After the crowd’s applause for his opponent died down, Dinesh D’Souza said he felt like a mosquito in a nudist colony.
Facing popular affirmative action advocate Tim Wise in a heated debate on the subject, D’Souza spoke in opposition to affirmative action.
Wise, a social critic and political speaker, and D’Souza, an author and speaker, faced off Thursday night in a debate at the Knight Law Center. The presentation, which drew more than 200 people, was part of the Multicultural Center’s 2001 Dr. Edwin Coleman Conference, “Reawakening Remembrance and the Radical Reality.”
Wise argued that affirmative action is necessary because of “ongoing blatant discrimination” in today’s society and institutional barriers that affect people of different ethnicities.
“Discrimination studies for years have shown that employers find merit in people who look like themselves,” Wise said.

Wise referred to California’s Proposition 209, which passed in 1996 and barred racial and gender preferences in public hiring, contracting and education. Wise said that despite the passage of legislation such as Proposition 209, affirmative action is still necessary because of the history of injustice and discrimination that people in America have faced.
During the audience question-and-answer period, D’Souza suggested one solution to class-based affirmative action would be to give parents more educational options for their children in order to provide equality of opportunity in the public school system.
D’Souza said he opposes affirmative action because it causes cultural disadvantages, and “merit, like racism, creates inequality.” He frequently quoted people such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King Jr.
Kim Hutchinson, the co-director for the Black Student Union, said she hoped students, faculty and community members would come away from the debate with open minds regardless of whether they were for or against affirmative action.
Junior exercise and movement science major Carrie Zografos said she thought Wise’s argument was more convincing because it was backed up with more concrete examples.
Oscar Ponce, the multicultural liaison for Springfield’s public schools, said he also thought Wise’s position was better presented.
“Tim Wise is more of a realist. He knows what is going on,” Ponce said. “There are people who are aware, but there are a lot of people like Dinesh D’Souza who are not aware of issues such as diversity and racial profiling.”