“To abandon Affirmative Action is to say there is nothing more to be done about discrimination.”
—Coretta Scott King

My childhood bedroom resembled a monk’s cell. My mother built a bed in one corner, and a desk constructed of a door perched on filing cabinets was on the opposite wall. Finally, there were three wooden shelves and a closet. Because it was an attic and the walls were plaster and slanted, nothing would stay on them, It was stark and small and freezing in the winter, hot in the New Jersey summers, and yet I liked the way it lacked comfort because that was the message sent by my parents, life is not about La-Z-Boys and excessive packaging and snacks. It’s about furniture designed by artists that kept you sitting upright, avoiding waste like plastic wrap and Band-Aids, and God forbid there is anything easily accessed to eat between meals.

It was a weird childhood bookended with great indulgences like traveling on ocean liners to live abroad, Christmas Eve in Paris at Notre Dame, living for a summer in southern Spain, living in Ireland, and witnessing the life my parents relished filled with books, writers, artists, academics, and, unfortunately, alcohol. However, denial was also the element that fueled our family life. Denial of my father’s drinking, of my becoming a teenage alcoholic, of the hurts my parent’s childhoods passed on to their three daughters, and also the denial that sometimes you needed help, unlimited love, and understanding rather than a message that you were alone in a world that might crush you. Ultimately, they would come through, but I almost committed suicide simply to prove how much pain I was in.

This recent decision to eliminate Affirmative Action enrages me as a person who has taught for decades and understands the struggle to survive, never mind matriculate in a decent college, as well as any privileged white person can. I never had a classroom where everyone was equal. Aside from a stint at an incredibly wealthy high school on the North Shore, I have spent most of my career chasing down those who don’t understand the system to persuade them to stay, claim their place and ask for what they need. I had a college freshman explain that he didn’t come to my office hours when I saw students one-to-one because he thought they were the times I couldn’t be disturbed. The point is less is not more. We have a mental health crisis in this country which demands an understanding that many people have mental diseases that are made worse by a message of neglect. Neglect does not encourage anyone to succeed; it is simply a message, a message that communicates a lack of value, indifference, and possibly contempt.

The reality is diversity brings excellence to every level of education.

Classrooms are enriched by the experiences and insights of students who provide narratives unlike those of their privileged classmates. And those same classmates welcome the chance to learn new information. I recall my son, a product of the Chicago Public Schools, making friends as he worked on a mural project sponsored by the City of Chicago. He came home after visiting one of these fellow muralists with new information about the lives led by those not given the enormous advantages he had grown up with. This lesson was not one I had successfully taught. I was his mother, and he didn’t find my descriptions of the inequities of the public school system an engaging topic.

Affirmative Action was not created to teach lucky white people their lives reflected a racist society, but that is one of its functions. How can this country justify a ruling that can be represented by someone sticking their fingers in their ears, closing their eyes, and chanting “La-la-la-la-la?” As I observed my white AP English class in a high school with fifty-two percent Black students, I knew the system was broken. If we pretend that everyone receives the same chance in life, the fact will quickly become apparent that that is a lie. And the ladder will, as it’s always been, be pulled out of reach for those who deserve the same support to enter the unhallowed halls of higher education.

I loved my parents, but their Darwinian vision of life was something I changed in my parenting. My son needed help as a teenager; he needed to be reminded of the preciousness of life and always to know that my love for him was unconditional, no matter the circumstances. The Supreme Court has sent a horrific message in its lack of humanity.

—Molly Moynahan, author and writing coach

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