/cVclFZQmjA pic.twitter.com/QYuBQC46Qq

— The View (@TheView) June 29, 2023

Shortly after the news broke, Whoopi Goldberg called out the court at the start of The View. “The 14th Amendment is supposed to promise equal protection, but if everyone was actually treated equally, we wouldn’t have had to put in affirmative action. Wouldn’t have had to do it!” she said. “People wouldn’t have had to march and beg and got hosed and all of these things that people did to just balance us out with everything else going on in the country.”

Sunny Hostin

The View co-hosts also asked if there would be more efforts to oppose legacy admissions to colleges and universities. Sunny Hostin and Alyssa Farah-Griffin also noted how the opinion didn’t stop colleges from considering how race affected different applicants’ lives. Sunny showed agreement with the dissenting opinions that ignoring race will not make the problem go away.”Pretending that it is no longer an issue exacerbates the problem,” she said on The View. 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

If SCOTUS was serious about their ludicrous “colorblindness” claims, they would have abolished legacy admissions, aka affirmative action for the privileged.

70% of Harvard’s legacy applicants are white. SCOTUS didn’t touch that – which would have impacted them and their patrons.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 29, 2023

New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also released a statement, calling out the Supreme Court for not doing away with legacy admissions. If SCOTUS was serious about their ludicrous ‘colorblindness’ claims, they would have abolished legacy admissions, aka affirmative action for the privileged,”  she tweeted. “70% of Harvard’s legacy applicants are white. SCOTUS didn’t touch that – which would have impacted them and their patrons.”

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