Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law

by Randall Kennedy

  Notes

  INTRODUCTION

  1. See Randall Kennedy, “Neil Rudenstine and Blacks at Harvard,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, January 31, 2002. A classic scholarly embodiment of the affirmative action ethos is William G. Bowen and Derek Bok, The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions (1998).

  2. See, e.g., Ruth Marcus, “Minority Groups Assail Course at Harvard Law,” Washington Post, July 26, 1982; Christopher Edley, Jr., “The Boycott at Harvard: Should Teaching Be Colorblind?” Washington Post, August 18, 1982; Carl Rowan, “Harvard’s Closed Circle,” Washington Post, August 27, 1982; Nick King, “Minority-Hiring Fight at Harvard,” Boston Globe, November 17, 1982.

  3. Eric Foner, “Hiring Quotas for White Males Only,” The Nation, June 26, 1995.

  4. For elucidations of this point, see Elizabeth Anderson, The Imperative of Integration (2010), 144–48; Michael J. Yelnosky, “The Prevention Justification for Affirmative Action,” Ohio State Law Journal 64 (2003): 1385; David A. Strauss, “The Law and Economics of Racial Discrimination in Employment: The Case for Numerical Standards,” Georgetown Law Journal 79 (1991): 1619. See also Michael H. Gottesman, “Twelve Topics to Consider Before Opting for Racial Quotas,” Georgetown Law Journal 79 (1991): 1737; John J. Donohue III and James Hackman, “Re-Evaluating Federal Civil Rights Policy,” Georgetown Law Journal 79 (1991): 1713.

  5. Anderson, The Imperative of Integration, 10.

  6. See Personnel Administrator of Massachusetts v. Feeney, 442 U.S. 256 (1979).

  7. Glenn C. Loury, “Democracy and the Choosing of Elites,” in David L. Featherman, Martin Hall, and Marvin Krislov, eds., The Next Twenty-five Years: Affirmative Action in Higher Education in the United States and South Africa (2010), 317.

  8. Dawn v. State Personnel Board, 91 Cal. App. 3d 588, 593 (1979).

  9. Lungren v. Superior Court, 48 Cal. App. 4th 435 (1996).

  10. See Lydia Chavez, The Color Bind: California’s Battle to End Affirmative Action (1998).

  11. See Lino Graglia, “Affirmative Action: Today and Tomorrow,” Ohio Northern University Law Review 22 (1995); Brian Fitzpatrick, “The Diversity Lie,” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 27 (2003): 385.

  12. 1945 N.Y. Laws 457. See also Morroe Berger, Equality by Statute: The Revolution in Civil Rights (1967); David Freeman Engstrom, “The Lost Origins of American Fair Employment Law: Regulatory Choice and the Making of Modern Civil Rights, 1943–1972,” Stanford Law Review 63 (2011): 1071; David J. Garrow, “The Evolution of Affirmative Action and the Necessity of Truly Individualized Admissions Decisions,” Journal of College and University Law 34 (2007): 1–3.

  13. Exec. Order No. 10, 925, 26 C.F.R. 1977 (1961).

  14. See, e.g., Morris B. Abram, “Affirmative Action: Fair Shakes and Social Engineers,” Harvard Law Review 99 (1986): 1312; Nathan Glazer, Affirmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy (1975, 1978).

  15. Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (2006), 246.

  16. See Randall Kennedy, The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency (2011), 266.

  17. See Randall Kennedy, “Persuasion and Distrust: A Comment on the Affirmative Action Debate,” Harvard Law Review 99 (1986): 1327, n.1.

  18. See Richard Primus, “The Future of Disparate Impact,” Michigan Law Review 108 (2010): 1341; Randall Kennedy, “Competing Conceptions of ‘Racial Discrimination,’ ” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 14 (1991): 93.

  1. AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN RACE RELATIONS

  1. See Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (1974); Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790–1860 (1961); Stephen A. Siegel, “The Federal Government’s Power to Enact Color-Conscious Laws: An Originalist Inquiry,” Northwestern University Law Review 92 (1997): 477; Paul Finkelman, “Prelude to the Fourteenth Amendment: Black Legal Rights in the Antebellum North,” Rutgers Law Journal 17 (1986): 415.

  2. President Andrew Johnson, Veto of the Civil Rights Act, March 27, 1866.

  3. See David A. Strauss, “The Myth of Color Blindness,” Supreme Court Review 1986 (1986): 99; Jack Balkin, “Obscured Vision About Colorblindness?” Balkanization, January 8, 2003.

  4. Quoted in James Oakes, The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders (1998), 233. See also Bruce Levine, Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves During the Civil War (2006), 7.

  5. Quoted in Heather Cox Richardson, The Depth of Reconstruction: Race, Labor and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865–1901 (2004).

  6. Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 25 (1883).

  7. See Andrew Kull, The Color-Blind Constitution (1992), 62.

  8. Arval A. Morris, “Constitutional Alternatives to Racial Preferences in Higher Education Admissions,” Santa Clara Law Review 17 (1977): 279, 292.

  9. See Jed Rubenfeld, “Affirmative Action,” Yale Law Journal 107 (1997): 427, 430–32. See also Siegel, “The Federal Government’s Power.”

  10. See Ilya Somin, “Originalism and Affirmative Action,” The Volokh Conspiracy blog, September 7, 2012.

  11. See Siegel, “The Federal Government’s Power,” 549–55.

  12. Quoted in Anthony S. Chen, “The Hitlerian Rule of Quotas: Racial Conservatism and the Politics of Fair Employment Legislation in New York State, 1941–1945,” Journal of American History 92 (2006): 1238, 1246.

  13. Quoted in ibid., 1256.

  14. Quoted in ibid., 1257.

  15. Fair Employment Practice Act: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor on S. 101 and S. 459, 79th Congress 171 (1945) (statement of William H. Hastie). See also Engstrom, “The Lost Origins of American Fair Employment Law,” 1127–28.

  16. See George S. Schuyler, “A Dangerous Boomerang,” Crisis 41 (1934), 259; “The Fallacy of Racial Proportionalism,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 6, 1942.

  17. See Paul D. Moreno, From Direct Action to Affirmative Action: Fair Employment Law and Policy in America, 1933–1972 (1997), 30–65, 84–106; Mark Tushnet, “Change and Continuity in the Concept of Civil Rights: Thurgood Marshall and Affirmative Action,” in Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, Jr., and Jeffrey Paul, eds., Reassessing Civil Rights (1991).

  18. See “A Sane Approach to Job Seniority,” Chicago Defender, December 16, 1944; Ralph E. Koger, “CIO Advisor Says: ‘Negroes Must Not Seek Special Treatment When Layoffs Come,’ ” Pittsburgh Courier, August 11, 1945. See also Engstrom, “The Lost Origins of American Fair Employment Law,” 1127.

  19. The term seems to have been coined by Paul Moreno. See Moreno, From Direct Action to Affirmative Action.

  20. Hughes v. Superior Court, 339 U.S. 460 (1950).

  21. Hughes v. Superior Court, 198 P.2d 885 (1948).

  22. Hughes v. Superior Court, 339 U.S. 464 (1950).

  23. See Tushnet, “Change and Continuity,” 151.

  24. Quoted in ibid., 151–52.

  25. Hughes v. Supreme Court, 198 P.2d 895 (Traynor, C.J., dissenting).

  26. Quoted in Hugh Davis Graham, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy 1960–1972 (1990), 105.

  27. Ibid.

  28. Quoted in Terry H. Anderson, The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action (2004), 86.

  29. Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (1963), 124.

  30. Ibid., 127–28.

  31. Lyndon B. Johnson, Commencement Address at Howard University, “To Fulfill These Rights,” June 4, 1965.

  32. See Matthew J. Countryman, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (2006); Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (2008); Thomas J. Sugrue, “Affirmative Action from Below: Civil Rights, the Building Trades, and the Politics of Racial Equality in the Urban North, 1945–1969,” Journal of American History 91 (2004): 145; Thomas J. Sug
rue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (1996). See also Jim Sidanius, Pam Singh, John J. Hetts, and Chris Federico, “It’s Not Affirmative Action, It’s the Blacks: The Continuing Relevance of Race in American Politics,” in David O. Sears, Jim Sedanius, and Lawrence Bobo, eds., Racialized Politics: The Debate About Racism in America (2000).

  33. Cited in Graham, The Civil Rights Era, 106.

  34. See Kyle Heselden, “Should There Be ‘Compensation’ for Negroes?” The New York Times Magazine, October 1963; Graham, The Civil Rights Era, 113.

  35. Quoted in Anderson, The Pursuit of Fairness, 87.

  36. Graham, The Civil Rights Era, 120.

  37. Quoted in United Steelworkers v. Weber, 443 U.S. 193, 238 (1979) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting).

  38. Quoted in ibid., 243.

  39. Quoted in ibid., 240.

  40. See Daniel A. Farber and Philip P. Frickery, “Is Carolene Products Dead? Reflections on Affirmative Action and the Dynamics of Civil Rights Legislation,” California Law Review 79 (1991): 685.

  41. Green v. County School Board, 391 U.S. 430 (1968).

  42. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1 (1971).

  43. See Johnson, Commencement Address at Howard University.

  44. Quoted in Anderson, The Pursuit of Fairness, 99.

  45. Quoted in Dennis A. Deslippe, “Do Whites Have Rights? White Detroit Policemen and ‘Reverse Discrimination’ Protests in the 1970s,” Journal of American History 91 (2004), 932.

  46. Key interventions that nourished this important process of reconsideration and revision include Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (1968); Kenneth Stampp, The Peculiar Institution (1956); Kenneth Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction, 1965–1877 (1965); Robert Blauer, Racial Oppression in America (1972); and Derrick Bell, Race, Racism and American Law (1973).

  47. Kaplan, “Equality in an Unequal World,” Northwestern University Law Review 61 (1966): 363, 367. See also D. Bell, “Black Students in White Schools: The Ordeal and the Opportunity,” University of Toledo Law Review 2 (1970): 539, 543 (one of the aims and functions of affirmative action was “ghetto calming”); Graham Hughes, “Reparations for Blacks?” New York University Law Review 43 (1968): 1063–64 (“the still half-submerged position of black people causes discontent amongst them and leads to social unrest with the prospect of episodic violent disturbances … Ordinary political wisdom dictates the adoption of a program to alleviate and ultimately remove the resentment by demonstrating to the minority groups that the fullest benefits of life in that society are open to them”).

  48. Quoted in Anderson, The Pursuit of Fairness, 105.

  49. Quoted in Kevin L. Yuill, Richard Nixon and the Rise of Affirmative Action: The Pursuit of Racial Equality in an Era of Limits (2006), 98.

  50. See John David Skrentny, The Ironies of Affirmative Action: Politics, Culture, and Justice in America (1996); Yuill, Richard Nixon and the Rise of Affirmative Action.

  51. See Yuill, Richard Nixon and the Rise of Affirmative Action; Dean J. Kotlowksi, Nixon’s Civil Rights: Politics, Principle, and Policy (2001).

  52. Quoted in Graham, The Civil Rights Era, 323.

  53. On the Philadelphia Plan, see James E. Jones, Jr., “The Bugaboo of Employment Quotas,” Wisconsin Law Review 2 (1970): 371. See also Robert D. Schuwerk, “The Philadelphia Plan: A Study in the Dynamics of Executive Power,” University of Chicago Law Review 39 (1972): 732; Paul Marcus, “The Philadelphia Plan and Strict Racial Quotas on Federal Contracts,” UCLA Law Review 17 (1970): 817.

  54. Quoted in Kotlowski, Nixon’s Civil Rights, 531.

  55. Graham, The Civil Rights Era, 325.

  56. Quoted in Kotlowski, Nixon’s Civil Rights, 533–34. See also “Nixon Gives View on Aid to Negroes and the Poor,” New York Times, December 20, 1967.

  57. Ibid., 534.

  58. Ibid., 536.

  59. Ibid., 532.

  60. See Herbert Hill, “Black Labor and Affirmative Action: An Historical Perspective,” in Steven Shulman and William Derrity, Jr., eds., The Question of Discrimination (1998).

  61. DeFunis v. Odegaard, 507 P.2d 1169, 1175 (Wash. 1973).

  62. Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 274–275 (1978).

  63. See Steelworkers v. Weber, 443 U.S. 193 (1979).

  64. Quoted in Anderson, The Pursuit of Fairness, 139.

  65. Ibid., 147.

  66. Quoted in Joan Biskupic, Sandra Day O’Connor (2005), 71.

  67. President William Jefferson Clinton, Address on Affirmative Action, July 19, 1995.

  68. Quoted in Nicholas Laham, The Reagan Presidency and the Politics of Race: In Pursuit of Colorblind Justice and Limited Government (1998), 20.

  69. Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, 476 U.S. 267, n. 2 (1986).

  70. Ibid., 270.

  71. Ibid., 276.

  72. Ibid., 283.

  73. Quoted in City of Richmond v. J. A. Croson, 488 U.S. 478 (1989).

  74. Quoted in ibid., 480.

  75. Ibid.

  76. Ibid., 494.

  77. Ibid., 504.

  78. Ibid., 504.

  79. Ibid., 504–506.

  80. Ibid., 526 (Marshall, J., dissenting).

  81. Ibid., 559 (Blackmun, J., dissenting).

  82. Ibid., 559 (Marshall, J., dissenting).

  83. Metro Broadcasting Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission, 497 U.S. 547, 612 (1990) (O’Connor, J., dissenting).

  84. Ibid., 615.

  85. Adarand Constructors v. Peña, 515 U.S. 200 (1995).

  86. Ibid., 240 (Thomas, J., concurring).

  87. See Laham, The Reagan Presidency; Raymond Walters, Right Turn: William Bradford Reynolds, the Reagan Administration and Black Civil Rights (1996).

  88. Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424 (1971).

  89. Office of Legal Policy, U.S. Department of Justice, Report to the Attorney General: “Redefining Discrimination: Disparate Impact and the Institutionalization of Affirmative Action,” November 4, 1987.

  90. Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio, 490 U.S. 642 (1989).

  91. Ibid., 662 (Blackmun, J., dissenting).

  92. Civil Rights Act of 1991, Pub. L. No. 102–166, 105 Stat. 1071.

  93. See, generally, “The Civil Rights Act of 1991: The Business Necessity Standard,” Harvard Law Review 106 (1993): 896.

  94. California Constitution, Article I § 31(a).

  95. See Eugene Volokh, “The California Civil Rights Initiative: An Interpretive Guide,” UCLA Law Review 44 (1997): 1335.

  96. Coalition for Economic Equality v. Wilson, 946 F.Supp. 1480, n. 12 (N.D. Cal. 1996).

  97. See Chavez, The Color Bind.

  98. Quoted in ibid., 50.

  99. Quoted in ibid., 52.

  100. See Ward Connerly, Creating Equal: My Fight Against Racial Preferences (2000); Chavez, The Color Bind.

  101. Quoted in Chavez, The Color Bind, 74.

  102. See Anti–Affirmative Action Ballot Initiatives, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, December 2008. http://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/anti-affirmative-action-ballot-initiatives.

  2. THE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION POLICY DEBATE

  1. See, e.g., Paul Brest and Miranda Oshige, “Affirmative Action for Whom?” Stanford Law Review 47 (1994): 855, 866 n. 33 (reparations “has been the implicit rationale for most affirmative action programs”); Richard Posner and Adrian Vermeule, “Reparations for Slavery and Other Historical Injustices,” Columbia Law Review 103 (2003): 689, 727 (“The leading mode of in-kind reparative payment [in the United States] is remedial affirmative action”).

  2. Kim Forde-Mazrui, “Taking Conservatives Seriously: A Moral Justification for Affirmative Action and Reparations,” California Law Review 92 (2004): 683, 709.

  3. See, e.g., Charles Lawrence III, “Two Views of the River: A Critique of the Liberal Defense of Affirmative Action,” Columbia Law Review 101 (2001): 928.

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sp; 4. Bernard A. Boxill, Blacks and Social Justice, rev. ed. (1992), 147. See also Kenneth Karst, “The Revival of Forward-Looking Affirmative Action,” Columbia Law Review 104 (2004): 60; Kathleen M. Sullivan, “Sins of Discrimination: Last Term’s Affirmative Action Cases,” Harvard Law Review 101 (1986): 78.

  5. See, e.g., Kenneth Karst and Harold Horowitz, “Affirmative Action and Equal Protection,” Virginia Law Review 60 (1974): 955, 964.

  6. See Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010).

  7. See Thomas Ross, “Innocence and Affirmative Action,” Vanderbilt Law Review 43 (1990): 297; Antonin Scalia, “The Disease as Cure: In Order to Get Beyond Racism, We Must First Take Account of Race,” Washington University Law Quarterly 1979 (1979): 147.

  8. See, generally, “Symposium: After Disaster: The September 11th Compensation Fund and the Future of Civil Justice,” DePaul Law Review 53 (2001): 209.

  9. Kwame Anthony Appiah, “ ‘Group Rights’ and Racial Affirmative Action,” Journal of Ethics 15 (2011): 265, 275.

  10. See Boris Bittker, The Case for Black Reparations (1973).

  11. See Dalton Conley, Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth and Social Policy in America (1999); Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro, Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality (1995).

  12. See, e.g., Eugene Robinson, Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America (2010), 208–17; Richard D. Kahlenberg, The Remedy: Class, Race, and Affirmative Action (1996), 42, 46–47; Derrick Bell, And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice (1991), 140–61; Norman Vieira, “Racial Imbalance, Black Separatism, and Permissible Classification by Race,” Michigan Law Review 67 (1968–1969): 1613. For judicial voicings of this complaint, see Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, 538 (1980) (Stevens, J., dissenting).

  13. See Kenneth W. Mack, Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer (2012); David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. DuBois, 1919–1963: The Fight for Equality and the American Century (2001).

  14. Hughes, “Reparations for Blacks?” 1063, 1073 (“Even if a black person has been personally lucky enough to escape the prevalent racial burdens that weigh upon many or most blacks, the question of social justice is … a question of group advancement and we may legitimately use [the privileged black] for the benefit of his group”); Amy Gutmann, “How Affirmative Action Can (and Cannot) Work Well,” in Robert Post and Michael Rogin, eds., Race and Representation: Affirmative Action (1998), 345.