Source: https://diverseeducation.wordpress.com/tag/affirmative-action/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 06:48:39+00:00

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A 25-year deadline is fast approaching; in fact, 5 years have expired, and there are only a short 20 years remaining.
Five years have passed. Time is running out fast, and—as unpleasant as the task may be—political leaders, public intellectuals, journalists, social scientists, and voters need to start a national debate about affirmative action — whether to keep it, how to fix it, and what it means for the future of the country.
Those who might believe that there is no urgent need to confront these issues now should bear in mind the long road to Brown v. Board of Education. The legal path to that decision in 1954 actually began 20 years earlier, when civil rights attorney Charles Houston joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The following year, in 1935, Houston and his protégé – the young Thurgood Marshall – won the first battle against the separate-but-equal doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson, in the case of Murray v. Pearson (which forced Maryland to open its law school to African-American applicants). Nineteen more years of hard-fought litigation followed, including landmark cases such as Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938), Smith v. Allwright (1944), Morgan v. Virginia (1946), Patton v. Mississippi (1947), and Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), culminating in the issuance of the decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
To play a role in shaping how the U.S. Supreme Court will rule in 2028, higher education leaders and lawyers need to strategize – as Houston and Marshall did – about what test cases are emerging in all 50 states, how those cases will create appellate opportunities, and how each court decision can build upon a prior decision.
If the goal is to push back against Justice O’Connor’s expectation of a race-free admissions process after 2028, then those who support race-based admissions must think about what legal cases can best frame the argument that 2028 is too early a year to abandon that system. If the goal is to recast affirmative action as a class-based system starting in 2028, those advocates need to build the case for why class is a fitting substitute for race when it comes to admissions.
There is a possibility that no appropriate case will reach the U.S. Supreme Court in 2028 to cause it to issue a ruling that will change affirmative action. But there is an even greater possibility that opponents of race-based admissions are preparing, even now, to file test cases in the near and distant future that will drive these issues to the U.S. Supreme Court just in time to try to turn Justice O’Connor’s 2003 expectation into the law of the land.
V.I. King is President of the Board of Trustees at Glendale Community College and University Legal Counsel at California State University, Los Angeles.
Connerly’s subtext is clear. Whites voted for Obama. In exchange for their votes, the expectation is that Obama must deny the continuing significance of race (at least in Connerly’s mind). Although not white, Connerly, it seems, has appointed himself to speak for millions of whites. Hence, he is arguing that since whites have voted for a black candidate, then race no longer matters. Since Obama is the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, racism has simply disappeared. Obama is victorious, thus racism has disappeared.
Mr. Connerly’s argument fails for at least three reasons. First, Obama cannot be a post racial “candidate” since America is still a racialized society. Second, the undeniably historic nomination of Obama does not singularly eliminate racism in one fell swoop. Lastly, employing the post-racial moniker is nothing more than an attempt to sloganeer, rather than address the continuing significance of race.
Connerly writes, “As many readers will know, I am intimately involved in the effort to enact race-neutral initiatives around the country.” Ever the racial apologist, Connerly is attempting to end Affirmative Action in states by voter referenda because he feels that whites are increasingly the victim of discrimination and must be protected. But, why would there need to be race neutral legislation in a ‘post-racial’ America? “Post” suggests “after,” doesn’t it? So, doesn’t the need for this legislation at all suggest that America is still a society that is marked by race?
Connerly and others like him are advancing the argument that Obama’s election as the Democratic nominee for President of the United States is unequivocal evidence that racism in America has ended. Under this premise, whites in predominantly white states have voted for Obama and are thus cleansing themselves of centuries-old racial demons and achieving racial salvation. As important as Obama’s ascent is to the vexing question of race, it would be a mistake to assume it is the end of racism in America. Just as it was a mistake to assume that “major combat operations in Iraq had ended” when President Bush donned a flight suit and so declared.
America is the land of spin over substance and ‘post racial’ is the latest slogan to find its way into popular culture and the cultural lexicon. While the term escapes precise definition, it suggests that racism has occurred in the past, and that enlightened whites have eschewed racism as “so yesterday.” It also suggests that blacks who raise the continuing significance of race in a ‘post-racial’ America risk being relegated to the political margins as modern day race-baiters. There is a difference between issuing declarative statements proclaiming America ‘post racial’ and the reality that racism still plays a part in American life. The ‘post racial moniker’ is designed to give comfort to those who have black friends, for whom race “does not matter” and those who believe that “merit” is the great equalizer. As seductive as post-racialism is, it cannot exist in a society where the color of one’s skin still matters. “Post-racial” is another in a series of politically correct terms in which Americans avoid acknowledging the difficult issues, but instead choose to ignore them.
Finally, Connerly for all his ruminations about the need for a ‘post-racial’ America is trapped by the racial thinking that he is supposedly attempting to eradicate. Me thinks the gentleman protests too much.
Dr. Christopher J. Metzler is Associate Dean at Georgetown‘s School of Continuing Studies and the author of The Construction and Rearticulation of Race in a Post Racial America (Aberdeen University Press, 2008).

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