The Supreme Court’s decision against Affirmative Action is a fundamental decision against fairness, progress, and equity. Equity is always about ‘owning value.’ So, when Black women, for instance, are only paid 68 cents on the dollar to do the same jobs as white men, that’s 32 cents of inequity. When property in Black neighborhoods is underassessed by $48,000 on average, that’s $156 billion of national Black inequity. These are things that people have earned yet are kept from them because of their race or race and gender.

When Harvard and other schools excluded people based on race for over 300 years, that lost opportunity, social networking, knowledge, and wealth were immeasurable inequity. Harvard built hundreds of years of all-white ‘legacy families’ who are still given preferential admissions because of that racial legacy but Harvard has just been told that they can no longer counterbalance their racial bias for white people.

The ruling on education will be used by those who have always opposed racial equity policies to push Black and brown people out of things they have earned in every facet of the economy such as hiring, housing, lending, and learning.

The most disturbing facet of this is that those opponents will make the logical argument that eliminating race as a conscious factor is just being “fair” because no one should be privileged by their race.

Yet they will brazenly continue to enjoy their race-based privilege in pay, in property assessment, in financing, in size of grant funding, in law leniency, in voter suppression, in who is centered in all our education systems and socialization.

If you oppose racial preferences then pay Black and all people what they’ve earned, assess their properties the same, lend them what they qualify for, grant them what you grant the white-run shops, enforce all laws with compassion, make sure that everyone can vote, and teach the history of all people’s contributions to this country rather than only centering the white history.

Those are steps toward ending racial preference. This ruling is just a big step toward ending racial equity. Let’s be clear.

The powerful Black leader-members of BMe Community and our friends, allies and clients of all races will continue to fight for liberty and justice for all.

That means that we will value ALL members of the human family. We won’t denigrate groups and leave them vulnerable to charges of wanting privileges that they haven’t earned.

We will instead define all people by their aspirations and contributions so that we can genuinely see and appreciate each other’s value. We will continue to come together for knowledge, support, and community. And we will continue to show leaders why rejecting fear and stigma is the only way to realize a society wherein we are all free to Live, Own, Vote, and Excel (L.O.V.E.).

Please join us in this intensifying fight to build both L.O.V.E. and Power. www.BlackLOVEPledge.org.