quit or was fired?
I don't know .. yet
He says he quit because of the Reagan policies
I checking into it .. but I found this
http://www.fed-soc.org/Publications/barwatchbulletin/barwatchAug0903.htm
FIREWORKS ON RACIAL PREFERENCES
Today the Litigation Section sponsored a roundtable called "The Aftermath: Affirmative Action and the US Supreme Court." The participants were: Ward Connerly of California Prop 209 fame, former US Court of Appeals Judge Nathaniel Jones, Eva Patterson of the Equal Justice Society, Ted Shaw of
the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and US Civil Rights Commission Member Abby Thernstrom. It was extremely explosive. As best as we could scribble it down, here is some of the blow-by-blow:
Question from Moderator--What is most significant about the Michigan cases?
--Ted Shaw. "These cases are part of a broader attack." The Supreme Court's decision "turns that back," and it was "rendered by a conservative court."
--Ward Connerly. "The decision legalizes racial discrimination." The decision "does not resolve the long dispute, it only suspends the day of reckoning." He then discussed ballot initiatives on preferences.
--Eva Patterson. She believes that there is "common ground" that "discrimination still exists." We "may not intend to discriminate" but it "is alive and well."
--Lino Graglia. The decision is "official approval of racial discrimination" and is an "enormous defeat" for Brown v. Board and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. "The official policy is that blacks cannot be expected to
compete with whites." Preferences "keep the race drums booming" and "conceals rather than deals with under-performance by blacks." Much hissing followed. No applause.
--Judge Jones. "Race has a long history in shaping our institutions." That history is why blacks underperform and why remedies are still needed. Much applause from the audience.
--Abby Thernstrom. Discussed the racial gap in academic performance and the need to address it through K-12 education. "Get involved in the fight for vouchers." "Fight for charter schools." "Do not get sucked into the notion that testing is discriminatory. That is shooting the messenger." Dead
silence.
Question by Eva Patterson to Lino Graglia whether he believes in the Bell Curve. Graglia asks whether preferences are "the road to racial harmony" and professes not to have enough background to answer her question. Patterson describes the "subtext" of Graglia's remarks as "maybe genetics, I don't know." Ted Shaw jumps in and says that with Graglia's remarks "rumors of inferiority float in the air."
Moderator asks about the presence of common ground. Ted Shaw states that "there are people who in good faith differ." But "colorblindness is not my goal" and he said he had "no common ground with Graglia."
Ward Connerly: the statistics may incite folks, but there is an academic gap. Referring back to Graglia, Connerly said he wished people would not use the word "unqualified" when speaking of black applicants. Qualification "is not the issue," but, rather, "whether we should use the contentious
factor of race." We need to look at better ways of defining academic merit."
Judge Jones expressed trouble with ballot initiatives. With the Court's decision "the issue is removed from political debate and controversy." He also accused conservatives of hypocrisy--there is much talk about academic disparity now, but nobody was there to talk about that when he and other lawyers at NAACP were challenging school segregation.
Abigail Thernstrom indicated that she "favors integrated schools" but "finds it offensive that there needs to be some white faces for there to be a quality education." She has seen a number (though too few) innner city schools that are good but lack white students. Jones asks her if she is for separate but equal. Ted Shaw agrees with Thernstrom's point.
Ted Shaw, speaking to Ward Connerly: "I say to you, sir, that while I wish you no harm, you are doing a great deal of harm." Called Connerly's colorblindness message "simple-minded." Connerly responds: "believing that all people get equal treatment under the law is not simple-minded."
Lino Graglia created a huge stir in the room when he said that, in some respects, blacks were better of 40 or 50 years ago, referring to the current 70 percent illegitimacy rate. Yelling and hissing from the
audience, followed by a comment from Judge Jones that he "feels badly for people who had to study under Graglia." Thernstrom condemned the bashing that people always seem to go out of their way to do on panels, referring specifically to the way in which Justice Thomas and his views are characterized
http://www.naacpldf.org/content.aspx?article=47
(snip)
Shaw graduated from Wesleyan University with honors and from the Columbia University School of Law, where he was a Charles Evans Hughes Fellow. Upon graduation, Shaw worked as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice from 1979 until 1982 in Washington, D.C. He litigated civil rights cases throughout the country at the trial and appellate levels, and in the U.S. Supreme Court. Shaw resigned from the Justice Department in protest of the Reagan Administration's civil rights policies.