Ben Royal

The main theme of the Feb. 13 Daily editorial attacking the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary (By reasonable means: BAMN polarizes, hurts affirmative action dialogue) was that BAMN"s "divisive rhetoric" has weakened the defense of affirmative action. The editorial implies that BAMN has alienated moderate allies, marginalized the defense of affirmative action to a "radical fringe" and thereby harmed the defense of affirmative action.

None of these accusations is true. This viewpoint is an attempt to get out the truth of what we have done and the significance of the struggle which we find ourselves leading.

With the two affirmative action lawsuits currently under consideration by the Federal Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, the University is under the direct threat of resegregation. This reality is a wake-up call for students on this campus. Either victory or defeat in Cincinnati leads to Washington D.C. and the United States Supreme Court where national law on affirmative action will be made by the high court"s decision in the two University cases. Our campus is at the epicenter of this historic struggle over the direction of American Society.

The point of departure for BAMN"s defense of affirmative action has of necessity been these two critically important lawsuits against the University and the University administration"s public, legal defense of its own policies. We entered the legal fight as the leading student defendant intervenor organization into the University of Michigan Law School case. As intervening defendants, we have stood side-by-side with the administration in their defense of affirmative action and have done everything we could to mobilize support for the University"s affirmative action policy.

The necessity of BAMN"s legal intervention can be understood from several different angles.

First, the University administration, following the supportable and important but too narrow standing legal precedent, has focused on the defense of affirmative action as a means to achieve educational diversity. For BAMN and the new civil rights movement, this defense, while absolutely necessary, is also inadequate. The real motivation for affirmative action both in history and in the minds of the overwhelming majority of people who support it, is not diversity which, in its most conservative interpretation dovetails with tokenism it is the struggle for integration and equality.

Affirmative action is the practical social policy that aims at lessening the institutional inequalities that structure life and opportunity in America it must be defended on that plain basis if it is to win in the court of public opinion and in the court of law. Affirmative action measures are desegregation programs in higher education and employment. BAMN entered into the lawsuit as intervenors to raise these basic arguments in favor of equality and the robust integration that is the only means to achieve equality in America.

It is to BAMN"s great satisfaction that many mainstream and establishment voices (including representatives of the University) have recently begun to speak about the defense of affirmative action in terms of the questions of integration and equality. These are the key questions for the direction of American society as a whole.

Second, as intervenors, we fought for a trial in the Law School case. The case we presented at trial was the most comprehensive exposition of race and the history and reality of racism ever to be put forward in the history of affirmative action litigation. Our case included extensive expert testimony on segregation, education policy, standardized testing and a whole range of issues put forward by some of the leading scholars in America: John Hope Franklin, Eric Foner, Gary Orfield, Walter Allen, Eugene Garcia, Frank Wu and more. Despite this, District Court Judge Bernard Friedman, in an ideological and intellectually dishonest decision that ignored that great weight of evidence put forward at trial, ruled against affirmative action in the Law School case. The fact of BAMN"s having fought for and won a trial means that the Law School case has the most developed legal and sociological record of any case of its kind. Our trial and its record have become touchstones in race and gender litigation and scholarship in the year since we organized it. (Recently, the Daily referred in an editorial against the SAT to the expert testimony of Martin Shapiro and Jay Rosner, two of BAMN"s trial witnesses who addressed questions of bias in standardized testing-having brought forward these two witnesses is part of the "harm" we have done to the affirmative action dialogue.)

The third and most important reason for our intervention into the Law School case has been to link the legal cases to the growing civil rights movement.