(upbeat music) - Hey, y'all.

I'm Kiara Butler and welcome to "Generation Rising," where we discuss hard-hitting topics that our diverse communities face every day.

In another controversial ruling, the Supreme Court has rejected affirmative action in university admissions, ruling that race-conscious decisions are unconstitutional.

This will heavily impact large communities, including women, people of color, and people with disabilities.

And so joining us on the show today is Ray Rickman, the co-founder and executive director of Stages of Freedom and a pivotal social justice figure here in Rhode Island.

Welcome, Ray.

- Thank you.

- How are you?

- Thank you for having me at Channel 36.

- Yes, so happy to have you here and to be talking about affirmative action, what that means for us, what that means for our future.

Where do you wanna start?

- Well, I have two views.

I have a very harsh view of the Supreme Court and then I have a more moderate view.

And everybody's surprised at the moderate one.

Let me start with the moderate one.

Real affirmative action in colleges only exists in about 200 colleges out of 5,000.

So we haven't lost a whole lot.

And I could be unkind and name you 10 colleges within 50 miles that do nothing.

I'm not going to be unkind this morning.

- I was gonna say, Rhode Island's 50 miles long.

- Well, I might go into, anyway, nevermind.

And then you have the Brown Universitys of the world that embrace this.

Harvard, Brown, Dartmouth, Yale, mainly the Ivy Leagues, University of Michigan.

So there are 200 of those and nearly 5,000 do nothings or do little, like the University of Rhode Island.

And so the court has slapped at the most prestigious, most capable universities in this nation who know how to get around things and have resources, okay?

Harvard has more resources than the state of Rhode Island will have in the next 32 years.

Anything they want to do.

And then this strange court put in unbelievable exceptions for the military academies because somebody called them up and told them, "We need Black people in the military at this time.

White folks don't wanna join in the numbers they used to."

So you have a exemption.

How do you give an exemption for West Point?

It's as prestigious, as capable a university as you can imagine and they gave them an exemption.

Hypocrisy is what that is.

Now we go to the next level.

You ready?

Then they tell them, this is Roberts telling people what they can do in lieu of.

It's really what you can do to get around the ruling we just made.

That's my moderation.

And Roberts doesn't want to be considered an awful human being.

There are three or four, including Clarence Thomas, don't care what you think of them.

This is a slap in the face, a kick to the groin.

This is awful, insult, mainly the Black people.

And it's stupid too because there are no other minorities that need to be talked about in this country.

So they're full of garbage on every conceivable level.

Let me give you another one.

He says you can look at zip codes.

Detroit has 41 zip codes.

Not a one of them, one of them is 14% white, another one's 20% white, and the other 42 are Black.

If you look at any zip code in Detroit, you're talking about Black people.

And we can get to Philadelphia and Atlanta and every place else you wanna go.

So you don't have to check the box race.

You can check the box 42114 Detroit.

- And now we know.

- 98% Black.

The only white people live above their stores or something.

I don't know.

Anyway.

So this is Roberts letting people do what they already do.

And so yes, it is the ultimate insult.

But is it the ultimate stoppage?

No, because, first, it only applies to a limited number of places.

And secondly, there are about 10 outs in which you can consider race, including, they keep screaming, the essay.

What am I gonna write in my essay?

I'm a poor Black kid, and then my social worker will take the word Black out.

I'm a poor kid and I have A grades.

Please let me into Dartmouth.

So this is just them.

This is not as bad as the abortion decision because that's going to cause death.

It's also going to cause people to travel 4 and 500 miles.

But about 60% of all abortions come now through the pill and you can get it through the mail.

So these justices are as full of it as you can imagine.

But let me tell your viewers and this is what I tell the Black kids, Latino kids, Asian kids, indigenous kids all the time, there is a way forward.

And some conservative white man and evil Black man, Clarence Thomas, and that evil Barrett cannot stop you from moving forward if you so want to.

There's a way around it.

And if you don't know how, call me.

- So do you think there's gonna be like a ripple effect in the job market?

You mentioned the military, but are we gonna see the effects of this ruling?

- I would predict, and I'm not, Buckminster Fuller said, "Please be careful about predicting the future."

But I'm gonna try it anyway.

You ready?

- [Kiara] Yeah.

- This is gonna hurt for a year or so, and then it's not.

Harvard and Brown will find a way, and they're the ones doing it.

He told them, zip code.

Just don't check the box.

Now, this is the era in which we live.

The majority of white folks who are mad at Black folks are full of it.

I can't even begin to tell you.

And I wish I were a curser.

You know, people getting social security want it abolished because Black people get it.

And you say, "I'm sorry, it's a savings account.

And the Black person's probably getting less social security than you because it's based on income.

What are you talking about?"

And this is the Supreme Court doing the same piece of skulduggery.

I mean, it's just ridiculous what people want to believe.

Black people are getting ahead of white people?

Legacy at Harvard, at Brown, at all of these places in which white people get to walk in because of something their great-grandfather did.

Great-grandfather.

Not even your father.

I take some credit for my mother, not much, but I take virtually no credit for my grandmother and great-grandmother and whatever.

Why should that come back to benefit me, what they did?

And they didn't necessarily do anything great, except get to go to school when Black people couldn't go.

That's legacy.

I wanna see what the court's gonna do 'cause that's gonna work its way up to them in the next three or four years to strike legacy down.

80% of all legacy people are white.

20 years ago, 90% of all legacy people were white.

- Wow.

- And that is a benefit for white people.

- As a student at Yale, the school where four of the Supreme Court justices went to, three of whom voted in favor of dismantling race-conscious admissions, I thought I'd give my input.

The premise of affirmative action lies in placing favor on certain individuals or certain groups.

We often hear it being used in relation to race, but there are many other ways that we favor individuals in the college admissions process.

Think private tutors, SAT prep courses, feeder schools, legacies, connections, wealth.

By having access to any of that, you are more likely and oftentimes more successful at being admitted to a college.

So it seems that placing favor on all of those things are okay, but when it comes to simply considering race, that's too much of a launching pad.

Being Black wasn't enough to get me or anyone else into a school like Yale.

If that was the case, then you would see low retention rates at universities.

I'm not sure what college applications or essay topics will look like.

I'm not even sure what Yale will look like four years from now.

All I know is that my kids and those of many, many Black and brown students across the nation will be legacies.

And when that happens, I wonder what our justice system will say about legacy-based admissions.

- What do you think this means for HBCUs, if anything?

- It's a plus.

There are a few Black people who are gonna say, "Ooh, they don't want me to go to Yale.

I think I'll go to Howard."

(chuckles) When I was a teenager, long, long time ago, I went to Howard and would've gone to Howard but they had had some trouble that summer and racial problems and one store got burnt down and so I didn't go to Howard.

I wanted to.

And you're gonna have more of that.

Now, what affirmative action in these universities is, is 25 years, 30, of them figuring out how to attract the best and the brightest, how to get Diana Ross's children to come to Brown instead of to go to Morehouse, okay?

And Brown has mastered that.

And there will be a little pushback 'cause people do silly things.

Clarence Thomas doesn't want me to go to Yale.

I'll go to Howard.

(chuckles) He may have helped.

He may have helped the Black schools.

This is a sick conversation we're having.

This is Plessy versus Ferguson on steroids, except that hurt the whole race for a hundred, I'm exaggerating, I'm sorry, I don't believe in exaggeration, hurt the whole race for 70 years.

This is aimed at 1% of the race.

And they're talking about it as a, including my favorite paper, ta-da, "The New York Times."

- "The Times."

- "Justices Gut College Affirmative Action."

They didn't gut it.

They threw it on the side and we have to figure out how to put it back on track.

And I never criticize "The Times" as a rule 'cause they're such a fabulous paper.

They're so kind of people of color and cover and protective.

But we can undo this.

- What message do you think this is sending?

Like is it to Biden, is it to Black people?

Is it to everyone as citizens?

- No, it's to the federal, so they have these two arch-conservative white organizations that put these three justices on the court through Trump and they promised them that they would get rid of affirmative action, and so they did.

And it's almost impossible to get rid of.

But they did the best they could.

And this headline is what they wanted from "The New York Times" so they can show it to the Federalist Society.

We gutted it.

We gutted it.

Now, I know how they could have gutted it, and they didn't.

You can't use zip code.

You can't use essays that discuss poverty.

You know, if they list, if they did those 10 things, first, I don't know how you can get into college after that because I have gotten two people into one of the Ivy Leagues because they played an obscure instrument and their bands are falling apart.

I tell every Black kid, every Latino kid, go learn to play the tuba.

And you get a B+ grade in the tuba and you get into Dartmouth.

Schools are constituted by a variety of young people, students, who have certain skills.

This Harvard thing, which I'm very slow to talk about, involving Asian students, Harvard should have backed back so we didn't have this decision.

Harvard was too proud.

You get into, and again, this is for your viewers, you get into these schools because you're rich, (gasps) they lie about it, because you gave a lot of money, they lie about it, or you're going to be somebody.

You're going to be a doctor who finds a cure to sickle cell anemia.

That is what Harvard wants, okay?

Now, you can't just go up there and go to school and be a teacher at a so-so school.

They're not interested in you.

And a lot of people have good grades but don't have much else.

The essay didn't say, "I am going to find a cure for diabetes."

You wanna get into Harvard?

That's all you have to say.

17 1/2 years old.

It's an essay.

It may not even be real.

- So in terms of belonging, do you think that our Black babies should actually be aspiring to go to Ivy Leagues?

Because I went to Tougaloo and Tougaloo produces some of the top lawyers and doctors in the nation.

And so what are your thoughts?

- Can I come on your show again later in the year?

- Yeah.

- Stages of Freedom exists for the purpose of taking people, mainly Black, but also lots of Latino kids, to places they've never been, to see things they've never seen.

We're taking them to the Supreme Court of Rhode Island in the fall to sit with some judges, okay?

You wanna see judges versus the criminal attorney who's helping you avoid the judges.

I think every single person should, this is my philosophy, this is Ray Rickman's philosophy, tomorrow should be better than today.

Your children should be better off than you.

And that means, it means a whole lot of things.

Now, if going to Harvard gets you that, and going to Harvard normally gets you something, you should go there.

Now, if you go to, my nieces went to two Black colleges.

- HBCU?

- Yeah, and they're just fine and they went on and got PhDs and one of them runs a hospital and our whole family's doing fine.

What is the way forward?

That's my answer to you.

And some people aren't ready for some things.

I go over to the RISD Museum and sit in the room with 200 white people all the time.

It enriches me, doesn't bother me.

It's the way it is.

We send Black kids over there and they never want to go again.

I was the only one there.

And where are you in terms of what you're able to take advantage of or participate in?

I've learned to tell Black kids about to go to the museum.

The guard will watch you, and he watches everybody.

- Mm-hm.

- Okay?

They don't know that.

They don't wanna be watched.

Now, I'm a Black man past 70.

I don't wanna be watched.

I'm tired of it.

It's a whole lifetime of it.

Those justices can lie all they want, but being Black in America still carries its problems, enormous problems, discriminatory problems.

And Black people are not, this is, again, for any conservative viewers you might have.

You ready?

Brown University has expanded its number of students three times in the last 30 years.

There isn't a white student that they want to take that has been replaced by a Black student.

But on top of that, in the last, certainly, I wanna be careful, going back 30 and 35 years ago, Brown was trying to figure out what to do and I was slightly a part of that.

Brown sent me to EEOC training in Washington to come back and help train their first diversity workers.

So I've been there, I've seen them, but they got it.

They know what they're, with the students, they know what they're doing.

And I now worry they've gone too far, that, oh, that the Black students are all equal to the white students and above.

So Morehouse, which I like, is not gonna get Diana Ross's children, grandchildren.

And they need them too.

- Yeah.

- So (sighs), and Brown, you know, Brown's 7.5% Black students, but it's 24% minority, Latino and Asian and the like.

Go back, when I first started working with Brown, it was 1% Black.

- [Kiara] Mm-hm.

- And certain people didn't want you there.

- And so do you think there's gonna be any lawsuits or anything as a result of the ruling?

- There will be a legacy lawsuit.

I've just been shocked that there hasn't been one up to now.

I have talked to Brown students for 10 years urging them to confront the corporation at Brown on legacies.

Legacies are going to now take a beating.

It's indefensible.

You are rich and white and your grandfather went someplace and you get points, and enough points to take you over.

90% of Brown students, and I have to be careful about keep picking on Brown, but I know a lot, they're the same, seriously.

And you wanna be Black from Utah?

Boom, you'll get in there 'cause you're the only Black person from Utah.

You wanna be white from Utah?

Boom, you get in there.

Why?

Because Brown wants five students from every state in the nation.

Connecticut, you don't wanna come from Connecticut.

There are 300 people with a whatever and can write good essays and have a story to tell.

- But that sounds like that's more of a strategy of Brown, right?

- Oh, no, no, all the Ivys.

- Do you believe that affirmative action is giving Black people or other people of color a leg up like legacy?

- No, no.

I told you, no.

I think, and I don't wanna keep naming them, I know Diana Ross's two daughters, so I tell them I talk about them sometimes, and they're both in the public eye.

They're actresses and the like.

No, I think Brown takes highly qualified everybody.

And if you found somebody not highly qualified, their parents are worth $300 million, and they're not slouches either.

Now, I'm gonna tell this 'cause time's gonna run away from us.

So I wanna tell you this.

So the president of Harvard I think 25 years ago, related to the medical school, said this, and I'm simplifying, "You get in there 'cause you're 90 to a hundred."

That's a simplification.

And a lot of the Black people and Native American people and the like are only 90 and 91.

But 90 and 91 is better than almost anybody else in this society.

You're not a bum 'cause you're 90 going to the med school at Harvard.

A lot of the white folks are 95, 96, 97.

Their fathers and grandfathers, medical doctors.

And you sit at the arm of a medical doctor for 18 years and you get benefits.

You know the language, you know all kinds of things, and it puts you ahead of the Black kid whose mother is a part-time whatever, okay?

- Yeah.

- So he said, "Most of the white kids coming to Harvard have a leg up.

They're no brighter."

- But they've been- - 'Cause nobody's any brighter, you know?

You get off the boat for 50 years and you're just as bright as everybody else if you want to be.

You see who wins the spelling bees in this country and they ain't white people, okay?

So he said, "Harvard likes a kid who's 91 and is going to discover a cure for sickle cell anemia more than a white kid who's 96 and is going to practice in Manhattan and get to be a multimillionaire."

And now, he didn't badmouth him too bad 'cause they're gonna call on him for some of those millions.

- Yeah.

- And that's what these schools do.

They put in as many children of medical people as they can 'cause they know the benefits to the school and its endowment.

- And so from your perspective then, how should students navigate the application process or applying for a job?

What should they do?

- 42114.

Detroit zip code.

You're Black, okay?

- All right.

- And Justice Roberts keeps trying to do the wrong thing (chuckles) as nicely as possible.

Really.

He's not a moderate.

He's trying to figure out how.

Now, we had a ruling on congressional districts, two of them in the South, in which Roberts steered it.

You know, they should have two Black districts where Black people can win and he steered it where we could have one versus zero.

That's him.

Moderate arch-conservative.

And now, again, I say this, I'd love to say this, all things will change.

Two of those justices went before the US Senate and lied about abortion, and then three years later, overturned it.

Nobody thought it would be overturned.

- Hmm.

And so what can we do?

We don't just sit back and watch.

What can we do?

How can we stay involved?

- Vote.

- Or how can we stay involved with and in touch with you?

- Well, first, you know, and I wanna be political, he who votes, she who votes, they who vote have something to say.

And quite often, you know, I tell people I've met decent Republicans, but they're part of a really bad system.

Can you count on them?

So there's Roberts doing bad things, but not totally evil, only evil.

If they weren't on the court, we wouldn't have this problem.

And God in heaven will take one of them away.

Old age, death, stroke.

Seriously.

I'm not predicting anything I don't know.

And there will be a vacancy.

Who fills it?

Who fills it?

- And so is there anything you want us to end with to wrap it up?

- Yeah, so Stages of Freedom has put one of the decisions, and it's not the decision, I wish it was one of the dissents, on stagesoffreedom.org.

And you can go there and you can listen to this decision, which covers 400 years of denigration of Black people and why this decision is so bad.

And we are not paying enough attention.

If we were, we'd all be angry, really.

- [Kiara] Yeah.

- This is humiliation.

And I told you, I sound a little moderate because I know the ways around it, and it's not me.

Ray Rickman's not dreaming this up.

Justice Roberts told you, "No, you can't check the box anymore.

Go do this."

And they should read the decision is.

Oh, this is painful because we're supposed to be out working on diabetes, we're supposed to be working out on fixing the Providence School District.

We're not supposed to be talking about settled law.

- [Kiara] Right.

- Really, this is as insulting as you can imagine.

And again, I know time's getting away from us, but Clarence Thomas, the affirmative action baby, everything he did, including the seat on the court, he was given the Black seat on the court.

You know, and I think God turned and had tears in his eyes when this man got Thurgood Marshall's seat.

You can't believe it.

- Yeah, right.

We're definitely gonna have to have you back to talk about it because we're out of time.

We are out of time.

Thank you so much for joining us.

And to our viewers at home, thank you for watching.

You can catch past episodes any time on watch.ripbs.org and be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for the latest updates.

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