Affirmative Action Standoff Continues

The Washington Afro
By James Wright
AFRO Staff Writer
April 2008

The issue of affirmative action was raised in last week’s debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and is likely to continue as a contentious public policy issue, experts on both sides of the issue say.
“Affirmative action is a helpful tool for businesses, government and schools to integrate its workforce and student body,” said Hilary Shelton, Washington bureau chief for the NAACP. “We do not want to go back to segregation.”
Affirmative action was created precisely because people of color and women have been specifically excluded from opportunities in higher education, employment and government contracting.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights defines affirmative action as "a contemporary term that encompasses any measure, beyond simple termination of a discriminatory practice, which permits the consideration of race, national origin, sex and disability, along with other criteria, and which is adopted to provide opportunities to a class of qualified individuals who have either historically or actually been denied those opportunities, and to prevent the reoccurrence of discrimination in the future."
While affirmative action has been credited with expanding the Black middle class, it has come under increasing attacks by conservatives, including Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Ward Connerly, who is leading a national campaign to eliminate affirmative action.
Connerly, a Black California businessman, is the founder and chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute. He opposes affirmative action as being reverse discrimination.
Spporters of affirmative action accuse Connerly of failing to realize that in all aspect of society, people of color and women are still underrepresented.Shirley Wilcher, the executive director of the American Association for Affirmative Action, said that the work of her organization is more critical than ever.
" The goal was not to give Blacks and others automatic advantages but to level the playing field. The playing field is not level and that is why we need affirmative action now.”
According to the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, although White men make up just 48 percent of the college-educated workforce, they hold 85 percent of the tenured college faculty positions, 86 percent of law firm partnerships, more than 90 percent of the top jobs in the news media, and 96 percent of CEO positions.
The Supreme Court, ruling on two University of Michigan cases, struck down a numbers-oriented undergraduate admissions program but upheld the concept of affirmative action as practiced by the law school.
Shelton of the NAACP, said, “It is under constant attack because you have conservative forces who want to take it apart. The courts have made it clear that they believe that race is still a compelling factor in various aspects of employment, admissions and contracts. It is still standing.”
Led by Connerly, California, Washington state and Michigan have passed ballot initiatives outlawing affirmative action. Efforts are underway to place a similar measure on the ballots in November in five states: Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma.
Critics say Connerly has been successful because he has helped draft language that is confusing to voters, misleading them into thinking they are voting for pro-affirmative action measures.
Barbara Arnwine, executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, said that Connerly is aligning himself with ultra-conservatives to get rid of affirmative action in the various states. She said that fueling this anxiety about affirmative action is the general condition of the country.
“Whites are feeling threatened by the possibility of a recession and economic insecurity,” she said. “When that is happening, Whites are more receptive of a message that talks about reverse discrimination.”
Luke Harris, a political science professor at Vassar College, said that Connerly is being used to deceive the people. He said that Connerly is the “Black face” of the right wing effort and is paid very well for it.
He said that when Michigan was considering the anti-affirmative initiative, Connerly would go into Black churches and say it was a good thing for Blacks to support.
“We had to re-educate people about what was really going,” Harris said. But that was enough because the ban on affirmative action passed in Michigan.Harris said that White opposition to affirmative action has taken on an interesting element.
“If you look at who voted against affirmative action in the states, you will see that it is mainly White women,” he said. “That is odd because studies have consistently shown that White women are the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action.”
The issue continues to be discussed around the country.
A major conference on the topic is taking place in Falls Church, Va., at the Fairview Marriott this week and a town hall meeting will be held on April 26 at the Howard University School of Law Moot Courtroom. It is being sponsored by the American Association of Affirmative Action, an organization that promotes and trains government and corporate leaders on the subject.
Speakers at the conference will include former NAACP Legal Defense Fund Director-Counsel Theodore Shaw, National Urban League President Marc Morial and Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. Posthumous honors will be presented to U.S. Representatives Augustus Hawkins and Parren Mitchell.
Participants in the town hall meeting include Democratic Party strategist Donna Brazile; conservative commentator Armstrong Williams; comedian/activist Dick Gregory; and Dr. Julia Hare, a scholar on Black issues. [To read the entire story, go to: http://beta.afro.com/tabid/72/itemid/759/modid/1076/Affirmative-Action-Standoff-Continues.aspx ]