Backlash and Attack: The Movement to End Affirmative Action and Open Admissions in Public Universities

• In Event: 163 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Paper Session. Race and Law on the 50th Anniversary of the US Civil Rights Act

Abstract

Though affirmative action in public universities has been challenged since its inception, not until the 1990s were these challenges successful—emerging from a politically determined, coordinated, and powerful conservative movement in the form of organizations, think tanks, public interest law firms, and elected officials. Though these networks are largely unacknowledged, they were able to take advantage of opportune political conditions and the adoption of "colorblind" neoliberal rhetoric, and shape the discourse and policy on racial access to education and other public goods. This paper documents the strategies utilized in successful challenges to race conscious admissions in two regionally distinct locations, at large public universities—City University of New York (CUNY) and University of California (UC) (the larger chapter additionally includes University of Michigan (UM), and University of Texas-Austin (UT-Austin)). A variety of strategies and political conditions produced successful challenges to affirmative action and open admissions in the United States, including: the emergence of city and state leaders that embraced neoliberalism and its colorblind logics, the increasing importance (and conservative politicization) of university regents, conservative think tanks and public interest law firms, the deployment of conservative people of color spokespersons, appropriation of civil rights rhetoric and its legal strategies, and statewide referendums. Our understanding of the recent history of the retrenchment of race, gender, and class sensitive policies in public universities is important to the ways in which we understand educational access, the legacy of the civil rights movement, and the outcomes of a racialized neoliberal political dominance.

Author

• Amaka Camille Okechukwu, New York University