BY MARIEM QAMRUZZAMAN
Daily Staff Reporter
Published October 4, 2007
Theodore Shaw, the head of the NAACP's legal defense and educational fund, said class-based affirmative action is not sufficient and that race-based programs are needed.
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Since Proposal 2 banned affirmative action in Michigan last fall, many have called for the University to adopt a system based on class as a proxy.
But Shaw, a former University Law School professor, said affirmative action based only on class wouldn't mean more blacks in higher education and positions of power because there are still more poor white people than poor black people.
"I know the majority of poor people in this country continue to be white," he said.
Shaw told an audience at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theater yesterday that some think it's time to move past the issue of race because they feel the nation has reached a level of racial equality.
"The political effort is a difficult one because people deeply want to believe that we've put these problems behind us," Shaw said.
Shaw discussed a number of issues hurting the black community during his talk.
He talked at great length about the case involving six black teenagers in Jena, La. who were charged with attempted murder for allegedly beating up a white student. The incident occurred after students at the school hung a noose from a tree, heightening the tension between the black and white students there.
Shaw, who attended the protests in Jena two weeks ago, said the black students are facing "draconian" sentences for a small crime. Shaw said the Jena example is just one in the "massive incarceration of African-Americans in the criminal justice system."
Shaw also voiced his disappointed with a recent Supreme Court ruling that he said has set back the cause of racial equality.
He called a June ruling that banned some uses of race in K-12 school assignments "a betrayal" of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.
"I appreciate his honest style," said LSA senior Sheldon Johnson, the speaker of the Black Student Union. "The topic is something you don't necessarily get to hear. We sort of glaze over diversity."
