percent of the population in 1955, [a] proportion which [by 1990] had declined to 76 percent" (12). During the 1980s, a flood of nearly nine million legal immigrants, and perhaps as many as five million undocumented or illegal immigrants, mostly from Latin America and Asia, "accounted for one-third of U.S. population growth" (Cochran et al. 12);
(2) Minority groups had become more assertive during the civil rights controversies of the 1950s and 1960s. Reaction by some whites to a loss of their relative power and status, coupled with resentment at affirmative action laws and the recession of the late 1980s and early 1990s, sharpened tensions between haves and have nots.
(3) Colleges and universities had been the scene of disruptions and demonstrations by students, some violent, during the convulsions of the 1960s and had been hard pressed on many occasions to maintain order on campuses. Pressures to adopt hate crime and hate speech codes were brought on college administrators by the growing numbers and influence o
...