This led the way to an increase in student activism and the creation of student organizations like the Black Student Union, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), the Latino Student Union, the Native American Student Union and the Asian Pacific American Student Union.
Affirmative Action began to be used as an opportunity for people of color and women to go into higher education, and also created retention programs to keep people of color and women in the education system. The creation of student organizations and retention programs, activism around Affirmative Action and issues surrounding the communities it affected, strengthened the fight against racism and sexism in higher education.
The increase of people of color and women in higher education, although still minimal, caused panic among the elite, who considered education a privilege, especially for women and non-white populations. In 1978, Allan Bakke, a white student at the University of California, Davis, took the California Board of Regents to the Supreme Court and lost, claiming Affirmative Action caused him to be denied admission to medical school because he was white. While he lost, the Affirmative Action programs suffered a setback.
The Supreme Court did not entirely gut Affirmative Action; however, quota systems were declared illegal. This happened during the rise of Ronald Reagan, a president synonymous with the rise of a new conservatism in the 1980s. Attacks on Affirmative Action began to intensify, reinforcing racist ideologies.
One of the biggest attacks was a California ballot initiative, Proposition 209, introduced by Ward Connelly in 1996. Connerly, a self identified Black, Irish and Native American man, began an agenda to remove Affirmative Action programs and policies on a statewide level. Using confusing messages and cynically invoking great civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr., Connerly successfully eradicated Affirmative Action in the state of California.
We can see real results: While, starting in the 1970s, UCLA began to see a rise in the number of Black students, in 2007, eleven years after Affirmative Action was eradicated, only 96 Black students walked through the front gates of the school in 2007.
Due to a lack of institutionalized memory within student organizing, Ward Connerly capitalized on the weakness in student activism, and the Michigan cases became the turning point for Affirmative Action for our generation. With the passage of Proposition 209 in California, Connerly was able to generate support and began to recreate similar ballots in other states, Michigan was Connerly’s next target.
The next major attacks happened in 2006 with two Supreme Court cases, led by the Center for Individual Rights. Two women applied to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and were denied enrollment. Both filed a lawsuit against the university’s undergraduate program and the law school.
Again using confusing language against communities of color and women, Connerly was able to remove Affirmative Action programs there. With only the backing of the Klu Klux Klan, Connerly and the so-called Michigan Civil Rights Initiative was able to prevent women and people of color from receiving a quality education.
The attack on Affirmative Action has not diminished. Connerly and his organization, The American Civil Rights Institute, are targeting Nebraska, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arizona, Colorado, with the possibility of more for the 2008 elections.
In Colorado and Arizona, petitioners have been paid and brought from out of state to get anti-Affirmative Action questions on the ballot; these petitioners are targeting supermarkets and places where middle class Americans frequent and are using confusing messaging to imply that the ending Affirmative Action was actually anti-racism. In Missouri, the Secretary of State is taking the confusing messaging of Connerly’s organization to reintroduce the initiative to, “ an eliminate … discrimination against and improve opportunities for women and minorities in public contracting, employment and education…”
Other states targeted by American Civil Rights Institute are currently waiting for ballot language to be introduced. However, the United States Student Association is mobilizing and organizing students against these attacks.
At USSA, we believe that education is a right regardless of socioeconomic status or identity. We believe that all students have the right to an accessible and affordable higher education. For decades, we have been dedicated to fighting against attacks on women and students of color around the nation and we are determined to educate students on the truths around the positive effects of Affirmative Action.
Contrary to what its detractors say, Affirmative Action does not hurt white students, it does not create quota systems and it does not only help people of color and women. It is not a way to unfairly admit certain communities into higher education and it is not “reverse discrimination.” Affirmative Action is still necessary because there continues to be widespread disparities and continuing evidence of discrimination in the workplace and in the educational realm. We have not yet achieved a level playing field as our opponents may claim. Affirmative Action works because it has improved our communities and has begun to equalize the participation of people of color, women and white people.
For the past seven years, USSA has taken a stance to protect Affirmative Action through the National Take Affirmative Action Day (April 1, 2008). Students from across the country are organizing events to educate and stand in solidarity to show that we are not in just a statewide crisis, but a national crisis. Students have always been at the forefronts of changing and strengthening equal opportunity for all. This year, we will show that little has changed in the last 40 years. (For more information and to register for NTAAD, please visit, www.usstudents.org or contact Scott Lu at cdp@usstudents.org.)
We must, now more than ever, stand in solidarity as sisters, brother and friends to fight against the indoctrinated racism that still exists in our society today. As African American poet and activist, Audre Lourde, once said, “ It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept and celebrate those differences.” So stand up, fight back and join hundreds of students across the country to show that education is a right not a privilege.
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Dynamic Magazine
