"I see myself as something of a Yente the matchmaker... that character from 'Fiddler on the Roof.'"

"I seek out individuals or jurisdictions, corporations who have been discriminated against in various endeavors because of their race and ethnicity. Over the years, my outreach has diminished because I guess I’m a more high-profile individual and people contact me. I pair them with lawyers. Then if the lawyers believe that there is a cause of action, I go out and try to raise money to pay for the lawyers. Now, philosophically, there’s a common theme in all of this. Like the vast majority of Americans, I believe that an individual’s race and ethnicity should not be used to help them or harm them in their life’s endeavors. And those life’s endeavors include, you know, if they’re gerrymandered into a voting district because they’re a certain race, if they’re applying for a job that they’re not going to get because they’re a certain race or they’re applying to a college or university that they won’t be admitted to because of their race or ethnicity."

Said Edward Blum, responding to a question about why he's involved in so many different cases, from affirmative action to gerrymandering. He's quoted in "He Worked for Years to Overturn Affirmative Action and Finally Won. He’s Not Done. Edward Blum’s latest victory at the Supreme Court is the culmination of a long fight to take race out of college admissions. Is the workplace next?" (NYT).

The NYT interviewer, Lulu Garica-Navarro, pushes him about his Jewishness: "I know you were raised in a liberal Jewish family. What made you break from the way that you had been brought up?" That question contains an assumption, and Blum doesn't accept it. He puts it very politely, like someone who knows not to take bait: "It’s easy to characterize someone like me, who is against racial preferences and classifications, as someone who has broken with standard Jewish philosophy and Jewish heritage. I disagree with that."