Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

320 // JEROME A. CHANES
(R-FL), would eliminate all federal preference programs based on race, gender, and
ethnicity.
43. Adarand held that federal affirmative-action programs must be "narrowly tailored"
to address specific examples of discrimination. This landmark decision calls
into question the validity of set-aside programs that are not predicated upon specific
evidence of discrimination.
44. NJCRAC Consultation on Affirmative Action, April 1995.
45. A useful brief summary of the voting rights issue is Samuel Rabinove, The
Voting Rights Dilemma: The Legacy of Discrimination, AJC Legal Papers (New York: The
American Jewish Committee, 1994). For a more extended treatment, which unfortu-
nately provides a narrative only to 1984, see Abigail M. Thernstrom, Whose Votes
Count? Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights (Cambridge, MA, 1987).
46. The Voting Rights Act is based on Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment,
empowering Congress to enforce the provisions of the amendment. The main provisions
of the Voting Rights Act are:
1. Literacy tests and other devices found to be discriminatory as qualifications
for voting in any federal, state, or local election, where the right to vote
had been denied by race, were suspended.
2. Provided for federal examiners to conduct registration and observe voting
in states and/or counties covered by the act (seven states plus two dozen
discrete counties).
3. The U.S. Attorney General was directed to initiate suits to determine the
constitutionality of poll taxes.
4. Civil and criminal protection was extended to qualified voters seeking to
vote, as well as to those who urge or help others to vote.
5. When a state or political subdivision covered by the act seeks to change its
voting qualifications or procedures from those in effect on 1 November
1964, it must obtain approval from the U.S. Attorney General or initiate
a federal court suit.
47. That is, groups whose "members have less opportunity than other members
of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of
their choice." Voting Rights Act of 1965, Title J, Section 2(b).
48. Even prior to the 1982 amendments, the Supreme Court in United Jewish
Organizations of Williamsburgh (UJO) v. Carey had upheld the use of racial quotas to
assure that non-whites had majorities in certain legislative districts. The Supreme
Court said that whites in New York State had more-than-sufficient representation,
suggesting, in effect, that the whites of (for example) Kingston were akin in their
political, social, and economic needs to the Chasidic Jewish whites of Williamsburgh.