This guidance is designed to help advocates and institutional leaders understand prevailing interpretations of law with a greater degree of nuance and precision than is typically available. It clarifies what is permissible and what is generally prohibited, and provides many examples to illustrate these ideas.

In the face of legal constraints and political attacks, there are three broad orientations which racial equity advocacy groups and organizations with race-conscious programs tend to adopt.

• The first orientation is courageous defiance.
• The second possibility is the opposite: given the legal constraints and risk of liability, this orientation completely abandons any forthright attempt to address racial inequality or inequity, and relies entirely on universalistic, class-based, or wholly race-neutral approaches that may ultimately help reduce racial disparities or inequities, while disguising the racial purpose or goal.
• The third possibility charts a middle course: it seeks to forthrightly advance racial equity objectives while hewing as closely as possible to prevailing legal constraints and limitations.

This memorandum has been developed for advocates willing to take this middle course. This FAQ was created to accompany the more robust legal guidance document.