Generally, you can give gifts to whoever you want, even limited to people of a particular race. But if there are any strings at all attached to your “gift,” it may become a contract, and you can then be sued for racial discrimination in contracts, if you hand the ‘gifts’ out based on race. It attached a few minor strings to the race-based scholarships it offered, and ended up being sued for racial discrimination in contracts, because it excluded whites from applying for the scholarships, which were deemed contracts because of the few strings attached to them. the ABA particularly argued it should be allowed to exclude white applicants when awarding scholarships, regardless of the apparent prohibition on such discrimination in federal law. In her decision, Gottschall…said the AAER had done enough to move ahead on their claims of discrimination in the makings of contracts.