He was a retired master sergeant who served with valor in the Korean and Vietnam Wars. He was a Bronze Star recipient. Years later, in civil service, he was chief of the base Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) office, which was how I came to know him in the late 1980s. A man of gentle grace and a kind heart, he brightened every room into which he entered with a happy gleam in his eye and an infectious laugh that was as big as his overflowing good spirit. 

A sometime admirer of my submissions to the editorial page in the local newspaper, Sol would occasionally grill me on one subject or another and our debates were always jovial and more of an exploration of differing points of view than a rhetorical war. I had just finished reading Thomas Sowell's book "Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?" and penned an opinion piece on the book when Sol and I had some of our most probing and pointed exchanges. 

But there was more to it than just Sol's official title of EEO chief. With a look of inescapable pain in his eyes, he recounted what it was like to return home after fighting in the Korean War only to be told to sit in the back of a city bus, in the very country he fought to defend. How was it, he asked, that he was good enough to fight and die for America and yet not good enough to be treated as an equal citizen? From that perspective, he understood the animating reasons behind affirmative action, even if the logic of it prompted questions he found difficult to answer.  

Our discussions were always friendly and sometimes lively. Others would gather to listen in and occasionally interject a point on one side or the other. When it came to affirmative action, however, regardless of what particular news item launched our exchange we always ended up in the same place, i.e., with me asking some variation on the question, "How do you end discrimination on the basis of race or sex if you continue discriminating on the basis of race and sex?" 

Things would become uncomfortable at that point, prompting one or both of us to slip in a self deprecating remark before the laughter would begin and all was right with the world once more. One day, when it was just the two of us, I pressed the point further on whether one can end discrimination by continuing to discriminate. Sol leaned in and, with a warm smile, replied, "Ask me that question again after I retire, and the answer may surprise you."  

Alas, I was later transferred to another base, and Sol rose prominently up in civil service to the rank of GS-God, or some such. He wound up at the Pentagon, prompting a few phone calls and some gifts mailed to and fro before life took over and we lost touch.  He passed away in 2007, leaving this world a less happy place, though I'm sure heaven became more heavenly still with that incredible laugh.  

It seems grubby somehow to wonder what Sol would make of recent Supreme Court decisions that have finally concluded that the only sure way to end discrimination is to stop discriminating. The Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College in 2023 brought affirmative action in higher education to a stop, directing that a student "must be treated on the basis of his or her experiences as an individual - not on the basis of race."  

In yesterday's unanimous Supreme Court ruling in the case of Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Service, the Court found that the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals erred in it's requirement that a heterosexual who claimed that her employer had committed "reverse" discrimination against her was required to submit additional "background circumstances" that a minority employee would not have to submit. Writing for the Court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote: 

"As a textual matter, Title VII's disparate-treatment provision draws no distinctions between majority-group plaintiffs and minority-group plaintiffs. Rather, the provision makes it unlawful 'to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.'  ...By establishing the same protections for 'individual,' - without regard to that individual's membership in a minority or majority group, - Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone. ... Our case law ... makes clear that the standard for proving disparate treatment under Title VII does not vary based on whether or not the plaintiff is a member of a majority group." 

Here, at last, is an instance of a jurist looking at the plain language of the law and interpreting that law on its own terms, rather than interjecting what the jurist thinks the law ought to have said.  The result is simple, though we are reminded that that which is simple isn't always easy. Discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin is wrong and against the law, full stop. What would Sol make of it all? He made equality of opportunity for all his life's mission. He defended his country and his country's values.  I'd like to think he would be encouraged, especially in light of the carnage and division we've seen in recent years from those who see the world exclusively through the lens of race.  Sol wasn't like that.  I miss our conversations terribly, but remain hopeful that we're finally turning a corner, and heading toward the light he followed for 70 years.