Supreme Court decisions are a matter of law, not morality or even prudential public policy, and I’m unqualified right now to have an option on the legal aspects of the affirmative action decision.

But I do see, as I have for decades, quite a few people say that AA is “reverse discrimination”, and also that it sends a bad message or sets a bad example.

AA doesn’t teach kids that the way to fix discrimination is just reverse discrimination.

I don’t mean this to be derogatory or provocative (it’s not a personal remark), but objectively speaking, to me such a claim seems either in bad faith or naive.

Besides the fact that an AA program doesn’t teach anyone anything by it’s mere existence — hopefully the fact that people can form their own negative opinion on AA even in the face of such a program so far isn’t something they think is a rare privilege — the programs don’t have only the interpretation this “bad example” view implies.

For example, if 20% of the societal wealth is interest on stolen labor (to make up an example), then broadly speaking a school that based on the society and its endowment today having 1000 slots would counterfactually have 800. That means that slots used in AA aren’t being denied to anyone who deserves them. They are being reclaimed as stolen property by a particular demographic. If there were not legacy of slavery to correct, so no AA, we wouldn’t have people in those spots who are otherwise victims of reverse discrimination: the spots wouldn’t exist.

This is the same argument I made, against my peers, in favor of collegiate athletics at Princeton. A large number of slots went to athletes who otherwise would have had their slots go to academically superior or otherwise more deserving applicants, was the resentful claim.

But it wasn’t true. Athletics was cash flow positive. Without the program, the occupied slots wouldn’t exist. Indeed they created extra, surplus slots, so additional academically gifted folks could go to Princeton, not fewer.

There is an objection instead that this nonetheless damages the mission of the university or is bad for brand or other such points. Same can be said for AA. We can debate if that is true, or quite the opposite, or neutral, but the objection that AA takes slots from those who otherwise deserve it is only true if the slots exist in the counterfactually world where the injustice didn’t exist — a possibility but seems prima facie implausible.