Speaker calls affirmative action threated

As part of the University's Feminist Scholar Series, Ellen Messer-Davidow, associate professor of English at the University of Minnesota, delivered a speech titled "Discrimination and Affirmative Action: The New Rules," before a capacity crowd yesterday in Kern Building.

Messer-Davidow focused on the policies, lawsuits and public referenda that she claimed are threatening affirmative action.

"The rules that determine what counts as equal and unequal opportunity have changed at this very moment in history, when we as diverse people, are caught up in a struggle over the economic, political and cultural restructuring of our nation," Messer-Davidow said. "The winners of that struggle will be those who can seize the rules, invert their meaning, pervert their purpose and use them to rule the nation."

Anti-discrimination laws and policies that were put in place to insure opportunities are equitably distributed among the nation's citizens, have been attacked by the conservative movement, Messer-Davidow said.

Through lawsuits, voter referenda and other political moves, the movement has redefined discrimination as reverse discrimination against white men and special privileges for minorities, women, gays and lesbians, she said.

"Make no mistake," she said. "This movement has embarked on a long march to dismantle affirmative action and restore an aristocracy of privileged citizens."

Messer-Davidow cited different policies brought up by conservatives through the years, such as the California Civil Rights Initiative, and different landmark cases that have sided with the conservative movement in their effort to eliminate affirmative action.

"Through the new rules, conservative courts have partnered themselves with the conservative movement to play a cynical political game," Messer-Davidow said. "They are producing a regime of truths that will falsify virtually all claims about pattern discrimination and its necessary remedy."

However, she said there are lessons to be learned from anti-affirmative action policies, cases and rulings that will better prepare disadvantaged people to fight the conservative movement.

"What I thought was really interesting were some of the court cases that she gave examples of and how they actually moved towards ending affirmative action," said Kelly Mills (sophomore-human development and family studies). "Some examples were just outrageous; it put the law in a different perspective."