The article “The Desegregation of Higher Education, Race Conscious Admission Policies and the Federal Constitution,” was written by Taj’ullah Sky Lark in June 2012. Lark received her PHD ED at Hampton University in Virginia and is a racial justice specialist/human rights activist who has been involved in many non profit boards throughout the years. Her article was published in The Journal of Pan African Studies, an online peer reviewed scholarly journal that focuses on building a transnational community. The journal’s main focus is also on the synthesis of research scholarship and African American experiences, thus it is meant to target audience who are interested in learning more about oppressed minorities.
Taj’ullah Sky Lark’s main purpose of writing this article, is to give us an overview on important events that occurred to alter the direction of race conscious admission policies. Knowing the history will give us a better understanding of when and how affirmative action was …show more content…
In 1978, the idea of reverse discrimination was made prevalent through the case of Regents of University of California v. Bakke, when Allan Bakke, a white applicant, was rejected twice by the University of California. Despite having better test scores than most of the minorities who got accepted, Allan was denied admission because the University of Davis had a policy which reserved a fixed number of spots for minority applicants. The court ruled that race can be considered during admission decisions in order to help diversify the campus, however, universities cannot allocate the spots (Lark 32). This case is important because it was the first case that successfully challenged affirmative action. There were many cases afterwards that led to the restriction affirmative action in admission practices such as Hopwood v. Texas, Gratz v. Bollinger, Grutter vs. Bollinger,