070823 Does The Supreme Court Really Understand Affirmative Action? (Part 2)

check Unknown Union dot com. All right, today's reading comes from NPR. Something the Supreme Court did that was good. The US Supreme Court stepped back from the brink of totally gutting the landmark nineteen sixty five Voting Rights Act. That's very important. Okay, this is why I'm still optimistic.

By a five to four vote, a coalition of conservative and liberal Justice justices reaffirmed the Court's nineteen eighty six president interpreting how legislative districts must be drawn under the landmark Voting Rights Act as amended in nineteen eighty two, the Court said that in Alabama, a state where there are seven congressional seats and one in four voters is black, Republican dominated state legislature had denied African American voters a

reasonable chance to elect a second representative of their choice. The decision could reverberate across other states with reconsideration of how congressional lines are drawn in areas with significant black populations. Chief Justice John Roberts, who authored or joined prior decisions that gutted key parts of the voting rights law, on Thursday, wrote for the Court majority to preserve the way voting rights law has been applied for nearly forty years in

redistricting cases. Who was joined by federal conservative Brett Kavanaugh. Crazy, you know that would never have expected that, but sure, I'll take it, man, and I got a credit where it's due. They joined the Court's three liberal justices Sonya Sodemayer, Alana Kagan, and Katanji Brown Jackson. Basically, the long and the short of it is jerry mandering. This this deals a blow to jerry mandering, which is often a tool used to repress and suppress the influence of black people

and marginalize people's votes in this country. So shout out to the Supreme Court for getting that thing right that that the implications there are a lot bigger than a lot of people know voting. I think voting is still very important, So the implications are a lot further reaching than many people though.

not that dude. And you'll see why we say that Also, I want to make sure that I say that the Supreme Court is not necessarily to be all and end all. There are checks and balances in government so that no one branch has supreme authority in perpetuity. Okay, you by listening to the show like this, and I'm sure you listen to other programming, and you seek out ways to become a better human being. First off, I applaud you.

But you're the sort of person that needs to influence your social circles so that people can think critically about things. And hopefully we'll kind of give you some perspective today. I'm going to read from NPR. In a historic decision, the US Supreme Court on Thursday effectively ended race conscious

admissions programs at colleges and universities across the country. In a decision divided along ideological lines, the six justice conservative supermajority invalidated admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. The decision reverses decades of precedent upheld over the years by narrow Supreme Court majorities that included Republican appointed justices. It ends the ability of colleges and universities public and private to do what most say they still

need to do. Consider race as one of the many factors in deciding which of the qualified applicants to be admitted. Chief Justice John Roberts, a longtime critic of affirmative action programs, wrote the decision for the Court majority, saying that the nation's colleges and universities must use color blind criteria and admissions. Oh if only that were true, real quick, before I

keep reading. Using color blind admissions criteria does not deal with like at Harvard, we're going to talk about this Harvard, forty three percent of the people that attend Harvard, our legacy attendees.

a Harvard thing. This is a thing with our corporate culture in this country. With law enforcement, I believe it's like sixty five percent of all police officers are white men. Judges, same thing, you know, on and on and on. This is when people talk about systemic issues, systemic racism, that these are issues that privileged white people and really prevent barriers to black people, and they operate more or less in perpetuity unless unchecked by something a lah affirmative action. Okay,

I'll keep reading. The majority of opinion says quote many universities have for too long concluded wrongly that the touchdown of an individual's identity is not challenges bested, but skills built or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice. Okay, Now, what does he think has been happening. Right, It's like it's like turning a blind eye your own privilege, your

own how these things help you. But when it becomes formalized for the benefit of someone else who is seeking to kind of equal things out, there's there's some equity built into the equation, equitable treatment, if you will, Then all of a sudden, it's well, whoa, whoa, we can't have this. In other words, I've said it recently on the show too, and I really need to get this quote quote right.

hire anyway. And now, even though the majority of the players are black, they pretend that there is not a pipeline for there to be black people in charge in the head coach position or the general manager position, which are the people who make the decisions and pretty much run these franchises. So these things are created because left to their own decisions, a lot of people would not even consider black people for these opportunities.

is black and he was on the Supreme Court. That's technically true, but there was no celebration in the way that there was there a good Marshall and Katanji Brown Jackson. Now you could say he was the first black woman, he was the first black Supreme Court justice. Clarence Thomas found in the middle. Oh, he doesn't, you know, he's not really breaking new ground here, but I think that.

Opportunity Commission. This man once oversaw the EEOC. The very job he held was to address racial inequality in this country. He made it to the Supreme Court, second Black the history of the Supreme Court. His predecessor was the great third Good Marshal. I could easily go into Clarence Thomas, and I think doctor Michael Eric Dyson put it best. He said, this is the face of a man who climbed the ladder of affirmative action to his present perch of power, only to help destroy the very ladder on

which he ascended. You used affirmative action to climb the ladder that you climbed to success, and then did everything you could to knock it down so nobody else could come up the same way you did. That is Clarence Thomas.

of our colorblind constitution. Okay, so Justice Clarence Thomas actually read that. Okay. Now there are people that will say, listen, man, that's black people, black people's problem, black people's issue. What do they have to do with it? Okay, Well there's more to this story, Okay, because affirmative action didn't just

help black people. Okay, there's a lot more here. And by the way, there's a good friend of the show and a good friend of me and Q. Isaac's the third, the son of the great Isaac Hays, the singer and the owner founders.

Then he says, but you didn't vote though, right, And so again we're talking about voting, and earlier when we talked about what the Supreme Court did that was good, hopefully end upholding or rather pushing back against people's rights or states rights, to jerry mander away the black the influence of the black vote, voting matters, and for everyone who thinks that your vote doesn't matter, it does. Because it was a conservative president, it's stacked a now conservative

Supreme Court that now it's taken away abortion. They've taken away affirmative action, as we've discussed, they have taken away protections against our lgbtqia plus brothers and sisters. They've taken away Listen, if you have student loans, the current president was trying to forgive twenty thousand dollars the student loans for everybody fifty thousand? Was it okay? Fifty thousand dollars

a student loans? So if you have student loans, the government or the president had a plan in place to forgive that that would have made a real measurable impact on you and your life and your immediate here and now, the same government that forgave all those pandemic loans, they have the capacity to do so this ship hasn't sunk, and all those pandemic loans were forgiven. But this is for every man. This isn't for business owners, This isn't for you, know, this is for you if you have

student loans or people that you might know. Right, the same Supreme Court push back on those efforts, and now the presidential administration underneath Joe Biden has to find another way to deliver that relief to the American public. So your vote shapes outcomes absolutely. And Isaac Cays was right.

your fifteen thirty SAT score won't be enough. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was living in Senegal, free and happy, but then had an idea. What if I got on a ship and went to a land I had never heard of, a place where I knew no one, did not speak the language, and spent sixteen hours a day doing forced labor while getting whipped and beaten. Yes, I thought, if that's what it takes for my prog you need to bump someone just as deserving from the admissions list, I'll do it.

Specifically because after graping, enslaving, murdering, lynching, and torturing black people for four hundred years, they wouldn't even allow black children to read a book, so black people had to build their own schools. And for those claiming that systemic racism is over, when when did those systems of white supremacy stop? Because right now black and brown schools get twenty three billion less in funding than white schools despite

serving the same number of students. Because even now, forty three percent of white students at Harvard are there only because of legacy, and three quarters of.

The bottom line is this, don't blame black people for your own mediocrity.

most important cell lines in medical research. And a mortalized cell line reproduces indefinitely under specific conditions, and the HeLa cell line continues to be a source of invaluable medical data to the present day. Lax was the unwitting soul of these cells from a tuner biopsied during treatment for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland in nineteen fifty one. These cells were then cultured by George Otto Gay, who created the cell line known as HeLa,

which is still used for medical research. As was then the practice, no consent was required for culture to culture the cells obtained from Lax treatment Neither she nor her family were compensated for the extraction or use of the HeLa cells. Even though some information about the origins of HeLa Hela's sorry immortalized cells was known to researchers after nineteen seventy, the Lax family was not made aware of

the line's existence until nineteen seventy five. With knowledge of the cell line's genetic prominence becoming public, its use for medical research and for commercial purposes continues to raise concerns about privacy and patient's rights. On January twenty ninth, nineteen fifty one, Lax went to Johns Hopkins, the only hospital in the area that treated black patient, because she felt

a knot in her womb. She had previously told her cousins about the knot, and they assumed correctly that she was pregnant, but after giving birth to Joseph, Lax had a severe hemorrhage. Her primary care doctor, William C. Wade, referred her back to Johns Hopkins. There, her doctor Howard W. Jones, took a biopsy of a mass found on LAX's cervix for laboratory testing. Soon after, Lax was told that she

had a malignant epidermoid carcinoma of the cervix. In the nineteen seventies, physicians discovered that she had been misdiagnosed and actually had an a dino carcinoma. This was a common mistake at the time and the treatment would not have differed. Lax was treated with radium tube inserts as an impatient and discharge a few days later with instructions to return for X ray treatments as a follow up. During her treatments, two samples were taken from LAX's cervix without her permission

or knowledge. Sample was of healthy tissue and the other was of cancerous These samples were given to George Otto Gay, a physician and cancer researcher at Johns Hopkins. The cells from the cancerous sample eventually became known as the HeLa immortal cell line, commonly used cell line in contemporary biomedical research. In nineteen ninety six, Moorhouse School of Medicine held its first annual HILA Women's Health Conference, led by physician Ronald Atillo.

The conference is held to give recognition to Henrietta Lax, her cell line. End quote the valuable contribution made by African Americans to medical research and clinical practice. The Mayor of Atlanta declared this date of the first conference, October eleventh, nineteen ninety six. Henrietta Lax Day. LAX's contributions continue to

be celebrated at yearly events and Turner station. At one such event in nineteen ninety seven, then US Congressman from Maryland, Robert Elrichi, presented a Congressional resolution recognizing Lax and her contributions to medical science and research. In twenty ten, the John Hopkins Institute for Clinical and Translational Research established the annual Henrietta Lacks Memorial Lecture Series to honor Henrietta Lax and the global impact of HeLa Celles on medicine and research.

In twenty eleven, Morgan State University in Baltimore granted Lacks a posthumous honorary doctorate in public service. Also in twenty eleven, the Evergreen School District in Vancouver, Washington, named their new high school focused on medical careers, the Henrietta las Health and Bioscience High School, becoming the first organization to memorialize

her publicly by naming the school after her. In twenty fourteen, Lax was inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame twenty seventeen, a minor planet and the main asteroid belt was named three, five nine or two six Lax in her honor. In twenty eighteen, The New York Times published a belated obituary for her as part of the Overlooked

History Project. Also in twenty eighteen, the National Portrait Gallery the National Museum of African American History and Culture Shout Out to Him jointly announced the accession of a poetrait portrait of Lax by Kadir Nelson. On October sixth, twenty eighteen, Johns Hopkins University announced plans to name a research building

in honor of Lax. The announcement was made at the ninth Annual Henrietta Lacks Memorial Lecture and the Turner Auditorium in East Baltimore by john Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels and Paul B. Rothman, CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine and Dean of the medical Facility the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, surrounded by several of Las's descendants quote through their life, through her life and immortal sells Henrietta Lax made a measurable impact on science and medicine that

has touched countless lives around the world. Daniel said this building will stand as a testament to a transformative impact on scientific discovery and the ethics it must be under

grid in its pursuit. Johns Hopkins are profoundly grateful to the Lax family their partnership as we continue to learn from Miss LAX's life and to honor her and during legacy, the building will adjourn Burman Institute of bio Ethics during call, located in the corner of Ashland and Rutland Avenues, and will quote support programs that enhance participation in partnership for members of the community and research that can benefit the community,

as well as extend the opportunities to further study and promote research, ethics and community engagement research throughout expansion of the Burman Institute and its work. And finally, in twenty twenty, Lax was inducted to the National Women's Hall of Fame. There's a lot more accolades and so forth, but still not taught in schools, So I didn't know about this woman.

A lot of people owe their life to this woman, a life cancer you name it, like life be living if not for this black woman and herself and what we've been able to learn and keep them going and use them in medicine and so forth.