Fighting White Supremacy Once Again, Ku Klux Klan Act is Challenging Race-based Scholarship at UCSD

In 1871, over five years after the establishment of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), Ohio Republican Congressman Samuel Shellabarger introduced the KKK Act as “An Act to enforce the Provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment.” The KKK Act was intended to empower the federal government to enforce equal protection of the law for all Americans, including four million formerly enslaved African Americans, whose political and civil rights were gravely threatened in the South by vigilante groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Operating on the same rationale, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the KKK Act’s modern version, vindicates federal constitutional rights of equal protection against state and local actors. Any public-private conspiracy to deprive individuals of equal protection is outlawed by the KKK Act. 

Today, in an ironic reversal of political and cultural tides, self-righteous, virtue-signaling and race-baiting elites have replaced the Klansmen as the menacing threat to equal protection. Many of these elitist interests live in ivory towers safely insulated from public opinions and common sense, concocting academic papers based on imaginary identity labels and infecting various societal segments with a perpetual mentality of victimhood. 

For the last 42 years, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) has maintained “the Black Alumni Scholarship Fund (BASF),” a race-based scholarship only for the school’s black undergraduate students. The school had created the scholarship in 1983 as a state-run program funded by taxpayer money. In 1998, two years after over 55% of Californian voters approved the California Civil Rights Initiative via the passage of Proposition 209, UCSD transferred BASF to the San Diego Foundation, an off-campus nonprofit. 

Cunning university administrators thought this sleight of hand could absolve the school of legal risks, claiming that the scholarship is now a private program. With BASF still operating in the same way as before 1998 and receiving continuous support from UCSD’s Black Academic Excellence Initiative (BAEI), the transfer was merely nominal and designed for the sole purpose of skirting the law. In fact, there is a blatant conspiracy between UCSD and the San Diego Foundation to award scholarships on the basis of race. While the San Diego Foundation “funds” the endowment, BAEI is the on-campus supporter and de facto operator of BASF. 

BASF has provided more than $1 million in scholarships and mentoring opportunities to over 400 black UCSD students studying engineering, mathematics, sciences and technology majors. The flipside of racial preferences is racial discrimination. Each year, qualified students who are not black are denied access to up to $10,000 in financial assistance. Some of these excluded students are members of my organization, the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation (CFER). One of the student members never received an application to BASF because she chose not to disclose her race on her admissions form, despite meeting all other qualifications for the scholarship. Moreover, some CFER members are high school students with plans to apply to UCSD but would have been excluded from BASF due to race. 

Just as equality-minded lawmakers approved the KKK Act to combat white supremacy against intentional collusions among bad actors, we are using the same act to push back against UCSD’s race-exclusionary scholarship in a newly filed lawsuit. Represented by capable lawyers from the Pacific Legal Foundation, we are seeking equal justice for our members as well as all current and future UCSD students. We will prevail.