Useful quotes/stats/history etc.

FYI: this is alllll from the fat 36 page article

Some main points:
affirmative action is only a quick fix
Most advocates of Affirmative action propose simultaneous reform of K-12 education
Republicans are scared to oppose aa because of losing minority voter turnout
Whites are not losing jobs to african americans, whites and African americans are losing jobs to the asian subcontinent”
“The global economy makes it more difficult to have a convenient domestic scapegoat for lost jobs.”

“In CA, 36 percent of all high school students in 2001 had taken all the courses required for admission to the state university system, according to a study by the civil rights project at Harvard university. Among black students, only 26 percent had taken the prerequisites and only 24 percent of Hispanics. Meanwhile, 41 percent of white and 54 percent of Asians had taken the nexessary courses.” 22

Efforts at ensuring racial and ethnic diversity in higher education would have been better aimed at improving k-12 schools across the country.

“At the k 12 level you could argue that affirmative action has led to stagnation, theres very little forward movement, vey little closing of the black-white gap of the past 20 years” Richard sander professor of law at UCLA law school

“We have a whole range of students with different abilities. All of the weak students are not minority students; all of the strong students are not white students” James E. Coleman professor at Duke University Law School

The civil rights revolution of the 1950s and '60s forced a new look at the policies that had locked one set of Americans out of most higher-education institutions and higher-paying jobs.

As early as 1962, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), one of the most active civil-rights organizations, advocated hiring practices that would make up for discrimination against black applicants. "We are approaching employers with the proposition that they have effectively excluded Negroes from their work force a long time, and they now have a responsibility and obligation to make up for their past sins," the organization said in a statement from its New York headquarters. Footnote 25

Facing CORE-organized boycotts, a handful of companies in New York, Denver, Detroit, Seattle and Baltimore changed their hiring procedures to favor black applicants.

In July 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed Congress to pass the landmark Civil Rights Act, which had been championed by President John F. Kennedy since his 1960 presidential election campaign.

The law's Title VII, which prohibits racial, religious or sexual discrimination in hiring, said judges enforcing the law could order "such Previous affirmative action as may be appropriate" to correct violations.

itle VII didn't specify what kind of Previous Hitaffirmative actionNext Hit could be decreed. But racial preferences were openly discussed in the political arena as a tool to equalize opportunities. Official working definitions of Previous Hitaffirmative actionNext Hit didn't emerge until the end of the 1960s, under President Richard M. Nixon.

In 1969, the administration approved the "Philadelphia Plan," which set numerical goals for black and other minority employment on federally financed construction jobs. One year later, the plan was expanded to cover all businesses with 50 or more employees and federal contracts of at least $50,000. The contracts were to set hiring goals and timetables designed to match up a firm's minority representation with the workforce demographics in its area. The specified minorities were: "Negro, Oriental, American Indian and Spanish Surnamed Americans." Footnote 27

The sudden change in the workplace environment prompted a wave of lawsuits. In the lead, a legal challenge by 13 black electric utility workers in North Carolina led to one of the most influential U.S. Supreme Court decisions on Previous Hitaffirmative actionNext Hit, the 1971 Griggs v. Duke Power Co. case. Footnote 28

In a unanimous decision, the high court concluded that an aptitude test that was a condition of promotion for the workers violated the Civil Rights Act. Duke Power may not have intended the test to weed out black applicants, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger wrote in the decision. But, he added, "Congress directed the thrust of the Act to the consequences of employment practices, not simply the motivation." Footnote 29

If the point of the Civil Rights Act was to ensure that the consequences of institutions' decisions yielded balanced workforces, then goals and timetables to lead to that outcome were consistent with the law as well. In other words, eliminating racial discrimination could mean paying attention to race in hiring and promotions.

That effort would produce a term that captured the frustration and anger among white males who were competing with minority-group members for jobs, promotions or school admissions: "reverse discrimination."

The issue went national with a challenge by Allan Bakke, a white, medical school applicant, to the University of California. He'd been rejected two years in a row while minority-group members — for whom 16 slots in the 100-member class had been set aside — were admitted with lower qualifying scores.

After the case reached the Supreme Court, the justices in a 5-4 decision in 1978 ordered Bakke admitted and prohibited the use of racial quotas. But they allowed race to be considered along with other criteria. Representing the University of California was former Solicitor General Archibald Cox, the Watergate special prosecutor who was fired on orders of President Nixon in 1973. Cox's granddaughter, Melissa Hart, helps lead the opposition to an anti-Previous affirmative action ballot initiative in Colorado. Footnote 30

In 1979 and 1980, the court upheld worker training and public contracting policies that included so-called set-asides for minority-group employees or minority-owned companies. But in the latter case, the deciding opinion specified that only companies that actually had suffered discrimination would be eligible for those contracts. Footnote 31

Divisions within the Supreme Court reflected growing tensions in the country as a whole. A number of white people saw Previous affirmative action as injuring the educational and career advancement of people who hadn't themselves caused the historical crimes that gave rise to Previous affirmative action.