Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley spoke to Brian Kilmeade about the Supreme Court decision striking down race-based affirmative action in schools. Riley says he has been waiting for this day for a very long time and this is a decision that corrects something that the court got wrong back in 1978 when it when it blessed racial preferences in higher education. Riley believes it is unconstitutional and unfair to discriminate by race and the policies put forward to help the Black underclass has hurt the intended beneficiaries. Riley also pushed back on California Governor Gavin Newsom saying there will be a significant decline in African American and Latino admissions in institutions of higher learning and how California has had a 50% decline within the first three years after California passed Proposition 209. Riley says Newsom has a wrong reading of history and does not know where he gets his numbers from. Before the ending of California’s race-based preferences, Riley points to Black enrollment and graduation rates within the University of California system had been declining but after California ended race-based admissions, Black enrollment not only increased but so did Black graduation rates by more than 50%. Riley also discussed school choice being integral for the Black community. Riley explained the correlation for Black kids who have a higher decent education to having a higher income and staying out of trouble with the law, avoiding teen pregnancy, drug dependency and so much other positives. Riley finds it troublesome that the democrat party, which claims to champion Black Americans, is increasingly opposed to school choice. On the question of reparations for the Black community, Riley asks why people would expect this to work any more effectively than all the other wealth redistribution schemes that have been tried since the 1960’s under President Lyndon Johnson.
