{"title":"Sustaining Racial Retrenchment","authors":"Matthew Johnson","doi":"10.7591/cornell/9781501748585.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501748585.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter describes how the University of Michigan (UM) leaders fought to preserve the new affirmative action policies. In this context, diversity—the idea that a racially heterogeneous student body improved education and prepared students for a multiracial democracy and global economy—became a tool to defend and sustain the new policies. Diversity helped sever the purpose of affirmative action from addressing the inequality rooted in cities, offered ambiguous goals that helped officials avoid accountability, and advanced administrators' interests in introducing a corporate model for the university. The diversity ideal, in other words, did not spark racial retrenchment. Instead, diversity became a tool to sustain the university's policies of retrenchment. Administrators still had to work to retain control over the meaning of diversity and ensure it supported the new policies. When diversity took hold among administrators, black students and their allies tried to employ diversity language to undermine the policies of retrenchment. Administrators ensured that never happened.","PeriodicalId":220973,"journal":{"name":"Undermining Racial Justice","volume":"342 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117354327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The University as Victim","authors":"Matthew Johnson","doi":"10.7591/cornell/9781501748585.003.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501748585.003.0010","url":null,"abstract":"This epilogue details how, in 2006, Michigan voters approved an amendment to the state Constitution that banned affirmative action in public institutions. One way to read Proposal 2 is as the culmination of a conservative backlash to affirmative action at the University of Michigan (UM). There is no doubt that these anti-affirmative action efforts have made racial inclusion more difficult at UM. But UM officials have long crafted visions of inclusion that accommodated and defended racial inequality. Proposal 2 did not create racial disparities and a poor racial climate at UM—it simply exacerbated existing problems. In the wake of Proposal 2, black enrollment began to decline, and the racial climate worsened. Battles on campus since 2006 have revolved around the university's culpability in racial retrenchment. University officials have deployed racial innocence, blaming the constitutional amendment for any problems on campus. Black students, however, have tried to hold UM accountable for its part in the new era of retrenchment, despite Proposal 2.","PeriodicalId":220973,"journal":{"name":"Undermining Racial Justice","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130776405","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Controlling Inclusion","authors":"Matthew Johnson","doi":"10.7591/cornell/9781501748585.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501748585.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter assesses how the five-year period between 1970 and 1975 changed the University of Michigan (UM). The university implemented the most ambitious affirmative action admissions policies in its history, increased the number of black officials on campus, and redistributed millions of dollars to inclusion initiatives. At the same time, UM administrators deployed new and old techniques to co-opt black campus activism. They added new disciplinary codes to deter confrontational activism; expanded the inclusion bureaucracy; and fought against black, Asian American, Chicano, and Native American activists who tried to build on the Black Action Movement (BAM) concessions. By 1975, BAM's revolutionary vision that called for a new institutional mission was nowhere to be found. The university still had not reached the 10 percent black enrollment goal, and the racial climate was still creating obstacles for black students on campus. The fact that black campus activists were not able to mobilize a campus strike that rivaled BAM's in response to these failures signaled that executive administrators had a firm grasp on racial inclusion once again.","PeriodicalId":220973,"journal":{"name":"Undermining Racial Justice","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128782616","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Epilogue: The University as Victim","authors":"M. Johnson","doi":"10.7591/9781501748592-010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501748592-010","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":220973,"journal":{"name":"Undermining Racial Justice","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131533126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gratz v. Bollinger","authors":"Matthew Johnson","doi":"10.7591/cornell/9781501748585.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501748585.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter studies Gratz v. Bollinger, which challenged the racially attentive undergraduate admissions practices of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts in the University of Michigan (UM). Grutter v. Bollinger, which challenged the Law School's admissions practices, was filed soon thereafter. These cases put UM on a crash course with the Supreme Court. The chapter then highlights UM's defense of affirmative action, showing how the university's co-optation of racial justice aligned with the rightward shift of the Supreme Court since the 1980s. UM leaders' preference for diversity over the social justice rationale, their discomfort with enrollment targets, their efforts to make affirmative action serve business interests, and their selective incorporation of social science that promoted the benefits of interracial contact all made UM's chances of swaying at least one conservative justice more likely.","PeriodicalId":220973,"journal":{"name":"Undermining Racial Justice","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128731608","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}