This is an opinion column.

We’re used to this.

Every time white people begin to fret over their failings, when they believe their losing ground or see their precious privileges eroding, they blame us. They scream, pout, and not so surreptitiously appoint their friends to high places and slam the door. Or they try.

As my pastor likes to say: We don’t make excuses, we make adjustments.

They slam a door; we find a key or a window. Or we build a new house.

When they prohibited our enslaved ancestors from learning to read or write, fearing it might expose them to ideas of freedom and revolution, when they prohibited large gatherings designed to educate each other, we stole away in clandestine groups and taught ourselves, often from books provided by allies. Often from The Bible.

Adjustments.

When they prohibited us from attending their elementary, middle, and high schools, we built our own, named them after our own (like my own Paul Laurence Dunbar Elementary in Tulsa, and filled them with our teachers—and learned.

Adjustments.

When they refused to allow us into their higher learning institutions, we built those, too. My mother was a proud graduate of historically Black Langston University in Oklahoma, her best friend an equally spirited Spelman College alum. Both women became teachers who educated generations. And there were many, many, many more like them—products of our own institutions who still lift us.

Adjustments.

When they whined about the proliferation of programs designed to affirmatively address decades of slammed doors—not merely at educational institutions, but in public and private employment sectors, as well—then in 1978 struck down racial “quotas” (which had nothing to do with affirmative action), we endured. In part because that Supreme Court still ruled that race could be among many factors used for admissions.

Adjustments.

When in 1996, they passed Proposition 209 in California making it illegal for the University of California system and other state agencies from using race, ethnicity, or sex as criteria in public employment, contracting, or education, we took a hit. The following year, the number of Black and Latino students at UCLA and UC Berkley tumbled by almost half. In the fall of 2022, though, Latinos and Blacks comprised 43% of first-year students; more than double the 20% representation before Proposition 209.

Adjustments

They elevated a man to the Supreme Court—a man who’s long admitted being an affirmative action beneficiary–without the spine to brush off the darts thrown at all of us when we entered rooms previously closed to us, when we kicked down slammed doors at colleges and corporations. Justice Clarence Thomas allowed broken people to break him, to blind him to the disparate conditions that so many of our young still must overcome simply to get to the door, let alone walk through.

By contrast, just for purposes of comparison, Michelle Obama, who endured the darts at Princeton and Harvard Law Schools, responded thusly: “I belonged,” she shared on Twitter. “And semester after semester, decade after decade, for more than half a century, countless students like me showed they belonged, too.”

Adjustments.

When the Supreme Court ripped race out of affirmative college admissions this week, most of us deplored it, rightly so, knowing there is still so much to be done to ensure the full blessings of liberty our founding fathers ordained in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. We denounced this court ignoring half a century of judicial precedence to attack a single element of admissions criteria while leaving others (preferences for legacies, and children of big donors, faculties, and the like) unscathed.

SCOTUS didn’t “gut” affirmative action, as so many headlines blared, it gutted any affirmative admissions consideration for Black and brown people.

That said, race and how it shapes a young person’s journey—how it shapes the life of any person of color, whether they acknowledge it or not—cannot be extricated from the admissions process. Indeed, in support of the ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote: “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise.”

Many fret the immediate decline of Black students at many universities where admissions are highly selective. That may very well happen. Yet know this: Most of the nation’s 1,364 colleges accept most students who apply, so race isn’t really a factor for them. Indeed, according to the 2019 Pew Research Study, only 17 of those institutions typically admit fewer than 10% of applicants.

Moreover, myriad institutions we built are still open, still educating, still lifting.

“Since 1898, the doors of Miles College have been open to all, regardless of race, creed, ethnicity, or gender,” said its president, Bobbie Knight. “[The Supreme Court ruling] is reminiscent of an era when opportunities were unequal and marginalized communities were left behind. It evokes memories of a time when equal and fair access to higher education was denied. This denial contributed to the creation of HBCUs.

“While HBCUs emerged from a necessity to provide education in the face of segregation, our societal goal should be to create a truly equal and fair means for all individuals to receive a quality education.”

In the meantime, we’ll do what we always do—adjust. No excuses.

We’re used to it.

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