CHICAGO – On the 72th day of his 100-day rooftop vigil to build a community center designed to provide opportunities for his community, Pastor Corey Brooks wished to share his thoughts on the two affirmative action cases pending before the Supreme Court.
What follows has been lightly edited. We strongly encourage you to watch the accompanying video so you may hear the pastor in his own words.
Today, I want to talk about a controversial topic: affirmative action. And I know some of you are asking, "what the heck does affirmative action have to do with my community?" Well, I'm here to tell you, a whole lot.
Right now, the United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear two cases challenging admissions policies, one involving Harvard and the other involving the University of North Carolina. I'm not going to go into all the details of both cases because that is not the point of this Rooftop Revelation. But both cases generally ask if racial preferences can be used in college admissions. My answer is a simply flat out no.
For those of you wondering, no, I have never used affirmative action. I've never benefited from it. I'm one of those folks in the 2019 Pew Research Center poll that found that 62% of blacks said that race should not be used in college admissions. We all know it's a sham. I'm proud that I got to where I am because I worked hard and gave it all that I had. I know that many of my fellow brothers and sisters feel the same way.
My problem with affirmative action is that it helps nobody in our community. Our schools are so bad that even our smartest students struggle to get the education that they rightfully deserve.
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What bothers me about affirmative action is that it is essentially the government saying, "we will help you when you're 18. You can struggle from pre-K to 12th grade in a crappy school, and we will not help you. But when you apply to college and turn 18, we are here to help you."
How in the world does that make any sense at all? We're so far behind in this neighborhood that it's not funny. When they graduate 12th grade, some [students] are really at ninth grade levels [or worse]. So we give them affirmative action, and all of a sudden, our students are years behind in college.
Many of these students aspire to be doctors or scientists. They choose those majors in college, but many simply cannot compete with students from other schools and what happens? They drop out or they switch to easier majors.
Why are we doing this? We could have easily had those same students take a slower path upward, community college, state college and then graduate school. Let them catch up. Let them keep their dreams.
Several years ago, I saw a documentary called "How Jack Became Black." (Full disclosure, Rooftop Revelations producer Eli Steele made this film.) What struck me about the documentary is that it explained that the original purpose of affirmative action. The original purpose was to go into poor, underdeveloped communities and provide better teachers, better funding, a pathway to opportunities. The problem was that this development would take time, though.
University presidents wanted blacks on their campus now so they [could] show diversity, and they switched from the original purpose of affirmative action to racial preferences. They wanted blacks no matter what. They wanted blacks no matter where they came from, and the ugly truth is that most blacks that benefited were middle to upper class blacks, not the blacks from this neighborhood.
So affirmative action has not helped us one bit.
Here's an even uglier truth. The top colleges in America are fighting over a small pool of very talented black applicants who could have gotten into colleges on their own. These colleges had no interest in development. They wanted the quick, easy fix. They wanted to look good and brag about how many blacks they had on campus. It's simply tragic. Tragic. We need better schools, not affirmative action. We don't need handouts anymore.
The Bible says you reap what you sow. Because our nation chose the path of racial preferences, we're now in a racial war of sorts. What bothers me about these lawsuits is how they discriminate even against Asians. I've been discriminated against, and I would not wish that on any person, not even my worst enemy.
Why in the world would they discriminate against Asians that have worked hard and paid their dues? What kind of America are we becoming?
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See, what I'm getting at [is that] affirmative action is poisonous because it uses race as its primary principle. This has allowed Americans to overlook underdeveloped black communities. This has allowed Americans to discriminate against Asians simply because they look different, the color of their skin.
This is why we need to do away with affirmative action for once and for all. And if we do, then we will have nothing between us and our problems. We won't have the lies. We won't have the lies, the lies, the lies of affirmative action to hide behind.
The problems will be all naked and right in front of us. We will have to address them for once and for all. And that is why I support banning affirmative action.
Follow along as Fox News checks in Pastor Corey Brooks each day with a new Rooftop Revelation.
For more information, please visit Project H.O.O.D.
Eli Steele is a documentary filmmaker and writer. His latest film is "What Killed Michael Brown?" Twitter: @Hebro_Steele.
Camera by Terrell Allen.
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