Affirmative Action

According to the Washington Times,The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a state electorate’s right to ban the use of race in public university admissions..This says that affirmative action, which is based on race, can be struck down by a state's legislature for public university admissions. It does not say that affirmative action is no longer usable. It merely says that a state legislature can override it for public university admissions.
While this is a step in the right direction, I have long contended that affirmative action is anti-constitutional in any application.
The 10th Amendment to the Constitution says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Nowhere in the Constitution can be found a federal right to discriminate based on race (affirmative action). Therefore, this right to use or not to use affirmative action is a state's right. Any action by the federal government involving affirmative action is contrary to the Constitution.
Section 1 of the 14th amendment to the Constitution says, " No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." In effect, it says that a state law showing partiality to certain races for college/university admission actually ábridges the rights of other races, and is therefore unconstitutional. States affirmative action can get around this by operating as a "practice, rather than a law. However, states can also pass laws contrarily to disallow affirmative action. This was done with respect to college/university admissions in Michigan, but could be extended to any aspect of affirmative action.
The lone dissenter in the Tuesday Supreme Court ruling was Justice Sotomayor. She claimed that affirmative action helped her obtain an education which led to her present position of a Supreme Court Justice. This argument is about equivalent to a bank robber justifying his action because he was able to buy a new BMW. However, she goes on to say that race does matter in the United States and that blacks and hispanics have traditionally had fewer opportunities than whites for economic advancement. Most people will likely admit this and most will also likely agree that some effort should be applied to raising economic opportunities for blacks and hispanics. However, affirmative action is not the way to go. It should not have been used and should not continue to be used, because it is unconstitutional. Some other more imaginative approaches need to be developed in order to equalize the playing field. This does not necessarily mean that it has to be done through government. In addition, while affirmative action has been used unconstitutionally for many years, it has had a significant effect on the equalization process. Because of this, the present problem may be significantly less than it had been many years ago and perhaps more easily addressed.