Why and How We Must Defend Affirmative Action

    The purpose of Liberator is to defend affirmative action. Liberator rejects the apologetic, tepid tone and language, and the half-stepping, unpersuasive, tokenist argumentation of the reluctant, moderate "defenders" of affirmative action. A real defense of affirmative action requires a far-reaching and forceful system of arguments.

    Our most effective defense must incorporate a searching criticism of the existing order of things. A cohesive and compelling ideological defense of affirmative action requires broadening the debate and bringing the substantive questions to the surface. The questions must be put in their social and historical context. We must change the terms of the debate.

    We can and must defeat the effort to resegregate higher education. Having done so and in the process of doing so, we will have the opportunity to organize a long overdue attack on the inequality that dominates this society and has for too long been accepted and - by those least critical, most servile beneficiaries of the status quo - even exalted.

    Behind the attack on affirmative action is the Republican Party's national leadership. They seek to deflect social frustration over the relative stagnation of wages and the economy generally and with the dropping proportion of national income that the lower four-fifths of the American population is receiving. Central to this strategy is a long, vile, racist tradition in American politics of scapegoating black and other minority people for the problems and inadequacies of the society. The unbridled cynicism of the resegregationists' effort would make a Judas blush. This effort has become a central component of Republican national political strategy. Their perspective is to use this demagogic appeal to racism and sexism in the American electorate to win political power at the federal and then local levels.

    The defeat of the anti-affirmative action ballot proposal in Houston, Texas on November 4th was extremely important. This vote in America's 4th largest city - and an historically conservative one - will tend to break the momentum of the assault on affirmative action.

    The Houston vote is an irrefutable indication that the right-wing's tactic of obfuscation is decisive to the success of their campaign. In the future, they must not be allowed to get away with framing the question of affirmative action in the sort of intentionally deceptive, cynical language of California's Proposition 209. The dishonest use of language from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Civil Rights Movement in general by the opponents of affirmative action must be exposed as obfuscation and hypocrisy. After a political struggle, the language of the Houston proposal was changed to correspond more closely with the substance of the proposal's intent. With the question posed truthfully the defenders of affirmative action prevailed - we can and must repeat this victory.

The Lawsuit and the Failure of Our "Friends"

    The main problem in the defense of affirmative action has been the reluctance of American liberals to defend affirmative action openly against the right-wing attacks. In framing the question as "diversity" rather than affirmative action, universities like U-M have made it more difficult to defend affirmative action programs as what they really are - attempts to reduce the inequalities in American society. These "defenders" of affirmative action are afraid to make clear that the real issue is the fundamental and growing social inequality in American society because they fear the renewal of the social movements that forced the creation of affirmative action programs in the first place. Struggle around the historically decisive question of racism would lead quickly to criticism of the foundation of class inequality on which this society is built.

BAMN's PROGRAM 1. Defend Affirmative Action! No resegregation of higher education! 2. Stop the implementation of the racist, sexist Proposition 209 in California. 3. Force the University of California Regents to rescind their vote to destroy Affirmative Action. 4. Build mass, militant actions to stop the University of California, University of Michigan and other university administrations from implementing any anti-affirmative action policy in employment and/or admissions. 5. Stop the implementation of racist anti-immigrant Proposition 187 in California. 6. Build a mass, militant, integrated, independent movement that uses any means necessary, including education, rallies, marches, building occupations and strikes to defend affirmative action, win our demands and to fight for equality in American society. 7. Use democracy to build the movement. Hold open mass meetings and conferences, vote on strategies and tactics, and elect a steering committee accountable to the members of the Coalition. 8. Build a democratic statewide coalition that is financially and in every way independent of the Regents, University of California, University of Michigan and other administrations and government. Open it up to anti-racist activists and organizations from high schools, community colleges, state universities, unions, black, Latino and other minority organizations, anti-racist groups, women's rights groups, lesbian/gay organizations, etc.

    A few of the mainstream defenders of affirmative action have belatedly taken up some of the provocative, truthful terms that make clear what is at stake in this political struggle.

    The narrow legalism to which some would confine our presentation of the defense of affirmative action is absolutely insufficient. The legal strategy itself must rest on the powerful tradition of the struggle for equality. The current law suit against the University of Michigan cannot be defeated using the Supreme Court's 1978 Bakke decision as its defensive position. To win this legal battle, the defendants will have to go on the offensive. They will have to say that the lawsuit violates the spirit and intent of the Fourteen Amendment and that segregation survives despite Brown vs. Board of Education. This offensive stance must be coupled with the building of a social movement like the one that accompanied the progressive civil rights legislation from 30 years ago.

    Even the most summary review of history reveals that legal decisions of this magnitude are not the result of new-found insight into preexisting law by those in the legal profession. The pressure of conflicting social forces is at play at each of the key turning points in social and legal history. The courts are part of society not "the image and reality of reason" suspended above the rest of us, purveying rationality and order.

    In the 58 years that passed between when the Supreme Court codified segregation (Plessy vs. Fergeson in 1896) and when it ruled to overturn legal segregation (Brown vs. Board of Education 1954), the constitution had not been rewritten in the name and image of equality for black people. It was not a question of a new, "correct" interpretation of the Constitution that had been overlooked the preceding 170-odd years. The reason for the new interpretation of the constitution cannot be found in the realm of law. The beginning of a new phase of mass struggle for black equality was the source of the new legal reasoning. This fact must be properly understood if the defense of affirmative action is to be successful. If the defenders of affirmative action are caught unaware, the social forces of reaction and resegregation will win the first phase of the struggle by their willingness to fight for their unjust, cynical cause. Rational argumentation will prevail only if mass social forces are mobilized. In isolation from a mass movement, rationality will fall victim to the dull force of our enemies.

    The two current plaintiffs in the law suit by the "Center for Individual Rights" and Republican state representative Dave Jaye, have turned themselves into the tools of cynical, racist demagogues. The concept that "the spots that should have gone to the plaintiffs" went to black or other minority students is purely the product of a racist, paranoid imagination. They could just as easily - and with more statistical support - allege that their places had been taken by wealthy students with low SAT scores who got in because their family made financial contributions to U of M or because of their status as the relatives of alumni.

    The framing of the question as one of "diversity" is deliberately meant to evade the substance of the matter. "Diversity" has come to mean the token presence of women and minorities in historically elitist, segregated institutions. Because of this superficial framing of the question, the debate has so far allowed the mainstream, moderate defenders of affirmative action to avoid the substantive and far-reaching questions of social equality and has provided the elitist, racist, sexist demagogues with an easier target to attack.

    In the two and a half years since the attack on affirmative action began in California, the Democrats have refused to mount a serious defense against the attacks. The movement to defend affirmative action must be completely independent from the Democrats and their Party. We must be willing to travel independently from the established leaderships, while using every opportunity to pressure them into the struggle that they fear and to build blocks with them to advance our fight.

    By approaching the question from the standpoint of its historical substance - the fight for equality in American society - we have an enormous number of current and potential allies. We can mobilize those allies if we speak to the prevalent indignation that exists throughout the society.

    In order to successfully defend affirmative action programs, we must mobilize the same mass forces that won them 30 years ago. We must begin building a new, militant integrated Civil Rights Movement that can stop these attacks and can begin waging a war on the stifling social inequality that pervades American society.

   

The Origin and Impact of Affirmative Action

    The Civil Rights Movement and urban uprisings that swept the nation during the 1950's and 60's forced the government at every level to adopt the set of policies known as affirmative action. An executive order from Lyndon Johnson's administration in September of 1965 following the Watts rebellion was its first real legal foundation.

    The term affirmative action applies to the entire set of policies and programs designed to overcome the institutionalized inequities of American society. Affirmative action includes a range of policies, from hiring parameters that result in a management giving priority to a woman or minority when filling an open position, to an institution being required to actively seek-out applicants from underrepresented minorities or women. In admissions to higher education, affirmative action is a mechanism that compels administrations to take steps in the direction of integrating historically segregated institutions.

    As a result of these policies, for the first time in American history, significant numbers of black and Latino people, with increasing numbers of other minorities, working class people and women, gained access to historically segregated, elitist universities, jobs and other institutions. Through affirmative action, American society made an important, partial step towards integration and equality. Incomplete progress was made.

Myth > Fact Myth:  Affirmative action is only an issue for black, Latino and other minority people. Fact:  Women of all races have been the beneficiaries of affirmative action programs. Partial sexual integration of historically elitist, all-male institutions and jobs has resulted from the implementation of affirmative action policies and the struggle for equality generally. Recent Census Bureau reports indicate that median income for full-time working women was 74% of that for men. Affirmative action is also an issue for everyone who supports equality and justice in our society.

    Affirmative action's logical cornerstone is the necessity of an active remedy to discrimination and inequality codified in policy and law. Simply illegalizing discrimination is insufficient because the unreasonable burden of legally challenging abuses falls on the victimized individual.

    Much of affirmative action is not law, but programs adopted voluntarily by various institutions under the pressure of the struggle for equality.

    Affirmative action has been severely weakened since its inception. In the 1978 Bakke decision the Supreme Court ruled against quotas as a component of affirmative action but maintained that race could be considered as a factor in university and college admissions. The force of affirmative action programs was profoundly diminished by this decision.

    The social inequality that affirmative action measures were proposed to offset still exist today. Now, 43 years after the Supreme Court ruling that ordered the desegregation of education "with all deliberate speed", separate, unequal schools still dominate American public education. Inequity of resources is profound. Deprivation stifles merit and potential. Class and racial barriers conspire to bar millions of youth from higher education.

    The median white household income was $39,000 in 1996 while for black households it was $24,000. Black women are four times as likely to die during childbirth as white women. Black children and youth are almost four times as likely to be poor as their white counterparts.

    The actual measures carried out in the name of affirmative action have never been comprehensive or powerful enough to uproot the pervasive racist and sexist inequality in our society, nonetheless, they represent an important step forward that must be defended.

   

A Call to Action to U of M Students

    We, the students of the University of Michigan, are faced with a great responsibility and opportunity. Racist right-wing forces in Michigan have trained their sights on U of M as the next target in the struggle over the future of affirmative action. This means that we have the opportunity to begin to turn this national fight around.

    California and the University of Texas have suffered setbacks. We must draw the line at Michigan. We must prevent the resegregation of higher education in America. Our fight to defend affirmative action at Michigan is not taking place in isolation – the lawsuit against U of M is part of a national attack on affirmative action and all the progressive gains of the Civil Rights Movement. In the 1950's and 60's, a generation of young black, other minority, and white people built a movement to fight for equality in American society. They made great sacrifices in a fight that they saw not only as their own, but also as a fight for future generations. Their heroism won the end of legalized segregation and opened up educational and employment opportunities to many blacks, Latinos, other minorities, women, and poor and working class white youth who never would have had them otherwise.

    Affirmative action is the legacy of these early fighters. Without it, many of us would not be here, not because of any deficiency of our own, but because of the deficiencies of a system that is fatally flawed, a system that continues to practice systematic racial and sexual discrimination, a system that offers vastly unequal experiences to its people.

    Progress is only achieved through social struggle. It took an entire Civil Rights Movement to force the American government to institute the policies of affirmative action as a partial step towards actual equality. We would be making a grave mistake if we left the future of affirmative action up to the U of M Administration, the local courts, or the Supreme Court. The examples of California and Texas are proof enough of this.

    It is up to us to begin to rebuild a new student movement on this campus and be part of building a national civil rights movement in this country. We can turn back this attack and go beyond affirmative action to fight for a society where equality is the rule and affirmative action is no longer needed. It is fitting that U of M, the birthplace of Students for a Democratic Society, and the Vietnam teach-ins, should again be a center and leader of this struggle. Through campus unity and an ongoing, determined effort of education and direct action, we can begin to shift the large majority of U of M students, and the American people as a whole, in our direction. This will make all the difference in which way the Federal Courts rule. It will also make all the difference in what kind of a life we and future generations will face.

    We call on all student organizations and individual students to take up this fight to defend affirmative action. If we fail to organize now, we will surely lose. Fighting together, we can save affirmative action and win much more.

 
Send correspondence and letters to the editor to: bamn@umich.edu.
Visit our website at http://www.bamn.com.