36566 Mission of the UMass Anti-Racism Coalition: To organize and educate students and the community about racism and its negative, disruptive, and devastating impact on society and the world. Originally called the Chris Hani Anti-Racism Coalition, in honor of Comrade Chris Hani who spoke here at UMass in 1991, two years before he was slain by an assassin's bullet in South Africa for his just fight against apartheid, the ARC seeks to continue Comrade Hani's work by working for a just, non-racial, society where divisions by race and class are eliminated. The ARC has sponsored or cosponsored here at UMass such notable speakers such as ANC and SACP leader Chris Hani, CPUSA and Native American activist Judith LeBlanc, Political Affairs Editor Joe Sims, political scientist and author Dr. Michael Parenti, U.S. Communist Party Vice-Chair Jarvis Tyner, W.E.B. Du Bois scholar Dr. Anthony Monteiro, civil rights activist Dr. Angela Davis, United Farm Workers President Arturo S. Rodriguez, Indian journalist, scholar, and author of Everybody loves a good drought: Stories from India's poorest districts (Penguin India, 1996) P. Sainath, Puerto Rican anti-colonial activist and Massachusetts CPUSA Chair José Cruz, and many others. In conjunction with the W.E.B. Du Bois Petition Coalition, the ARC provided organizational and logistical support in the Coalition's successful effort to have the 28-story tower library at UMass named in honor of W.E.B. Du Bois on October 5, 1994, assisted with the purchase of a plaque for the Du Bois Library, and, along with the W.E.B. Du Bois Club/CPUSA assisted with the dedication of the Du Bois Library on the 128th anniversary of Dr. Du Bois's birth, February 23, 1996. http://worldpoliticalinfo.20m.com/arc.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The elimination of affirmative action leads to resegregation. After the Hopwood decision overturned affirmative action at the University of Texas (UT), the number of black students at the UT Law School dropped from 65 in 1996 to 11 in 1997. Only 4 black students enrolled—in a first-year class of more than 400. At the University of Texas Law School, Latino/a student enrollment has been cut in half since affirmative action programs were outlawed in 1995. When the ban on affirmative action was implemented at the University of California (UC)-Berkeley law school, the number of black students admitted dropped from 75 in 1996 to 14 (out of 792 applicants) in 1997; none enrolled. In its first year without affirmative action, the UC-San Diego School of Medicine did not admit a single black applicant, of the 196 who applied. UC-Berkeley admitted 61% fewer minorities in 1998—the year the state first implemented its ban on affirmative action at the undergraduate level. 800 black and other minority students with grade point averages of 4.0 and SAT scores of at least 1200 were denied admission to the 1998 freshman class. http://www.bamn.com Defend Affirmative Action skamunist 2005-03-28 20:45:29 2005-03-28 20:40:41 5 1 5.00