It's sometimes hard to be optimistic about the future of race relations in the United States. The recent shooting death of African American Timothy Thomas by a white police officer in Cincinnati is horrifying, as is the justifiably angry protest on the city streets. After endless discussions about racial profiling, both in Cincinnati and around the country, it often appears as though the nation is just as divided as it was decades before. There was widespread rioting in 1967 in Cincinnati, along with similar turbulence in Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Newark. Jr. And the same divisions exist today.
Affirmative action is just one policy splitting the country.
After passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, this policy began to give preference to members of groups discriminated against in the past. If all things were equal, preference was to be given to a candidate from such a group. White resistance soon developed. In the Bakke v. University of California case, the United States Supreme Court ruled in 1978 that Allan Bakke, a white, had been discriminated against as he applied to medical school when positions were held out for members of minority groups whose qualifications were less strong than his. But in a contorted ruling, including a number of separate opinions, the Court decided that racial preferences themselves were not unconstitutional.