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Joel Page / Reuters
Edward Blum, director of the Project on Fair Representation, poses at his home in South Thomaston, Maine, on Nov. 9.
SOUTH THOMASTON, Maine - Sometime in the next few months, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide two cases that could fundamentally reshape the rules of race in America.
In one, a young white woman named Abigail Fisher is suing the University of Texas over affirmative action in college admissions. In the other, an Alabama county wants to strike down a law that requires certain states to get federal permission to change election rules.
If they win, the names Fisher and Shelby County, Ala., will instantly become synonymous with the elimination of longstanding minority-student preferences and voting-rights laws. But behind them is another name, belonging to a person who is neither a party to the litigation nor even a lawyer, but who is the reason these cases ever came to be.
He is Edward Blum, a little-known 60-year-old former stockbroker.
Working largely on his own, with the financial support of a handful of conservative donors, Blum sought out the plaintiffs in the Fisher and Shelby County cases, persuaded them to file suit, matched them with lawyers and secured funding to appeal the cases all the way to the high court. Abigail Fisher is the daughter of an old friend of Blum's - a man who happened to call when Blum was in the midst of a three-year search for a white college applicant who had been rejected despite solid scores. Blum eventually got Shelby County to file suit after trolling government websites and cold-calling a county official.
Blum introduced Fisher's father and Shelby County officials to the same high-priced but politically sympathetic Washington lawyers, who agreed to work for a cut rate to be billed to Blum's backers. Neither Fisher nor Shelby County is paying to fight the cases that bear their names.
Related: High court hears biggest race case in six years
Over the past 20 years, Blum has similarly launched at least a dozen lawsuits attacking race-based protections. In addition to the Fisher and Shelby County cases, two other Blum-backed cases reached the Supreme Court. One struck down majority-black and majority-Latino voting districts in Texas. The other prompted the court to suggest it might eliminate a major portion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which the conservative-majority bench may now be poised to do in the Shelby County case.
A self-described former college liberal, Blum says that over time he came to believe that race-based policies violate the very principles of equality they were created to uphold. Affirmative action, he said, treats whites unfairly and stigmatizes minorities, and the rule that requires certain, mostly Southern, states to obtain special federal permission for electoral changes - Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act - unjustly punishes them for long-abandoned racist practices.
"The original vision has been turned upside down," said Blum, whose Toyota minivan has license plates reading "1FRSTNE" - short for One First Street Northeast, the address of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.
Jose Luis Magana / Reuters
Students calling for diversity protest outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, in this Oct. 10, 2012 file photo. In the next few months, the Court will decide two cases that could fundamentally reshape the rules of race in America.
Operating from Maine
Blum, who has a runner's lean build and brown hair flecked with gray, operates from a book-lined office in his white two-story frame house on Penobscot Bay, Maine. He holds an unpaid fellowship with the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington and in 2005 formed a not-for-profit legal defense foundation, the Project on Fair Representation, of which he is the sole employee. The organization's website says it devotes "all of its efforts to influencing jurisprudence, public policy, and public attitudes regarding race and ethnicity."
The Project on Fair Representation, in turn, is fully financed by a tax-exempt charitable group called Donors Trust, which raises money from a variety of benefactors and directs them to conservative foundations and projects. According to Internal Revenue Service documents, Donors Trust spent about $1.2 million from 2006 to 2011, the most recent information available, on Project on Fair Representation activities. Gifts to charities such as Donors Trust are tax deductible; money given directly to a legal-defense fund that is not a charitable organization generally is not.
Donors Trust, which also handles the administrative side of the Project on Fair Representation, said most of the project's expenses are for legal fees. Blum said he draws an average annual salary of $50,000, paid by Donors Trust from funds earmarked for his project. He said he and his wife, Lark, a retired insurance agent, also support themselves with income from savings, investments and Blum's part-time work as a municipal-bond analyst.
Blum said contributors to his project so far this year have included the conservative Milwaukee, Wis.-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which gave Donors Trust $100,000 to support Blum's group after Blum wrote them a pitch letter regarding the Fisher case and asking for support with costs. Bradley Foundation president and chief executive Michael Grebe confirmed the gift.
Another is the Searle Freedom Trust, a foundation of the late drug-company scion Daniel C. Searle, which gave Donors Trust gifts totaling $597,500 from 2005 to 2010 designated for the Project on Fair Representation, Searle's IRS documents show. Kimberly Dennis, CEO of the Searle Freedom Trust, declined to comment on Blum's project. Blum and Whitney Ball, president of Donors Trust, declined to name other backers of the Project on Fair Representation.
The practice of finding plaintiffs to tee up test cases at the Supreme Court is not new. Liberal groups such as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and conservative groups such as the Institute for Justice have been doing it for decades. The organizers typically play prominent roles - either as counsel, as public spokespeople or by filing amicus briefs.
Jon Greenbaum, chief counsel at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a not-for-profit liberal legal-defense fund that has represented parties on the opposite side of Blum-sponsored litigation, said it is rare that Blum's donors choose to remain anonymous. "There is an issue regarding the transparency of what's going on" when financial backers of high-stakes cases are not known to the public, he said.
Blum and Donors Trust's Ball say the financing of Blum's work is similar to what is done for liberal causes, and say people have many reasons for seeking to give anonymously.
The nation's colleges are currently allowed to consider a student's race in the admissions process, a procedure that is now being challenged in the Supreme Court. NBC's Pete Williams reports.
Son of a shoe salesman
Blum was born in Benton Harbor, Mich., and moved around as a child. His father, Joseph, was a salesman, mainly of shoes. During a tough time when they were living in Florida, Blum said he drove with his father up to North Carolina textile mills to buy bulk loads of women's underwear, and peddled the packs along the road back South. "He sold them in motels, coffee shops, wherever blue-collar women would give him four bucks for a pack of underwear he bought for a buck and a half," Blum recalled.
He speaks in plain-Midwestern tones sprinkling his conversation with the Yiddish word emes (pronounced "EM-ess"), which means "truth." A 1973 graduate of the University of Texas, Blum said he started out as a Democrat, but by the early 1980s began reading the neoconservative "Commentary" magazine and changed his views. In 1984, he voted for Ronald Reagan. He soon became a successful stockbroker at Paine Webber in Houston. Then, in the early 1990s, came the "acorn that began all my activities," Blum said.
After noticing that his heavily Democratic district had trouble fielding a Republican congressional candidate in 1990, Blum decided to enter the 1992 Republican primary. He won it, and in the general election faced an African-American incumbent Democrat. When Blum and Lark walked the district to shake hands with voters, he said, he had to carry a map because the borders zigged and zagged. "Multi-ethnic neighborhoods were split apart," he said. "Block by block. Blacks over here. Whites over here. Hispanics over here."
Blum lost by a wide margin. At the time, court challenges were starting to mount over "majority minority" districts like his that had been gerrymandered to consolidate minorities and maximize their voting power. In 1993, the Supreme Court ruled that districts appearing to segregate voters by race, even if designed to help minorities, violate the Constitution's guarantee of equality. Blum decided to sue Texas officials, alleging the districts unlawfully segregated voters by race.
Related: Affirmative action in college admissions? Supreme Court to hear case
He enlisted five local Republicans to join him, including Al Vera, then a high school government teacher, who became the lead plaintiff. Their complaint went to the Supreme Court. That 1996 case, Bush v. Vera, struck down two majority-black and one majority-Hispanic districts in Texas and ordered the boundaries redrawn. Now retired, Vera said Blum is "like a bulldog once he attaches onto an issue he believes in."
Blum says he personally fronted about $100,000 of the legal fees in the case, which eventually rose to about $1 million. He initially retained regional lawyers, then sought out a large Washington firm whose top partners had served in Republican presidential administrations. Blum said he and the lawyers eventually recouped virtually all their money, as winners' legal fees are reimbursed in some civil-rights cases. Bert Rein, partner at the firm now known as Wiley Rein, said he doesn't recall specific fees but Blum's account sounds right.
Blum went to court to watch oral arguments. He felt so vindicated that he decided to devote himself nearly full time to the fight against race-based laws and policies. "Seeing how the whole thing can be put back together with litigation," he said, changed his life. "It really is the emes."
In 2000, Blum moved to Washington and began working with likeminded conservatives. He spent several years as a senior fellow with the Washington-based conservative Center for Equal Opportunity, and abruptly left in 2006 after a falling-out with Linda Chavez, the center's president. Neither Blum nor Chavez would discuss the circumstances. By his own admission, Blum operates best solo. "With partners, everyone wants to be the shiniest apple," he said. "Operating alone, I don't need to address that."
Sensing an opportunity
By the mid-2000s, the makeup of the Supreme Court had tilted rightward, and Blum sensed another opportunity. John Roberts succeeded the late William Rehnquist as Chief Justice in 2005, and in January 2006 the conservative Samuel Alito replaced the moderate Sandra Day O'Connor, who several years earlier had cast the crucial swing vote upholding affirmative action in college admissions at the University of Michigan.
Following the Michigan decision, the University of Texas had instituted a modified version of an affirmative action program it had previously discontinued because a lower court in Texas had blocked it. The university guarantees admission to all state high-school graduates in the top 10 percent of their class, but under the new arrangement also allows in some minorities with lower scores in an effort to enhance diversity.
Blum figured if he could find a white student who had been rejected with a record that exceeded the lower criteria used for some minority applicants, he might be able to persuade a majority of the nine justices on the Supreme Court that the practice was unconstitutional. Blum said he also wanted someone temperamentally suited to the long haul of litigation.
He set up a Web address, utnotfair.org, which asked spurned University of Texas students to contact Blum and relate their experiences. He gave speeches to the Young Conservatives of Texas and similar groups, and hounded everyone he knew in the state. "I could bump into people in restaurants and bars that I knew from high school in Houston that had kids graduating from high school," he recalled. "And I was such a noodge: 'If she doesn't get in, I want to represent her.'"
Susan Walsh / AP
Abigail Fisher, the Texan involved in the University of Texas affirmative action case, and Blum walk outside the Supreme Court in Washington, on Oct. 10, 2012.
He says he heard from many students, but after two and a half years, none still seemed right. Someone might have had strong grades, he said, but didn't seem like a person he could work with for a long period or "expose to the press."
Then, in March 2008, Blum got a call from his old friend Richard Fisher. Blum had met Fisher, an accountant, through business even before Fisher's daughter Abigail, then 18, was born. The Blums and Fishers had socialized together over the years and Blum attended the wedding of Abigail's older sister. Fisher, also a Republican with what he says are strong conservative views, knew of his friend's search.
Fisher told Blum that Abigail had just received a rejection notice from the University of Texas and was heartbroken. He described her scores, and the men agreed she might make a strong candidate to challenge the Texas admissions system. Blum said he told Fisher: "I want you to prepare Abby for being under a microscope."
Abigail, a slight, strawberry blonde, said she told her father she was willing to lend her name and story to a court case, but she wanted to go about her life privately. "I assumed that whatever would come of it would take a really long time," Abigail said. "It would be for others."
Blum told Richard Fisher he had financial backing and Fisher would not have to pay a cent in legal fees. Without Blum's access to funds, Fisher said, he would never have proceeded. Blum would not discuss the cost. But lawyers who argue regularly before the Supreme Court say constitutional challenges that start in district court and wind up at the high court could cost a total $2 million or more in legal fees.
Blum retained the Wiley Rein firm again, and within a couple of weeks, the lawsuit now known as Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin was filed at the U.S. District Court in Austin. The lower court sided with the university in 2009, upholding its affirmative action plan. A panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals later agreed. Abigail, meanwhile, had enrolled at her second-choice school, Louisiana State University.
A county in Alabama
A few months after Blum snagged Abigail Fisher, he found another plaintiff to challenge a policy he abhorred as much as affirmative action: Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires all or parts of 16 states with a history of discrimination to obtain federal approval for any election-law change.
While surfing the Web one day, he saw on the Department of Justice's site that the agency had rejected a voting map in the city of Calera, at the southwestern tip of Shelby County in central Alabama. That new map dramatically enlarged one of the city's voting districts, diluting African-American voting strength.
Blum picked up the phone and called the attorney for Calera and greater Shelby County, Frank "Butch" Ellis. The two men immediately clicked. Ellis said he had long been chafing under Section 5 and was intrigued by Blum's call.
Related: Inside the college admissions process
At the time, another Section 5 case that Blum was helping finance was already at the Supreme Court. That case, filed by the Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District #1, claimed the South had changed, and the requirement that federal permission was needed for election changes was an anachronism. Blum told Ellis that if the Texas utility case didn't strike down the rule, he thought the Shelby County situation might one day make a better case.
When the Supreme Court in 2009 sidestepped the issue of Section 5's constitutionality and ruled on a narrower issue, Blum called Ellis again. Like the Fishers, Ellis was enticed by Blum's promise that the county's challenge would cost it nothing. Shelby County v. Holder was filed in April 2010, at the U.S. District Court in Washington. Last May, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the lower court's ruling against Shelby County, and in November, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
Bert Rein of the Wiley Rein firm, which Blum retained for both Shelby County and Fisher, declined to discuss its fees. When asked how much money he thought each case would cost, Blum said, "Low six figures."
Plaintiff in pajamas
On the morning of Feb. 21, 2012, when the Supreme Court announced it was taking the Fisher case, its eponymous plaintiff was still in bed in her Baton Rouge apartment, just a few months from graduation. Her father called to tell her the news, and Abigail began jumping up and down in her pajamas. "That was the most excited I had been throughout the four years," she said. "My dad and Edward were way more passionate about it."
Blum then stage-managed some publicity for Abigail, who previously had not appeared in public in connection with the lawsuit. He hired a small production company to make a YouTube video about the case, featuring critics of the university's program and Abigail. In it she said students had been accepted with lower grades and fewer activities than she had, and the "only other difference between us was the color of our skin."
University officials say such differences arise from their interest in bringing together as diverse a group of qualified students as possible. They acknowledge that some minority applicants with lower scores than Fisher have been admitted. But they also say that a significant number of African-American and Hispanic applicants with scores identical or higher than hers have similarly been denied admission at the highly competitive campus.
Related: Paying $2 million to get your kid into Harvard?
On the morning of Supreme Court oral arguments in October, Blum arranged a car and driver for himself, Abigail and her parents. When they arrived at the court building, they tried to avoid the protesters in the front, most of whom supported affirmative action and were carrying signs with messages such as "diversity works" and "expand opportunity." Blum and the Fishers headed for a rear door, but were turned away because it was only for employees. They eventually found the proper entrance and took seats in the rear of the courtroom.
After the hearing, standing in front of the marble-columned building surrounded by her parents, lawyers and Blum, Abigail recited from memory a statement Blum had written for her.
She thanked the Supreme Court for hearing her case and the lawyers for representing her. "I hope the court rules that a person's race and ethnicity should not be considered when applying to the University of Texas," she said.
It did not occur to her to thank Blum, she said. He had not put that in the statement.
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Leave a Comment:
What the supporters of affirmative action don't understand is that they are supporting and advancing the idea of racism. In the past few years I have observed outstanding students get rejected at a Michigan college. These are students with strait As for all four years of high school, including advanced placement classes, significant participation in extracurricular activities, and many hours spent with charitable organizations. Additionally during each of the four years they participated in Black education month - learning about slavery, the underground railroad, civil rights, etc. They were given a strong dose of liberal education and taught about the plight of Blacks (not any other minorities). These kids worked hard to get to the school of their choice. They were turned down solely because they were white by a quota system. They were shocked to see they were discriminated against because of color. Then came the struggle to understand why the very institutions of learning that taught them to be liberal turned on them because of their color. Of course they see the hypocrisy, the discrimination, and the two faced nature of it. None of this serves the underlying concepts of equality. With all the education they have had in school and the admissions process, what lessons do you think have been taught?
Many people here attempt to make it sound as though this is rare but unfortunately it is not.
Gosh there must be a lot of white straight a students in michigan huh? I mean you seem to imply that they were all shafted by some colored person (be honest now, this is your real beef) getting in ahead of them...why weren't they part of this lawsuit if its so obvious?...
The very idea of affirmative action portrays minorities as Inferior this needs to be eliminated!
The poisonous nature of being infected with RACISM is it leads a person to do things that only further point out their racism. Too bad these people prefer to spend their hard earned money on something a lot less risky than gambling on a number on a roulette wheel. I feel sorry that the woman seems to have a need to attend Univ. T. I feel sorry for her that after 3 years, she was the only candidate worthy of championing AND she agreed to be this lone dove. I think its funny that the Alabama county issue will come down to a simply "why does it need to be changed? question which will not be answered in a manner that any person who is free of racial issues will find acceptable. WHY are we even discussing this stuff with Confederates? WHY do they get a chance to participate? THEY LOST and should have been destroyed. America has a history of failing to remove enemies.
@ american
I have watched your comments on this thread and so far you have professed to be white, then you professed to be a white male, now you are professing to be a white male in an age zone. I just wonder how many more of your inane posts it will take before you are a white male that has been impregnated and is carrying Lincoln's love child. Your comments, child, are easily recognized for what they are; propaganda.
It is pretty scary when you realize the small number of reichwing donors who are having dramatic impacts on our lives...did you know grover nordquist gets 65% of his funding for his anti tax crusade from just two billionaires hoping to avoid taxes or that a handful of fascists funded newt, perrys and romnuts campaigns??
Another giant racist piece of sh*t doing all he can to turn back the clock to how things were in Alabama and the deep South and other states in the 1960's. How typical of a Republican Conservative. Evil giant piece of sh*t! Good news is every year, every decade, every generation these rotten fossils will get old and die in greater numbers and fewer and fewer will take their place.
Jigs hate having to compete academically with their White masters. The easiest way to strike fear in the heart of a nog is to tell them they have to take a standardized test. They start trembling and blubbering... "But I'm po! I ain't be got no pencils!"...
You prove the need for affirmative action.
Black 12th graders read/rite/rithmetic about as well as 8th grade Whites.
Scary
She was rejected by the University of Texas despite "solid" scores? How high were her scores? I graduated from UT Austin. The admission requirements aren't THAT high. It is a large state school with lots of openings, and a fairly average student should be able to gain admission. Not that it isn't a great education, but Harvard, it ain't.
She had artificially inflated grades from a mediocre school and she thought she was entitled to admission based on ego and not ability. I bet her SAT or ACT scores were below average. Those facts have not been presented. That needs to be considered. I see high school kids who have great GPA's and no brains. Not one iota of ability to think critically. JUst a bunch of molly coddled babies who play sports and participate in mindless social activities in school and church. The exact opposite of enlightenment. Blame delusional parenting.
It's not a question of affirmative action being the "right" way to correct the issue at hand. The point is that if there is NO affirmative action, minorities would never get a foothold. Mr. Blum seems to have overlooked that part. You know, giving equal power to both sides. And shame on him for doing what he does. Turning back the clock far enough could leave him a slave too, building pyramids, and all. He seems to forget that, biblically speaking, with God as his people's equalizing power, they were freed from slavery. Al minorities get today is the Supreme Court!
Your "foothold" was the last 50 years, thanks.
No mas. Every person judged on their merits, alone.
I do not agree that this is the only way for minorities to get ahead, which minorities? Asian and Indian students excel in college and they could certainly be classified as a minority. Any time one group is favored over another, points given, or one person chosen over another based on race,it is wrong. Lets compete as equals on grades and SAT/ACT scores may the best person win, regardless of color
Affirmative action does not create intellectual achievement.
Chesty: The 400+ years that the white Europeans had free reign to destroy the familial, social and cultural aspects of those minorities is eliminated in 50 years? YOU ARE A MORON! 50 years isn't the entire average lifetime of a person in this country.
and thomas p: lack of affirmative action creates an even greater lack of intellectual achievement. You are most likey an example.....
Good! This is what Leftwing scum always do, shop around for a token plaintiff to use as the front person for their agenda. Use their own tactics against them, baby!
He's right on the merits of all these cases too, obviously. Only an idiot Democrat could think in 2012 we should give bonus points to anyone for being the right shade of skin. Man, liberals are stupid!
We know how to elect a president. Whiner!
Good Equality in schools means who has the highest grades period , not weighted on race, wealth or sexual orientation.
Unfortunately, children don't get to pick their parents. Parents determine the success of children and schools are a distant factor of the equation. Allowing young teens to have children is the single most significant contributing factor to poverty and long term poverty of intergenerational poverty. Governmental codependency perpetuated by the welfare mentality is contributing to mediocrity and failure of academic achievement. I have seen how children are short changed by convincing them that their grades are excellent because the schools have inflated their ego's that their checkbooks can't cash. These kids are wacked and have no critical thinking skills. This is what happens to a society in rapid decline. The youth are convinced they are entitled but they can't get it through their texting mentality that they don't have the skills to compete globally. They need a kick in the a** to set them straight. It isn't a TV sitcom.
I would think that America should focus on fixing more appalling statistics that show that minorities are more often jailed and jailed for longer terms for similar crimes that whites commit. And they should address the statistics that state that whites more often than not will hire a white with a criminal history over a minority with no criminal history and they pay whites more than their white counterpart. Until these are solved, getting rid of racial preference for education is even a larger blow to minorities.
Perhaps they should also look at the crime rates for black people vs whites. The 500 murders in Chicago for example are largely black on black , do not even bother to look at inter-racial crimes they are staggering. Until those issues are solved, do not look for support on college admissions
Huh???
Ya mean, that minorities aren't the intellectual equal of whites?
How can this possibly be?
keep it white = ) the numbers are in our favor, we make up the majority and we will flood the schools with more qualified whites...keep it white = )
maybe we should talk about white privilege, google it and search for white privilege and white privilege articles, there are a lot written ironically by whites.
Blocky....
Especially since it is clear that this country was built by blacks. Hah!!!!
Letusreason, your alias is deliciously ironic. Anyhoo, blockyblicky is spot on and shouldn't you take his or her advice on reading material prior to celebrating your nonvictory with "Hah!!!!"? Blockyblicky's got the truth. Let it go.
In the quest for a truly equal society, we must never stop giving advantages to one particular group over another. That makes sense...
Uh, the disadvantaged black 'scam' is in jeopardy.
I'm surprised that Holder hasn't weighed in.
Man, conservative white folks just CAN'T STAND IT to see minorities get legal protections to preserve their fundamental rights can they? I imagine we'll NEVER see the end of conservative lawsuits to try and take minorities' rights away, so the conservatives can feel all good about their "rightful" place in American society.
What right is being taken away from you? you take the ACT/SAT I take it- whoever has the higher score gets into xyz college fair enough? what else do need given to you?
The right to have a preference because you are a minority.
How American is that?
Let's stop fooling ourselves. This is a country of white conservative men who are only interested in amassing power and control of the political processes. This includes the legislative, judicial and legislative branches. Money has always been concentrated in the white class since the british landed at Plymouth and Jamestown. What they propagated once they landed was the British mentality of white superiority and an entitlement of ownership of property, stolen or confiscated from a pacifistic society of Native Americans. They branded the Natives as terrorists and inferior species of life because they were not white Christians who were members of the Anglican Protestant mentality. Western culture is highly destructive to the environment and to the mental health of humanity. They somehow indoctrinate themselves in believing their agenda of Calvinistic ideas and English superiority will benefit humanity long term. I hope the society implodes because of their plutocratic and oligarchial mindset that banks and corporations will improve society when in fact it is highly destructive to humanity. It is delusional illusional thinking that will fail. The Law of Civilization and Decay appropriately explains hoe every society rots from within by the excesses of the wealthy and the powerful. We cannot escape our destiny as an Empire. Just pray you are dead before the inevitable collapse happens. It always has and always will. I am white but I see the truth substantiated by fact. That is the definition of truth.
I think the real issue is white privilege, that needs to be addressed then we wouldn't need these racial preference systems in place. I would suggest people google "white privilege" and "white privilege articles", there is some very good stuff written ironically by whites
Why are some fools so worked up about the color of a person's skin? Wasn't the garden of eden in Africa?
Iraq at the head of Euphrates and Tigris's rivers -for creation folks , for Darwin folks Yes everyone originated in Africa
Whites are the new minority! We've all seen it in the Press. So . . . logically, the new minority should receive the A.A. points in the future.
These laws actually have little to with race but minorities. Guess what. As a white, single, male, Protestant I am one. So why do I not get the minority preference these programs, and others, afford so many other minorities? THAT is why they are obsolete and need to be cast off until some improvements are made. In today's modern America they are discriminatory and defeat their own purpose. Besides America is about equal rights NOT special rights.
so when minorities have longer jail times and convictions than their white counterparts, that is nothing? the last I heard, whites have it wonderful in general. less jail time for similar offenses, they get paid more than minorities for the same functions. sounds like whites have privileges that minorities don't. you are white, lets say that again, you are white. you can lie all you want, but you are white nonetheless, you have it better than other "races" because whites are more biased towards other whites. if white statistics show inequality for the same criminal charges and similar jobs, why...why and how do you talk about equality when there is a separate system of judgments that are going on that create this inequality, more than likely it is done indirectly by whites. It is convenient that whites have to come up with excuses to leave such a statistic out when race is "quietly" an issue. I don't see color, but I choose the white guy...he has "earned" the position even if he has a criminal history and the minority doesn't. educate yourself on white privilege and you will be surprised on who writes them...whites = )
the good thing is the courts will decide because they will get all of the information. not just what is in the article. I guess the guy should be applauded just like people who attempt to move forward their agenda's. If this guy was taking up a black, gay or woman's cause everyone would be routing for him. At least it is being brought to the US courts attention where, like I said will hear all of the information, and when they make their decision I will be ok with it either way. Like everyone should.
There was a commercial on the radio for a major company. At the end it encouraged woman and minorities to apply. Or in other works anyone other than white males. No other group would sit by and take that, but in plan view without protest that is what they say. If the ended with we encourage white males to apply, the company would be protested.
This idiot needs to come to the deep South and live a while and really find out how racists all these good Southern Hospitality Christian Bible Belt people are. Most are a bunch of racists, they will go to their Baptist and Pentecostal churches and teach their children to sing Jesus loves me, red, yellow, black and white, all are precious in His sight and then go out and do the most terrible things to blacks, native americans and anyone of mixed race. Some body needs to give him a good kick in the axs and force him to see there is a reason for rule of law in this country, libertarans believe people will do good on their own. They are stupid, Republicans attempt to destroy equality and yes, Democrats have gone too far but don't do away with opportunity, hear me, not hand me, but opportunity because in the real world in the South, let a Black man and a white man make a phone call on a sale of a project and watch what happens when the black guy walks in and they can see not because of his voice, but because of his skin that he is black, they turn him down. I have a client that has happened to and he sat in my office and told me about these things and his eyes teared up. I will say this; Southern, Northern, whoever and wherever you are, if you believe in God and heaven and hell and you mistreat someone or attempt to stop them from bettering themselves when they are trying honestly to do better and you mistreat them due to the color of their skin according to you own interpretation of the Kings James Bible, you are going to as we say in the South "bust hell wide open."
I am from Alabama. I served in 46 States and 34 countries. TRUTH? Racism in the south is black and white and all in between. Just like the rest of the world. Bigots hate anything and everything that pisses them off-on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Welcome to the human condition. We ALL are born with our attitudes and they will die about 5 minutes after we do. Only when we admit that can we change ourselves-no one else-and no one else can change me, or you. It all starts with rigorous honesty. Any one that believes obama is not a racist has been conned. That is our leader and example. Go figure.
Let's see, when the black man walks in with dreadlocks, and his pants buckled around his thighs, they don't have a positive reaction.
Boy, am I surprised!
Let's see, when a white guy walks in with a ponytail down to his ass, tatoos covering every inch of skin, dirty jeans and a jacket, the reaction is fairly positive. Boy, am I surprised!
Best education for this guy Blum and the reactionaries posting here would be to spend 20 years as slaves and 10 years being beaten by cops. Then, tomorrow, being told: "You're free and equal! Go compete.
Every reactionary should be forced to recapitulate American history in someone else's shoes.
Right. And this has been the typical experience of blacks in America for the last 25 years.
Get a life!
I want to donate to this man's cause.
I would not have a problem with the abolition of Laws for racial equality, "if they were not needed." During the last presidential election,remember it's the one Obama won, 40 states enacted laws to suppress the rights of minority voters. To add insult to injury, republican politicians were actually stating this was their reason for doing so- check WI. and Pa.. In an article published here a few weeks ago approximately, 51% of whites harbor ill views of African Americans and other minorities. So struggle to not be a criminal, to educate yourself, to work hard for a good life and then be discriminated due to someones' preconceived notion. The new conservatism is just the old racism in a better suit.
According to who? Do you pull this BS out of your azz?
I agree, it seems to be a little strange that most whites are oblivious to their racial actions or racial tendencies to discriminate against minorities...whites hold the majority of the important positions that allow them to make race based decisions. really, are whites that clueless about their privileged status they give themselves and how even white statistics show how and where discrimination exist in our society? prison sentences are one of many racial flaged issues, minorities are charged more and make less than their white counterpart, the list goes on and on and then they scream racism? that is a joke
The Court can save a lot of money and time by just voting 5-4 without bothering to question the parties, not that Justice Thomas ever does. As with Citizens United, the merits of a case are secondary to how a decision will impact each political party.