In some regions of the country, our schools are as segregated and profoundly unequal as they were when the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregated schools unconstitutional in its Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. The war on crime and drugs has disproportionately targeted people of color for arrest, prosecution and long, mandatory prison sentences so that today, one-third of all black men in their twenties are either behind bars, on probation or parole. Voting districts created to provide fair representation have been undermined by lawmakers and by the courts, and felony disenfranchisement laws have robbed hundreds of thousands of minorities of their right to vote. Segregation and discrimination in housing opportunity still exists, and a backlash against affirmative action in employment and education threatens to slam the door of opportunity in the faces of those who are most deserving. Anti-immigrant laws have stripped away basic civil rights for many of the nation’s ethnic minorities.

We have come a long way since Jim Crow ruled the South, but deeply entrenched discrimination, subjugation, subordination, and racial violence are still with us and affect not only African-Americans, but Latinos, Asian Americans, American Indians, and Arab Americans as well. The ACLU’s historic commitment to racial equality remains a centerpiece of its work in the courts and the legislatures, and in the arenas of public policy and public education.

Police abuse has never been evenly distributed throughout American society; it has always disproportionately victimized people of color. The ACLU initiates and participates in lawsuits designed to protect the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures and the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. We actively support reforms such as civilian review boards that would reduce the incidence of police abuse and empower its victims. The ACLU’s Campaign Against Racial Profiling opposes the police practice of targeting people of color for vehicular and other stops and searches. Our Drug Policy Litigation Project challenges the unconstitutional excesses of the war on drugs, which disproportionately impact people of color. And the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project works against the discriminatory application of the death penalty in this country, where the color of a defendant and victim's skin plays a crucial and unacceptable role in determining who will be sentenced to death.

The ACLU actively supports affirmative action as a remedy for discrimination in employment and education. Although much progress has been made since the Civil Rights Movement, avenues of opportunity for those previously excluded still remain far too narrow. The organization has also initiated a series of groundbreaking lawsuits to establish the right to "educational equity" for poor children and children of color. These suits confront the issue of how states fund their public education systems and argue that students are entitled to equal and adequate educational opportunities regardless of the wealth of the communities in which they live.