Affirmative Action, Civil Rights, and Racial Preferences in the U.S.: Some General Observations

Abstract

Forty years after being launched by President Lyndon Johnson at the height of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, affirmative action in the United States is in the throes of an acrimonious debate. The upshot is that this innovative public policy is in retreat, severely battered by relentless attacks from an extreme wing of the conservative right and its many allies. Led by White male lawyers, notably Roger Clegg of the provocatively named Center for Equal Opportunity, and his many allies, including high profile African American agent provocateur Ward Connerly of California, these well-organized, anti-affirmative action interest groups have forced elite universities and law schools to abandon practices that overtly strive to ensure some degree of racial diversity on their campuses (discussed later in this essay) and succeeded in passing ballot initiatives in California and Michigan that ban all forms of affirmative action in the public sphere.