The California Endowment Statement regarding SCOTUS Decision on Affirmative Action

Today’s ruling by the US Supreme Court on Affirmative Action is disappointing if not unexpected. Unfortunately, despite explicitly naming the centuries of legalized discrimination endured by racial and ethnic communities in this Country, the Court ignores this country’s shameful legacy and undermines 45 years of careful precedent attempting to redress in the context of higher education, the continued reality of this racial inequity

As a private health foundation, we know all too well that when it comes to your health in the United States, your zip code is more important than your genetic code. This dismaying correlation is attributable to our nation’s history of structural racism — forms of residential apartheid and segregation – playing out in the opportunities and conditions in communities where families and communities of color work, live, and play. Health is about neighborhoods, housing, jobs, and education. Affirmative Action policies were constructed as a tool to help level the playing field as a counterweight to decades and centuries of the gravity of racism in laws, policies, and practices.

Our Supreme Court should serve to advance equal justice under the law. It should not act in a manner that further excludes the most vulnerable from the reach of our Constitution‘s promise of meaningful equal opportunity. At this moment, here at The California Endowment, we stand resolutely and unapologetically with the visionaries and warriors for social and racial justice whose work we invest in and support. “La Lucha continua” – the Fight continues.