well hey then welcome back to heimlich's history now we've been going through unit three of the ap government curriculum and this is the last video for the whole unit so that means it's time to talk about affirmative action so if you're ready to get them brain cows milked then let's get to it so in this video here's what we're trying to do explain how the supreme court has at times allowed the restriction of the civil rights of minority groups and at other times has protected those rights so let's start by defining affirmative action and then we'll look at a few cases that give us an idea regarding how the court has ruled on this topic affirmative action as a concept describes policies and acted that favor groups that have been historically discriminated against while affirmative action has been in place in some form since the 19th century the modern version of it has roots in an executive order signed by john f kennedy which was concerning the employment of federal contractors and it said this the contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed and that employees are treated during employment without regard to their race creed color or national origin so that's the idea affirmative action takes an active approach against discrimination instead of hoping that passive discrimination laws will result in equity in other words a government contractor had to actively seek different minorities to do work for the federal government instead of just opening jobs and saying that anyone who applies can have as you can imagine such a policy got folks all kinds of angry and you know those folks were mostly white people who thought that such a policy although resembling equality on its face actually discriminated against them and that brings us to several supreme court cases that have wrestled with this idea of affirmative action is it constitutional or is it not now before we get into the cases you need to understand the debate underneath the debate on the surface these cases were about whether it was constitutional to have minority quotas in various institutions but under that debate was the more fundamental question is the constitution colorblind on the one side you had justices who insisted that the constitution makes no claims regarding race and therefore should not be invoked in racial questions on the other side are justices who argue that the constitution forbids racial classifications only when it harms certain races but does not forbid them if those classifications help historically discriminated races okay so with that understanding in place let's have a look at how the supreme court has ruled on the topic of affirmative action and spoiler alert it is not favorable in making these rulings the court is always trying to make the distinction between du jour and de facto segregation does your segregation is racial discrimination by law and the prime example of this was the jim crow laws in the south de facto segregation on the other hand is racial segregation by personal choice for example during the great migration lots of black families moved to the north and precipitated what's known as the white flight out of the cities into the suburbs so in that case racial segregation had occurred between cities and suburbs but not by law rather it was by the choice of white families moving out of places where black people were living now the court ruled against de jour segregation and brownfield the board of education ruling and that dismantled the legal structure that supported racial segregation but in many cases that followed where de jour segregation was not clear the court has generally ruled against affirmative action the clearest example of that is the non-required case of regents of the university of california vibacky in this 1978 case the university of california's medical school admitted 100 applicants every year and their affirmative action policy was to reserve 16 of those spots for minorities and women so that meant for 16 of those spots minorities and women could have lower qualifications and still beat out white applicants and wouldn't you know what that's exactly what happened to a white applicant named alan bakke he was denied admission and then went ahead and sued the university saying that the 14th amendment was violated because he was declined entrance based only on his race you're like wait wasn't he white and answers yes that's the point he said that because the university had established race and gender quotas for admission that he was the victim of reverse discrimination well the decision handed down in the case was that such mandatory quotas were in fact unconstitutional however the court didn't say that affirmative action was unconstitutional which is to say race could still be used as a factor in determining applicants qualifications for the school but race couldn't be the only factor in their decision now this principle was further upheld in another non-required case called richie v de stoffeno in 2009. in that case a group of firefighters took an exam to be promoted within their department when the scores came back none of the black firefighters scored well enough to be promoted and so the city threw out the scores and didn't promote anyone well the high scoring firefighters sued and the case eventually came before the supreme court and the court ruled that again this was not a case of de jour segregation but rather the exam appeared to be a good measure of knowledge for the job to which the applicants aspired so in that case we have another example of the court operating from a colorblind perspective okay that's it click right over here to grab review packet which is going to help you get an a in your class and a five on your exam in maine if this video helped you then by all means subscribe and that will let me know that you want me to keep making them i'll see you in the next one i'm