Prominent black opponents of these programs include the scholars Thomas Sowell and Shelby Steele the activist Ward Connerly, who has helped sponsor initiatives to abolish these programs in California and other states and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whose opposition mirrors the divide over these policies within the high court. Kennedy, coined the term “affirmative action.” Equally, and reflective of the divisive capacity of affirmative action, a number of African Americans oppose these programs, some of them unyieldingly.
These appointees include Hobart Taylor, a Detroit lawyer who, under President John F. Reflective of the black support for affirmative action, or coincidentally, black political appointees have played an instrumental role in designing and implementing these programs. Conversely, whites substantially disfavor special preferences for blacks and other minorities, but today, in opinion polls, support equal opportunity for all. In appreciation of these results, African Americans, anecdotally and in opinion polls, have maintained overwhelming and robust support for these programs. The use of these programs led to more black presence or representation in some national institutions, particularly those, like the military, with a long history of racial desegregation. They originated as techniques designed to promote equality for blacks and metamorphosed into programs of special preference, beginning from the third quarter of the twentieth century, when equal opportunity techniques alone proved inadequate to secure equality for blacks. Affirmative action programs play a critically important role in the black experience in America. Ultimately, we argue that this form of racial spectacle further inculcates the public in the post-racial ideology of colorblindness.Affirmative action permits the use of race and other “minority” factors, such as gender and ethnic origins, in decisions relating to allocations of public benefits, such as government employment, admissions into public schools, and awarding of government contracts. Through an analysis of five statewide anti-affirmative action initiative campaigns from 1996 to 2008, we explore both macro and micro political dynamics: public displays of these campaigns as well as individual, private agency expressed in the public and private act of voting court decisions in initiative litigation as well as individual and interest group participation in these cases. Paradoxically, these campaigns that purport to be colorblind depend on the enactment of these racial spectacles. We explore the creation of these spectacles through the initiative process because it is a state-sanctioned vehicle that enables white dominance. We develop the concept of ‘‘racial spectacles’’ to describe the narrative vehicles that serve to symbolically reassert and reinforce real existing racial hierarchies and inequalities. We examine a different question about racially marginalized groups’ interests in this process: the symbolic assertion of white supremacy expressed through this mechanism of majority will. While scholars have debated whether this leads to a form of Madison’s ‘‘tyranny of the majority,’’ the debate over the concrete impact of such initiatives on racially marginalized groups remains unsettled. Direct democracy by citizen initiatives is often heralded as the avenue for the true will of the people to be heard.
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