AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
A few thoughts

Increasingly, I am hearing white liberal friends of mine speak out against affirmative action. This is disturbing. It means that Americans to the left of the ditch are slowly starting to buy into the conservative mythology. This isn’t surprising due to many factors, chiefly, the mainstream media’s embrace of conservative philosophy as truth.

As far as I can tell, the conservative line of thought (if you want to call it that) goes something like this. Affirmative action had its time and place in American history, but that time has passed. Racism is no longer the problem that it was in this country some thirty years ago, and now affirmative action causes far more problems than it solves. Furthermore, affirmative action is discriminatory toward white people and that’s simply not the American way. America is about equality for all races and it is time to end this blatant discrimination toward whites.

(For those of you who are falling out laughing at this conservative “argument,” I’d be laughing with you if not for the fact that so many otherwise rational individuals buy this point of view lock, stock, and barrel.)

Of course, this conservative point of view is so extraordinarily naïve, I am somewhat amazed that anybody, liberal or conservative, could even consider that it is possibly true. For starters, I will admit straight up that affirmative action is, in fact, discrimination. However, it is a form of discrimination that exists in order to redress longstanding inequities in American society. That is, affirmative action is a “hand up, not a hand out.”

In order to believe that the time for affirmative action has passed, one must also believe that the time of racism has passed in the United States. It has not. I don’t even really think that I need to prove this point because the evidence is as plain as the nose on your (white) face. But just in case you don’t believe me, consider this. African-Americans are wildly over represented in prisons. There are no black CEOs (that I know of) running any Fortune 500 companies. We have never had a black president or vice president. Disenfranchisement of African-Americans is still a reality (there is now a massive amount of evidence about this happening in Florida during the 2000 elections). Black high school graduation rates are still much lower than white graduation rates. Black college diplomas still lag way behind the number of white diplomas. Weird, negative racial stereotypes of African-Americans still dominate television and cinema (find and read Wynton Marsalis’ comments about hip-hop stereotyping or watch Spike Lee’s film, Bamboozled). “Driving while black” is still an offense that will get you pulled over in many states. Killing a white person usually gets a death sentence. Killing a black person does not. Security “officers” often follow around perfectly innocent African-Americans in upscale department stores. Racial hate groups are still active and seemingly growing in number. There is a massive disparity in pay rates between blacks and whites. Whites possess far more wealth than blacks. Redlining is still widely practiced by the banking industry in covert forms.

There is much, much more to ending racism than avoiding the “n-word” or being able to ogle Halle Berry or having a black friend or two. Sadly, most white people, still being segregated from the black reality of America, reduce the ending of racism to this superficial (but nice) threshold of racial equality. Racism still exists. Racism is a big problem. Racism is aided and abetted by federal, state, and local governments. Racism hurts blacks and helps whites.

Affirmative action is discrimination, yes, but it is as nothing compared to the discrimination that African-Americans face every day. I would be perfectly willing to consider some other solutions to longstanding racial disparities in America that do not discriminate on the basis of race, but nobody seems to be offering any.

Are there any?

Yes, but such solutions are simply not feasible in our capitalist, wealth-dominated nation. Public schools need a massive overhaul—I’m talking on the scale of the Pentagon budget. Class sizes need to be lowered to less than ten students; this would mandate building tons of new schools and hiring hundreds of thousands of new teachers (and raising teacher pay would attract much better teachers than the bland bunch of nerds populating faculties now). No child that is in poverty can learn as well or as much as a child that does not have to worry about his next meal or where to live: poverty and the social ills with which it is associated must be eliminated, at least for children. Perhaps overhauling the public schools would make the need for affirmative action at colleges and universities a thing of the past, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

Furthermore, the African-American community should have a much-deserved infusion of wealth. That is, blacks throughout the twentieth century have been systematically excluded from the system that has allowed most whites to accrue their own capital assets: home mortgage loans. Redlining has lessened over the years (even though it does still exist), but America also owes a debt to descendent families of the menial labor that helped to build this country. Federal and state governments should pay reparations to blacks, or, at the very least, back wages for slave labor. Spent wisely, this could go a long way toward ending the economic white superiority that is still a part of America and its politics.

To be honest, I would personally prefer the two above-mentioned solutions over affirmative action—they would probably work better and no whiney whites could moan about how they’ve been “discriminated against.” But like I said, I’m not going to hold my breath.

To any white liberals or moderates that buy the conservative mythology about affirmative action, I say this. I will join you in you opposition to affirmative action if you join me in supporting a real fight against poverty, a massive influx of cash to public schools, greatly lowering class sizes, and reparations to the African-American community.

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Affirmative action is clearly an imperfect solution to a vast and complicated injustice in America. But for now, it’s the only solution we’ve got.

Don’t buy the racist, conservative bullshit.

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