Some of the arguments against affirmative action include: * It is unfair to judge applicants on anything other than their merits. – There are numerous factors that a college should take into account when considering applicants – grades, test scores, and extra-curricular activities. An applicant’s race is not a legitimate factor to take into consideration because it is outside of the student’s control. It is impossible for a college to consider every aspect of a student’s background when making decisions on whom to admit. Why focus on race when there are so many other things that differentiate students from one another? * Affirmative action does not lead to true diversity. – Diversity of opinion is important in an academic community, not racial diversity. Affirmative action provides an advantage to some people because of the color of their skin. This is not an attribute that is relevant to the academic mission of a college. Affirmative action gives preferential treatment based exclusively on race, which is a purely external characteristic. * Affirmative action does not help really disadvantaged groups. – In many cases, affirmative action does not achieve its goal of helping disadvantaged minority groups. What it does is perpetuates socioeconomic inequalities by making it easy for members of racial minorities from privileged backgrounds to get into prestigious colleges while not helping members of the lower classes. * White Men Win $11 million Lawsuit for Reverse Discrimination | | | |

Did You Know | Monday, 01 November 2004 14:04 | by Saadiq Mance

Did you know that the Justice Department has agreed to pay $11.5 million to a group of White men for arguing that Affirmative Action is discrimination against Whites? As reported by the Boston Globe, the latest, and possibly the greatest assault against equal opportunity was levied by the Justice Department. Faced with claims by hundreds of White men who say they were passed over for federal immigration judgeships in the mid-1990s, the Justice Department has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit with as many as 550 White men who say they were not chosen for high-profile jobs because of gender and skin color for $11.5 million. "

Angry White people determined to maintain their authoritarian position over the American people have continuously waged a war against Affirmative Action since its inception by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. Johnson, a white male who was all too familiar with the ""good ol' boy"" racist network systematically enforced by White men in America, saw Affirmative Action as the only way to level the playing field of the overt racism that persisted in spite of civil rights laws and constitutional guarantees. Unfortunately, Johnson's willingness to advocate for Black people to have an equal opportunity at promotions, salary increases, career advancement, school admissions, scholarships, and financial aid did not translate to the rest of the White population.

Starting with the University of California v. Bakke case decided in 1978 by the U.S. Supreme Court, White people have persistently whined that Affirmative Action is reverse discrimination. In this first landmark case against Affirmative Action, Allan Bakke, a white male who was rejected two years in a row by University of California's medical school, argued that he was discriminated against because the school accepted minority applicants that he felt were not qualified. The school reserved 16 out of 100 places for minority students, and Bakke felt that if the school had continued its Jim Crow policies of reserving 100 out of 100 places for White people, he would have been accepted. The Court held in a closely divided decision that race could be one of the factors considered in choosing a diverse student body in university admissions decisions, however, the use of quotas in such Affirmative Action programs was not permissible; thus the Univ. of California's medical school had, by maintaining a 16% minority quota, discriminated against Bakke.

This case was only the beginning as White people everywhere began to mobilize to stomp out the only federal law that could threaten their power. In 1994, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., struck down a University of Maryland scholarship program for African-Americans, saying the university failed to show the scholarships were needed to remedy past discrimination. With the ruling of this case, state universities in North Carolina, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, and elsewhere, out of the fear of litigation, decided to open minority scholarships to all races even though these scholarships only account for less than 5% of all scholarships available on the graduate and undergraduate level.

Then there are the two landmark cases of 1996; California's ending of Affirmative Action in public institutions with the passing of Proposition 209 and the Hopwood v. Texas case that effectively negated race and ethnicity-based Affirmative Action for purposes of diversity in states under the jurisdiction of the Fifth Circuit Court. Both of these cases systematically undermined the goals of Affirmative Action to ensure equal opportunity for African Americans in school admissions policies.

Other such cases filed by white people arguing reverse discrimination are:

Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena (1995)

Piscataway v. Taxman (1997)

White Professors v. HBCU (1999)

Johnson v. University of Georgia Board of Regents (2001)

University of Michigan Cases: Grutter v. Bollinger & Gratz v. Bollinger (2003)

As reported by the Boston Globe, the latest, and possibly the greatest assault against equal opportunity was levied by the Justice Department. Faced with claims by hundreds of White men who say they were passed over for federal immigration judgeships in the mid-1990s, the Justice Department has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit with as many as 550 White men who say they were not chosen for high-profile jobs because of gender and skin color for $11.5 million.

The case was born as an individual lawsuit in 1995 when Texas lawyer Lawrence D. Durnford was passed over for an immigration judgeship. That year, Chief Immigration Judge Michael J. Creppy wrote a column in an immigration law journal outlining the agency's intention to expand efforts to diversify hiring ""at every level -- from IJs [immigration judges] to clerks."" The plaintiffs' attorneys said Creppy's affirmative action position proved to be their strongest evidence.

""We are focusing our efforts on diversifying the bench based on ethnicity, gender, disability, and diverse professional backgrounds,"" Creppy wrote in the February 1995 edition of Interpreter Releases. ""I believe that the bench should reflect the composition of the greater society.""

The Boston Globe reported that it is unclear how many people will receive awards under this exact class, ""white male applicants for employment not selected as immigration judges during 1994 and 1995,"" but the Washington law firm handling the case estimates that between 150 and 550 white men were turned down for any of 100 openings during those two years.
""We got every penny out of the government that we thought was remotely possible,"" said Kator, whose firm will receive 33 percent, or $3.8 million, of the $11.5 million settlement

This landmark ruling that has barely been reported by the mainstream media could possibly allow White people to use jurisprudence to apply these rulings to the entirety of Affirmative Action laws. If this happens, it is also possible that a class action lawsuit could be filed on behalf of all White people using this case as precedence, effectively slapping millions of African Americans in the face by paying reparations to White Americans across the United States." |