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The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, it is known for its legal cases against white supremacist groups, for its classification of hate groups and other extremist organizations, and for promoting tolerance education programs. The SPLC was founded by Morris Dees, Joseph J. Levin Jr., and Julian Bond in 1971 as a civil rights law firm in Montgomery.
Affirmative action, also known as positive action or positive discrimination, involves sets of policies and practices within a government or organization seeking to include particular groups that were historically discriminated against based on their ethnicity in areas in which such groups are underrepresented, mistreated or suffer from lack of public support — such as education and employment. Historically and internationally, support for affirmative action has sought to achieve goals such as bridging inequalities in employment and pay, increasing access to education, promoting diversity, and redressing wrongs, harms, or hindrances.
Reverse discrimination is a term used to describe discrimination against members of a dominant or majority group, in favor of members of a minority or historically disadvantaged group. Groups may be defined in terms of ethnicity, gender identity, nationality, race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation.
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978), was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that involved a dispute of whether preferential treatment for minorities could reduce educational opportunities for whites without violating the Constitution. It upheld affirmative action, allowing race to be one of several factors in college admission policy. However, the court ruled that specific racial quotas, such as the 16 out of 100 seats set aside for minority students by the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine, were impermissible.
Carol Lani Guinier was an American educator, legal scholar, and civil rights theorist. She was the Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and the first woman of color appointed to a tenured professorship there. Before coming to Harvard in 1998, Guinier taught at the University of Pennsylvania Law School for ten years. Her scholarship covered the professional responsibilities of public lawyers, the relationship between democracy and the law, the role of race and gender in the political process, college admissions, and affirmative action. In 1993 President Bill Clinton nominated Guinier to be United States Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, but withdrew the nomination.
Racial color blindness refers to the belief that a person's race or ethnicity should not influence their legal or social treatment in society.
Morris Seligman Dees Jr. is an American attorney known as the co-founder and former chief trial counsel for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), based in Montgomery, Alabama. He ran a direct marketing firm before founding SPLC. Along with his law partner, Joseph J. Levin Jr., Dees founded the SPLC in 1971. Dees and his colleagues at the SPLC have been "credited with devising innovative ways to cripple hate groups" such as the Ku Klux Klan, particularly by using "damage litigation".
Proposition 209 is a California ballot proposition which, upon approval in November 1996, amended the state constitution to prohibit state governmental institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, specifically in the areas of public employment, public contracting, and public education. Modeled on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the California Civil Rights Initiative was authored by two California academics, Glynn Custred and Tom Wood. It was the first electoral test of affirmative action policies in North America. It passed with 55% in favor to 45% opposed.
Linda Susanne Gottfredson is an American psychologist and writer. She is professor emeritus of educational psychology at the University of Delaware and co-director of the Delaware-Johns Hopkins Project for the Study of Intelligence and Society. She is best known for writing the 1994 letter "Mainstream Science on Intelligence", which was published in the Wall Street Journal in defense of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's controversial book The Bell Curve (1994).
The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, or simply the Lawyers' Committee, is a civil rights organization founded in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy.
Facilities and services such as housing, healthcare, education, employment, and transportation have been systematically separated in the United States on racial grounds. The term is mainly used in reference to the legally or socially enforced separation of African Americans from whites, but it is also used in reference to the separation of other ethnic minorities from majority and mainstream communities. While mainly referring to the physical separation and provision of separate facilities, it can also refer to other manifestations such as prohibitions against interracial marriage, and the separation of roles within an institution. Notably, in the United States Armed Forces up until 1948, black units were typically separated from white units but were still led by white officers.
Affirmative action in the United States consists of government-mandated, government-approved, and voluntary private programs granting special consideration to historically excluded groups, specifically racial minorities or women. The programs tended to focus on access to education and employment. The impetus toward affirmative action was redressing the disadvantages associated with past and present discrimination. Further impetus is a desire to ensure public institutions, such as universities, hospitals, and police forces, are more representative of the populations they serve.
Bryan Stevenson is an American lawyer, social justice activist, law professor at New York University School of Law, and the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, he has challenged bias against the poor and minorities in the criminal justice system, especially children. He has helped achieve United States Supreme Court decisions that prohibit sentencing children under 18 to death or to life imprisonment without parole. He has assisted in cases that have saved dozens of prisoners from the death penalty, advocated for the poor, and developed community-based reform litigation aimed at improving the administration of criminal justice.
Stephan Thernstrom is an American academic and historian who is the Winthrop Research Professor of History Emeritus at Harvard University. He is a specialist in ethnic and social history and was the editor of the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups. He and his wife Abigail Thernstrom are prominent opponents of affirmative action in education and according to the New York Times, they "lead the conservative charge against racial preference in America."
Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, 572 U.S. 291 (2014), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States concerning affirmative action and race- and sex-based discrimination in public university admissions. In a 6-2 decision, the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause does not prevent states from enacting bans on affirmative action in education.
Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. ___ (2023), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the court held that race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions processes violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. With its companion case, Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, the Supreme Court effectively overruled Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), which validated some affirmative action in college admissions provided that race had a limited role in decisions.
Richard Henry Sander is a professor of law at the UCLA School of Law and a critic of affirmative action, primarily known for the mismatch theory.
Edward Jay Blum is an American conservative legal strategist known for his activism against affirmative action based on race and ethnicity. He connects potential plaintiffs with attorneys who are willing to represent them in "test cases" which he tries to use to set legal precedents. He is the director of the Project for Fair Representation which he founded in 2005. There is a claim that he is sole member of the Project, but this is disputed. According to its website, the Project focuses specifically on voting, education, contracting, employment, racial quotas, and racial reparations. The Harvard Crimson reported that his work is funded by conservative trusts and foundations, including Donors Trust, the Searle Freedom Trust, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and The 85 Fund.
Proposition 16 is a California ballot proposition that appeared on the November 3, 2020, general election ballot, asking California voters to amend the Constitution of California to repeal Proposition 209 (1996). Proposition 209 amended the state constitution to prohibit government institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, specifically in the areas of public employment, public contracting, and public education. Therefore, Proposition 209 banned the use of race- and gender-based affirmative action in California's public sector.
David Hamilton Golland is an American historian of the 20th-century United States with a focus on the history of civil rights, public policy, politics, and labor. He serves as dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of History at Monmouth University.
References
- ↑ Southern Poverty Law Center (2019). "Bryan Fair - Southern Poverty Law Center". splcenter.org. Retrieved April 24, 2019.
- ↑ University of Alabama (2018). "Bryan Fair - Culverhouse Law at the University of Alabama". law.ua.edu. Retrieved April 24, 2019.
- ↑ Washington College (February 13, 2019). "Civil Rights Leader Honored". washcoll.edu. Archived from the original on April 24, 2019. Retrieved April 24, 2019.
- ↑ California Bar. "Bryan Keith Fair #123067". calbar.ca.gov. Retrieved April 24, 2019.
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