Ironically Republicans may be the reason for President Joe Biden’s announcement of the kind of person he would nominate for the Supreme Court. Former President Ronald Reagan, upon being elected, made it clear he was going to pick the first woman for the court. And former President Donald Trump declared that no male need apply to replace the deceased Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg on the bench.

There is truly nothing wrong with any of those decisions made and followed through on by each president. Now it is Biden’s turn. Elections have consequences and a liberal justice will be selected.

Biden truly seems to have “heavy weights” to choose from in terms of candidate qualifications. Only two of the 13 are not Yale or Harvard graduates, and all 13 have impressive work experience. We do need to be careful, after all, because Yale or Harvard graduates have “always needed special help” getting confirmed to the court. Just kidding. Historically most of the justices have come from those two schools.

It is the timing of Justice Stephen Breyer’s announcement that I find interesting. Was it to stop the bleeding – the deep dive in Biden’s polling numbers – and unite the Democrat base? That would be his prerogative. It will certainly take up a lot of the oxygen in the room for next few months.

What I do not want is to conflate the possible selection of a Black woman to the highest court in the land with the Affirmative Action case regarding Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

There are a number of basic reasons for the Supreme Court to rule in favor of Harvard and UNC. I will argue just one today.

Race and the issue of fairness for Blacks in admissions has been fought since Bakke v. Davis in the 1970s. Former President Richard Nixon’s Assistant Labor Secretary Arthur Fletcher was the architect of goals and timetables for the inclusion of blacks in society, per educational opportunities and employment.

It’s the only way we can narrow the wealth and income gap between Blacks and whites.

When I was at Yale, the university made a radical change. It is common knowledge that if you went to a top boarding prep school, you were destined for a top college. There was a limited effort called A Better Chance that got promising young black students into those prep schools.

But the real change occurred after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And I benefited from that change. The top universities, especially the Ivy League ones, started recruiting in the inner cities. Many of the schools they targeted were high-end high schools or private institutions, most of them Catholic.

While at Yale, I often had lunch with four Black classmates who would go on to serve in Congress, one to the Cabinet, and one became chairman of a Fortune 500 company – just to name a few. I am proud to say that I was the first black from an Ivy League undergraduate school to serve as a U.S. Representative. Many white students then did the same – Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) being just one.

The colleges and universities are doing their part. They are monitored closely. They report their stats on admissions and they have gotten it right despite the constant challenge and threats from those who see a problem for the white man – reverse discrimination (a subject for another day).

We see how the income spread between the races is growing wider and wider. Why?

The main reason is the top paying firms, companies, institutions, employers only recruit from top-tier colleges and universities. Thus, if the top schools are not further encouraged to continue the fairness measures that they have been doing since MLK was assassinated, we will not have students of color getting high entry-level salaries.

For example, big tech companies camp out at the top engineering schools, offering lucrative internships and hiring from that pool of full-time applicants. It is how it is done. Other professions do the same. I could go on.

For nearly five years I worked with the Fortune 500 company Chesebrough-Pond’s, which is now part of Unilever. One of my responsibilities was running the College Recruiting Program for the company. This was back in the day when liberal arts degrees from the top-tier schools got you a position in the management training program. We recruited from the top MBA and engineering schools. But we also recruited from four historically Black colleges and universities out of the 40 campuses we visited annually.

If we don’t maintain the admissions policies of the top-tier institutions like Harvard and UNC for Black students, their access to high paying jobs will be eroded. The economic gap will widen to the point of becoming incalculable.