Shaw ’76 speaks on struggle for racial justice By Josh Brandstadter Assistant News Though this summer’s Supreme Court ruling was a major victory for Affirmative Action, more still needs to be done said Theodore M. Shaw ’76 during his speech on Wednesday evening concerning the struggle for racial justice. The lecture, sponsored by the Baldwin Fellowship, was the second formal occasion held in the newly renovated Memorial Chapel. Entitled, “Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: From Brown to Grutter and the Convoluted Struggle for Racial Justice,” the event attracted approximately 100 members of the Wesleyan and Middletown communities. Shaw had served on the University board of trustees for 15 years and is the Associate Director and Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Shaw related in sound detail the last fifty years of race-related Supreme Court decisions, starting with Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka to last summer’s Michigan affirmative action cases. Shaw was part of the defense team that represented the University of Michigan in the recent undergraduate case where the Court decided in the university’s favor. Shaw noted that next year will be the 50th anniversary of the Brown decision. “There will be a lot of self-congratulatory rhetoric,” Shaw said. In contrast, he said. “At the Legal Defense Fund, we plan to have a critical commemoration.” “It is not that we won’t celebrate it, because there is much to celebrate. But at the same time there is much to think about, there are questions to ask, and we have to access where we are today,” he said. Shaw arrived on campus on Tuesday and participated in a luncheon at Malcolm X House organized by Renee Romano, chair of the African American studies program. Students had the opportunity to ask questions regarding the Affirmative Action case and the other legal cases undertaken by the Legal Defense Fund. Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Nancy Meislahn took advantage of Shaw’s visit and invited him to a discussion centered on the University’s affirmative action policy. Taking a break from the academic and legal aspects of his brief trip, Shaw paid a visit to the basketball team, which he played on as a student. Before his lecture, Shaw attended a thirty-person dinner in the home of the President and Midge Bennet with students, faculty, administrators, alumni and friends. “It was a very compelling statement,” Bennet said after the speech. “Ted Shaw has an extraordinarily broad view of race relations and of compassion and of law and somehow he wove it all together. It was a very powerful speech.” After spending Wednesday evening in the Bennets’ home, Shaw engaged in a discussion Thursday morning with government students selected by Government professors Richard Boyd, chair of the department, John Finn, and Martha Crenshaw, who is also the new chair of the University Lectures Committee. At one point in his Tuesday night speech, Shaw was able to trace his advocacy for affirmative action back to his time as a student at the University in the early 1970s. A former member of the black student organization, Ujamaa, Shaw said the issue was very contentious among members of the Wesleyan community. “There was a lot of anger on campus,” he said. Shaw remembered one student who aggressively, but sincerely opposed affirmative action and believed it to be immoral and reverse racism. Shaw said he had discussed the issue extensively with the student, but was not able to find a resolution with him. While Shaw joked that the issue had calmed down due to the end of the school year, he had continued to advocate for affirmative action well past his years at the University. Alan Dachs ’70, chairman of the board of trustees, introduced Shaw by detailing highlights in his career and speaking of his own personal relationship with Shaw. He remarked on Shaw’s valuable input on the formation of the University’s affirmative action policy. “Who better to deliver the Baldwin lecture than my friend, Ted Shaw,” Dachs said. He then proceeded to give a legal history of the fight for desegregation starting from Brown to assessing what he believed is the state of racial justice today. “[Brown was] one of the most important decisions in American history – period,” he said. Shaw warned the audience about the far right, which he said wanted to make all race-conscious actions illegal and were misusing the words of Martin Luther King Jr. “Some are not opposing [affirmative action] in good faith,” he said. Shaw opened the pages of history between to focus on 1954 and today. He said that actual desegregation has been a slow process that is still ongoing. “[It was] not enough to rely on voluntary desegregation efforts,” he said. “The Supreme Court had no understanding, no idea, of how deep the roots of segregation had grown.” Shaw discussed the efforts of school districts to bus students to other schools in order to force desegregation in some areas. He attributed the decline in use of busing to a lack of will. “It was always about whether we had the real commitment,” he said, adding that white flight and the withdrawal of white students from public schools also hurt efforts for desegregation. Shaw said he believed Justice Sandra Day O’Conner had decided the case as she had because there was something in the back of her mind that let her know what was at stake. According to Shaw, the Court decided the case due to the diversity argument he made and not because his argument that affirmative action corrects historical discrimination. “I defy anybody to tell me what moment in time came when that link [between historical discrimination and today’s racial inequities] was broken.” Still, Shaw said that he knew the historical discrimination to be less acceptable to the Court. He said he made the argument anyway so they would be more likely to accept his argument for the need to have diversity in schools. “If there was no Malcolm, Martin wouldn’t have sounded as palatable as he did to many white people,” Shaw said in an analogy. Before beginning his speech, Shaw first clarified that the NAACP Legal Defense Fund independent of the NAACP. The NAACP is the parent group for the legal organization he works for, and they are related by a shared history. Jean Shaw said she was particularly impressed by his interaction with students. Derek Garcia ’04, who attended the Wednesday morning government discussion agreed. “I think Ted Shaw made some very interesting points about class and race,” he said. Garcia said Shaw spoke with students during the discussion on a variety of topics from campus to national issues. He said Shaw was interested in being updated in what was happening on campus. Garcia said that Shaw had helped him to understand how a working class student can afford law school. “It was a very positive conversation,” Garcia said. Garcia said he was invited to attend the discussion because he is in one of Crenshaw’s classes. “I would have been interested if he would have spoken more about sexuality in his speech,” he added. Abdullah Wright ’04 also attended the lecture and dinner. “I think his focus is inspiring, especially for a college student,” Wright said. One of the next major lectures on campus will be the Hugo L. Black Lecture Series on the First Amendment. It will be given by Anthony Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, in the Memorial Chapel on March 30.

Shaw ’76 speaks on struggle for racial justice Residents call for AWAREness Students arrested on drug charges Wesleyan DKE top in nation Professor injured in accident Lawsuit filed over crossburning Student helps Middletown committee allocate funds Tournament to score dollars for local youth center

The Wesleyan Argus © 2003 Wesleyan University Questions/Comments: Boon Hian Lim, Online Editor or the Argus