Rethinking the Interest-Convergence Thesis

Abstract

When the United States Supreme Court validated the limited use of race as an admissions criterion in Grutter v. Bollinger eight years ago, many veterans of the civil rights struggle greeted the decision with elation. Elaine R. Jones, then-President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., called the decision upholding the University of Michigan's law school admissions program "a slam-dunk victory affirming the principles we have been fighting for."' Professor Jack Greenberg, one of Jones's predecessors at the Legal Defense Fund and part of the litigation team who won Brown v. Board of Education, also viewed Grutter as an affirmation of the organization's efforts to achieve black advancement.' Professor Greenberg expressed particular admiration for Grutter's conception of affirmative action not as a policy that benefits primarily blacks but instead as a policy that benefits all of American society-including the armed services and the business communities.' Referring to Justice O'Connor's opinion for the Court in Grutter, Professor Greenberg commented that she kept "[h]er eye .. . on the condition of society and what affirmative action can do to help fix it, not what caused the condition."' This holistic perspective was, in Professor Greenberg's estimation, deeply commendable.' "In this I think she is not only right," Professor Greenberg wrote, "but it is what has been the driving force of affirmative action all the time: affirmative action to make ours a better country."'