Excited for that school let out after only half a day, I eagerly left my high school to head downtown. I, like a good suburban Maryland student, was on my way to a protest at the Supreme Court during the 2003 challenge to the University of Michigan’s affirmative action policy. I ended up missing the march, but picked up one of the signs anyway provided by the organization By Any Means Necessary.
Otherwise known as BAMN, this political action group has a history of swarming meetings to block votes and organizing public protests. Beyond marches, they’ve expanded their arsenal to include aggressive legal campaigns. In 2003, they filed as a co-defendant supporting affirmative action in the Grutter v. Bollinger Supreme Court case, and are currently fighting to block the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, claiming that the anti-affirmative action Proposition 2 was improperly allowed on the ballot. BAMN is not merely a rag-tag group of over-passionate, under-informed radicals, and their supporters show as much.
The list of endorsements for BAMN’s 2003 march reads like a roster for a Fels Institute of Government symposium. The AFL-CIO, Congressman John Conyers, and three city councils all officially endorsed the protest.
The list had local supporters as well. The former faculty fellow of DuBois College House, Dr. Vinay Harpalani, was instrumental in organizing Penn’s 500-person delegation to the 2003 protest at the Supreme Court. Harpalani also earned his PhD from Penn in 2005, and while a graduate student, organized press conferences downtown, coordinated student groups in support of affirmative action, and orchestrated a picket of Justice Scalia when he spoke at the law school. Our own GAPSA endorsed the rally- their detailed resolution is online, at the BAMN website no less!
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| A protester joins others in a demonstration against Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia outside of the University Museum when he spoke at Penn in 2003. (Geoff Robinson/DP) |
Intelligent, rational, well-thought out individuals is in our own backyard &mdash BAMN is not an organization for extremists.
On a broader scale, BAMN is not the end-all for affirmative action activism, nor should it be. They have honed their specific method of contribution &mdash investigating how anti-affirmative action petitions are conducted, protesting court cases that may undermine racial integration, and raising awareness of the exponential loss to minority students after affirmative action programs are discontinued. There’s a host of ways we can get facts out, BAMN represents a public arm that is complemented, and not complicated, by conventional discussion.
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February 20th, 2007 at 1:22 am
the “counterpoint” doesn’t address the “point,” which is focused on the issue of effectiveness.
February 20th, 2007 at 4:20 am
So ummm what does this have to do with the efficacy of affirmative action?
February 20th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
I think minority students like yourself should get into college because you deserve it…not because the bar has been lowered for you.
If you want to be equal, demand equality.
February 20th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
Damn right. Skin colour does not matter. It’s an irrelevance. The best should go to college, regardless of their backgrounds… And this column does little to either answer the point or reassure readers that BAMN is anything other than a militant action group.
February 20th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
I appreciated Brickley’s story, of how he was initially turned off by affirmative action activists, but eventually became informed about the education inequalities and the test score gap. I also appreciated Hardiman’s insight into BAMN, another example of the need to look deeper than appearances. Rather than criticize BAMN or Hardiman’s article, why don’t we criticize/investigate our education system?
February 20th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
Scott is EXACTLY right. On another note, I’d like to see someone write an article that talks about the myth that affirmative action has become at Penn. How about talking about socio-economic backgrounds/REAL diversity of ideas and not just skin color- something that Penn would have a very hard time claiming.
February 21st, 2007 at 12:46 am
The ‘counterpoint’ DOES address one of the points in Brickley’s post, however - the claim that organizations like BAMN use ‘emotional rhetoric’ instead of ‘cold hard facts’.
Attempting not to scream, lest I distract any of you with my humanity, I would add to Camille’s eloquent counterpoint that “issues of slavery, segregation, and the civil rights movement” can hardly be reduced to ‘emotional’ issues, since they exist in history…as cold, hard facts…and they continue to put colors to the socio-economic divide which continues to cripple our meager attempts at righting our perversely unjust system of education in the USA.
“If you want to be equal, demand equality”–What planet are you on? That’s exactly what BAMN sees itself as doing…but rather than pretending that humans can somehow jump from A to Z it acknowledges that intermediate steps must be taken–demands don’t magically create realities (at least on the planet I live on).
“Skin colour does not matter. It is an irrelevance.”–Again, what planet are you on? (this rebuke apparently includes Camille) We are human, embodied, color exists and affects how we view people–and we do VIEW people with eyes that see color. The question is what associations we have with color–being “colorblind” would ignore both beautiful differences and ugly reactions to difference. If you in any way doubt that there are still problems with how “we” view color or are somehow confused about the fact that we view color, check out: http://www.komotv.com/home/video/5001856.html?video=YHI&t=a
and be dismayed.