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Defend Affirmative Action, Smash the Bakke Decision

By VVAW

On April 15, 15,000 people marched in Washington, D.C., demanding that the Bakke Decision be overturned. This demonstration is but one of the organized waves of people that has been building for over a year, denouncing discrimination and the attacks on the gains made by minorities in the 1960s.

This case centers on Allen Bakke, a 34-year-old white engineer, who applied for admission to the University of California Medical School at Davis and was turned down twice. He also applied to 13 other medical school and was rejected by all of them. But, at the urging of a University of California administrator, Bakke filed suit against the university claiming reverse discrimination because, at the University of California, 16 places out of 100 were set aside for economically and educationally disadvantaged students.

In recent months the media has been putting out the word that Blacks and other minorities have been pushing whites out of jobs and schools, reversing the old situation into one of whites being discriminated against because of their color. "Reverse discrimination" has become a rallying cry for those who are attempting to reverse the gains won during the civil rights and Black liberation struggles.

These struggles hit a high tide in the 60's when what began as a civil rights movement burst into the open rebellions of the ghettos. People refused to live in the same old way. Coming off the rebellions and the struggle they represented, minorities made some gains. Government officials were forced to acknowledge, publically, the existence of "institutionalized racism." As a concession to the struggle, the government was forced to institute some reforms, and one of the important ones was affirmative action. Some schools were opened up, job training and hiring for minorities was advanced, and many open discriminatory policies were ended, giving many minorities the opportunity to move ahead. The speed of some of these changes is indicated by the fact that "Blacks to the back of the bus" ended less than 20 years ago.

Prior to the special admissions program at the University of California, a part of affirmative action, only 3 minority students were admitted, one Black and two Mexican-Americans. Of course the history of oppression of minorities by the system goes a lot deeper than admission to medical school, past or present. A quick look at the situation of Blacks today in relation to the rest of the population gives an example of the position of minorities. Black unemployment runs consistently over twice the rate of white unemployment—14% to about 6.5%. For younger Black Vietnam veterans, the figure is well over 30%; for Black young people, the estimates are as high as 60%. The median income for Black families is 60% that of white families, and the figure has actually fallen since the height of the Black liberation movement. But even these statistics don't deal with the everyday oppression of minorities in terms of housing, medical care, education or police repression. As one Black parent commented, "It's bad enough worrying whether my child is going to be able to have a decent education; I worry just sending him to the store whether he'll come home alive."

Clearly, the changes and victories of the 60's did not end oppression for minorities. Yet there were important advances. Today, the Bakke case is being used to take on the legality of affirmative action and minority quotas—any kind of program that hits at discrimination against minorities. In addition to the decision of the California Supreme Court (the decision which is now awaiting a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court) that special admissions at U.C. Davis are unconstitutional, other programs are being attacked: * Citing the Bakke case as a precedent, a Los Angeles court declared unconstitutional a law requiring that 10% of some government construction funds go to minority-owned companies.

A United Steelworkers contract in a plant in Louisiana which included an affirmative action program for on-the-job training was declared unconstitutional. The program required that program openings be filled on a one-to-one basis in order to increase the numbers of skilled Black workers. The court ruled the program unconstitutional even though the area around the plant is 40% Black while only 14.8% of the total employed workers in the area are Black and 2.2% of the skilled workers are Black.

These attacks aren't coming down just because of some racist judges (though there are plenty of them). The whole system is in economic crisis—there's overproduction of goods, there's competition from other capitalists and other imperialist countries which has cut off markets and resources. As usual, the U.S. capitalists throw their crisis on to the backs of the people. Despite minor variations in the monthly unemployment rate, in fact unemployment is up for all workers; everywhere we look, there's a general deterioration of social services—they aren't profitable so throw them out. And when these services are cut, when programs like welfare or food stamps or aid to dependent children are slashed, minorities—where unemployment is heavy—are hit the hardest. The bosses try to squeeze oppressed minorities even harder, driving them further down.

While the Bakke decision will be covered up with all kinds of legal mumbo-jumbo, the basic fact is that it is an important spearhead in the attack on past gains. One thing that the demonstration in Washington and others like it, whether around Bakke or police repression or Africa, shows is that people of all nationalities are taking up the fight against national oppression and discrimination whether at home or around the world.