Today’s Supreme Court decision will roll back the progress our country has made in the fight for racial justice and educational equity. For more than 50 years, Black students and other students of color have had the opportunity through affirmative action to attend colleges and universities that prior generations were restricted from, either through racist and nepotistic admissions practices or systemic institutional barriers that segregated and prohibited educational opportunity.

Increased access to higher education is a powerful instrument of economic justice, widening the path to well-paying careers and to building generational wealth for students and their families. In issuing today’s decision, the Supreme Court is ignoring the clear, persistent, and deeply ingrained inequities that define our educational system, which will only be exacerbated by barring higher education institutions’ admissions offices from considering race and the history of racism in this country.

This is a deeply disappointing decision for advocates for racial justice in this country, but it will not in any way shake our commitment to pursuing a more equitable borough and nation.