Albuquerque Journal

Lawyer Talks of Privilege
By Olivier Uyttebrouck, Journal Staff Writer

Morris Dees' "affirmative action card" gave him many privileges as a young man in Alabama, the civil rights lawyer said Thursday, including the ability to practice law without taking the bar exam.
   
"My affirmative action card was nothing but the color of my skin," Dees, who is white, told an audience of 300 Thursday at the 2008 Diversity Leadership Council Forum in Albuquerque.
   
By contrast, African-Americans who earned law degrees from more prestigious universities were required to take the bar exam, said Dees, a 1960 graduate of the University of Alabama School of Law.
   
Dees is the co-founder of The Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., a nonprofit law firm known for legal victories against hate groups.
   
Dees said he regretted a decision by University of New Mexico professor Ricky Lee Allen to withdraw as a workshop presenter at the forum.
   
Allen had planned to offer a "white privilege" workshop but withdrew last week after Sandia National Laboratories employees complained about a description of the workshop circulated by e-mail to lab workers.
   
"I wish the professor had continued with his program," Dees said after speaking to the forum.
   
Few would argue "that being in the majority Anglo population in this country over the last 150 years hasn't had enormous advantages," Dees said. "And those advantages just don't disappear overnight."
   
White privilege is not a subject that anyone should find offensive, Dees said. "If you're in the driver's seat, you don't have to worry too much," he said.
   
Dees predicted the United States will fail in its effort to reduce the flow of immigrants by building fences along the Mexican border.
   
Immigrants are entering the country in response to employers' demand for labor, and fences will do little to slow immigration, he said.
   
"That money could build a lot of schools in America," Dees said. "I suggest we put a broad walkway across the top to make it a tourist attraction down the road."