Affirmative action cases aren’t about ending discrimination. Their goal is white supremacy

The Republican activists leading a decadeslong assault on affirmative action, which is poised to succeed in the Supreme Court, claim they want to eliminate racism and create a colorblind society.

Their propaganda is so persuasive that 73% of Americans, including most people of color, believe race or ethnicity should not be a factor in college admissions.

But those same activists who’ve stoked the flames of antagonism toward affirmative action have close ties to the architects of this country’s metastasising white nationalist movement. These links reveal the activists’ ultimate agenda, which has nothing to do with ending racism.

Among them is Ward Connerly, the former University of California regent. In 1996, he spearheaded the first state ban on considering race or gender in public education, hiring and contracting, inspiring other states to pass similar restrictions.

Last month, Connerly, who has formerly protested being labelled a Black man, spoke outside the Supreme Court at a rally for his “dear friend” Edward Blum, who’s leading the high-profile lawsuits against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina that aim to overturn decades of legal precedent. “Dr. King had a dream,” Connerly said. “I have a nightmare. … Diversity and equity and inclusion will be the death of the country that we love.”

Neo-nazis and other white supremacists share this dread. In 2012, Connerly spoke at an event for the Social Contract Press, a white nationalist publishing house. “The endgame for all of us is vanquishing this whole notion of diversity,” Connerly said at the event, which also featured prominent white nationalist Peter Brimelow, whose racist lies about the “ethnic specialisation in crime” include the following: “Hispanics do specialise in rape, particularly of children.”

Inhisspeech,connerlylamentedlatinos’political empowerment. “The electorate has changed profoundly,” he said, “and I fear that that is permanent.”

Connerly supported the 2021 gubernatorial recall election campaign of right-wing radio host Larry Elder, a longtime mentor of former President Trump’s anti-immigrant advisor, Stephen Miller. In an op-ed in the Orange County Register, Connerly described the Los Angeles Times’ coverage of Elder as “unhinged” and “vile,” focusing on a column I wrote about Elder’s connections to Jared Taylor, a well-known white supremacist.

Ignoring the Taylor detail, Connerly described me as “part of the ever-growing group of racebaiters enabling and fomenting Latino and Black victimhood.”

Blum, Connerly’s successor in the legal assault against affirmative action, has similar affinities. He was behind the lawsuit a decade ago that guted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and has fought affirmative action in public and private sectors, including at Coca-cola and the New York State health department.

Blum’s nonprofit, Students for Fair Admissions, is the plaintiff in both affirmative action lawsuits before the Supreme Court. The organisation pretends to value diversity and Asian American students, claiming that admissions policies harm Asian Americans. But the litigation is funded largely by Donorstrust, which also provides millions to white nationalist groups, including Brimelow’s and Taylor’s. Blum’s legal challenges were once an internal program of Donorstrust. “Unlike other grantees of Donorstrust who can claim distance from the fund’s decision-making process and its recent embrace of white supremacy, Blum cannot,” wrote Sergio Muñoz, an expert in legal policy, in 2020. “Blum is so deeply embedded with the fund that Donorstrust brags that his anti-civil rights crusade is its own, claiming ‘our DNA floats in the bloodstream’ of his efforts.”

A Supreme Court decision in favor of Blum’s group will end up hurting diversity not just in college admissions but on construction sites, in hospitals and more. “As soon as they get it on the books for higher education,” Muñoz told me, “they’re going to be able to use that case as precedent and take it across American society.”