O happy day! As a blue light bulb, I celebrate the Supreme Court’s banning the deeply hurtful policy that is affirmative action in college admissions. Like with Clarence Thomas, affirmative action has caused me lifelong shame that blinds with the lumens of a thousand suns.

If you’ve ever set foot on an American college campus, you know who I am: I’m one of those festive bulbs that sits atop one of the poles, stationed all over campus, offering safety to all.

But as a result of affirmative action, I know what you think of me, regardless of how bright I am: She only got into college because of her color.

And then, once we get on campus, do we get the plum internships in labs, archives, or other valuable career-related assignments? With the exception of a few theater specialists, not at all. Rather, because of the assumption that we’re only there because of affirmative action and can’t hack anything else, I and those of my hue get shunted to the same bullshit, bad-hours work-study assignment.

Let’s face it, if you’re walking around alone at night on a college campus–among the most cheerfully best-lit places in America, along with dentist offices, prison yards, and Wal-Mart parking lots–and you’re in danger, what are you going to do? A) Scream bloody murder at the top of your lungs, then run like a bat out of hell; B) loudly announce that you’re dialing 911 on your cell phone, then run like a bat out of hell; or C) find the nearest blue light station, figure out how to use it to call campus security, then calmly wait alongside the potential aggressor during the one-to-five minute response time that they tell you it takes for someone to come rescue you. If you answered C, I would say I’ve got a Supreme Court justice to sell you, but that’s something that actually works.

Which is why, on every campus tour at every college in America, your perky undergrad guide tells you that no one besides an occasional drunk frat boy trying to order pepperoni pizza at 3AM has used a blue light station on their campus since 2005.

Light bulbs of no other color suffer this affirmative-action-induced stigma once they get out into the workforce. White bulbs, they’re everywhere. Pale whites, in every home. Greens, on every traffic light, and people love seeing them; heck, to “green-light” something always has a positive connotation. I’m not going to wade into the whole “yellow” or “amber” debate–the ruination of so many otherwise peaceful lightbulb family dinners–but whatever you call them, they’re on every traffic light, every car. Same with reds, plus, red gets “exit” signs, “open” signs, and even entire wonderful districts of cities are named after them. But blue lights? Campus security is all people think we’re capable of. And yet, what has red got that blue hasn’t got? Being admitted to college solely for my blue-ness has ruined Americans’ idea of what I, as a light bulb, can do.

This is a great day not just for blue bulbs, but for all bulbs. We are just a little bit closer to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence: that we are all, regardless of color, endowed by Our Creator–the great Edison–with the inalienable right to light, liberty, and pursuit of wattiness.