This Is The End Of Affirmative Action

We have to face the reality that our education system is, and always has been, separate and unequal.

- By Adam Harris

One afternoon, during my freshman year at Alabama A&M University, my homework was piling up, and I was feeling antsy. I needed a change of scenery from Foster Hall. I’d heard that the library at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, 10 minutes away, was open three hours longer than our own. So I loaded up my backpack, ran down the stairs—the dorm’s elevator was busted—and headed across town.

Founded in 1875 to educate Black students who had been shut out of American higher education, A&M was a second home for me. My mom had gone there; my uncle had been a drum major in the ’80s; my sister was on the volleyball team. But when you’re home long enough, you start to notice flaws: The classroom heaters were always breaking down, and the campus shuttle never seemed to run on time when it was coldest out. When I arrived at UAH, I was shocked. The buildings looked new, and fountains burst from man-made ponds. The library had books and magazines I’d never heard of—including the one for which I now write.

Something else quickly became obvious: Almost every student I saw at UAH was white. That day, a little more than a decade ago, was my introduction to the bitter reality that there are two tracks in American higher education. One has money and confers prestige, while the other—the one that Black students tend to tread—does not.