A Brief Balance Sheet of the National Struggle
The struggle over
affirmative action will be the defining question of domestic social policy in
America over the next period. This fight-win or lose-will be a turning
point for our whole society.
This attack is the first full-fledged
attempt to reverse a policy that is fundamental to the gains of the Civil
Rights Movement. It is a direct attack on the progress toward integration and
equality won through the hard struggles of black people as well as other
minorities. It also aims at a reversal of the historically associated progress
in the social position of women of all races.
We can and must defeat
this attack.
Since the publication of Liberator 2,
there have been some positive developments around the country that bear
consideration. There are some small, but very important signs favoring the
defense of affirmative action. These changes open up opportunities for the
movement which refute the notion-all too popular amongst mainstream
progressive forces-that affirmative action is all but dead.
Steps Forward
Belatedly, more of the
liberal intellectual elite has taken a more forceful stand in support of
affirmative action. For the movement to defend affirmative action this is very
important. It indicates that the comparatively small steps that the movement
has taken so far have had a far-reaching impact.
Professors in the University of
California system have called a two-day walkout in defense of affirmative
action on October 21st and 22nd.
This is a development of great moment. Having the professors of the
institutions that are on the front lines of the fight taking a bolder stand
can do a great deal to advance the struggle nationally. Similarly, the fact
that professors at the University of Michigan are circulating a petition in
support of affirmative action indicates important progress.
On October 5th,
the first day of the new term of the US Supreme Court, the NAACP held a 1,000
person demonstration outside the Court to protest the Justices' failure to
hire black and other minority law clerks (there have been only 7 black law
clerks out of the 428 hired by the sitting Justices since 1972). The
demonstration was in effect demanding that the nine Justices who will make the
ultimate legal decision on affirmative action, stop discriminating and start
implementing their own affirmative action policy. Implicitly this
demonstration called attention to the racist and reactionary character of the
current Court.
The publication of The Shape of the
River, a book that makes a very narrow but well researched case for
affirmative action in elite colleges and universities, has been hailed as the
beginning of a pro-affirmative action counteroffensive by a significant
portion of the mainstream media. The reviews of the book in various newspaper
editorials, particularly The New York Times, indicate that there is
something of a counteroffensive starting to materialize among the liberal
"opinion-makers".
In Michigan, the much-publicized attempt
by right-wing Republican state representative Deborah Whyman to get an
anti-affirmative action proposition on the ballot failed miserably for lack of
signatures. The leadership of the Republican Party in Michigan correctly
estimated that the issue was too volatile to serve as racist demagogy without
real danger of backfiring on the party as a whole. As a result, they did not
throw their weight, including their money, behind it. Whyman was rewarded for
her efforts by losing the Republican nomination in the primary election in
August.
In Washington state, the
Proposition-209-style "Initiative 200" has finally gotten some high profile
opposition. Large-scale capital, including Boeing, Microsoft, and
Hewlett-Packard, has begun to put money into the "NO on 200" campaign under
the guiding concept that the attack on affirmative action is "bad for
business". They fear the instability that will result from the struggle that
officially sanctioned segregation will provoke. Initiative 200 may limp
through the polls, however, aided, perhaps decisively, by the same
intentionally deceptive language as Proposition 209.
In California, on September 15th
the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to expand their affirmative
action policy on city contract allocation to include consideration of Arab
Americans and Native Americans. This action is in direct, conscious defiance
of Proposition 209, which is now California law. This opens a new legal
offensive against the legitimacy of Prop 209. The San Francisco Board of
Supervisors would not have taken that laudable step had it not been for the
pressure and support of the movement to defend affirmative action in
California.
Signs of a counteroffensive in defense
of affirmative action have appeared in the Federal Courts as well.
There are contradictory rulings in the
Boston Latin High School case (the Massachusetts District Court) and the
infamous Hopwood case (the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals). The Supreme
Court will be forced to address the contradictory Federal rulings. They will,
however, be no more able to resolve the issue than the Dred Scott
(1857) decision resolved the question of property in human flesh or
than the unanimous Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision actually
secured equality and integration in public schools. The position of the courts
on affirmative action opens up an opportunity for the movement to assert its
influence, but in the end, social struggle will decide.
Both the shift to a more outspoken
policy on the part of the liberal intellectual elite and the vacillations and
divisions in the position of the courts on affirmative action provide some
important openings for the movement.
Though by no means certain, an upset defeat for the
right wing's attack on affirmative action is now becoming a possibility. If we
can capitalize on these opportunities now, we can defeat the right wing's
attack and open up the prospect of substantial progressive change in American
society. 
Lessons from the Fight
Prospects & Balance Sheet of
the Struggle at the University of Michigan
The eyes of the nation
are on the fight at the University of Michigan. The lawsuits that seek to
eliminate affirmative action in admissions at the College of Literature,
Science and the Arts and the U of M Law School have placed a great
responsibility on the shoulders of students here. With that responsibility
comes a prodigious opportunity.
The movement to defend affirmative
action at U of M can make the most of these opportunities if we understand
four things: the limitations of our allies, the strength of our enemies, the
necessity for our movement to be united and energetic, and the potential of
this struggle to grow into a new, mass movement.
The Administration and the Movement
The convergence of the
position on affirmative action of the U of M administration and our movement
is not simple. The starting point of BAMN's struggle has necessarily been the
administration's defense of its affirmative action policies. But the
administration's position is conditioned by a series of factors which do not
and should not shape the movement's position. Their guiding aim is the stable
operation of an important training institution of the current system, whereas
the movement's guiding aim is achieving equality.
Mirroring the society as a whole, the
affirmative action policies at U of M and other educational institutions were
imposed on the administration by the popular will of students. The policies
that secured some measure of integration have been student policies
that administrations conceded.
At U of M, affirmative action policies
were won through mass, militant black student struggle. The first Black Action
Movement strike (BAM I) in March of 1970 shut down the campus until the
administration agreed to expand black enrollment to 10%-a promise the U of M
administration has not kept to this day. This action drew broad support
from students, workers and faculty. The Michigan Mandate, U of M's
undergraduate affirmative action policy, was the direct consequence of the BAM
III actions in 1987. Integration was forced on the U of M
administration by the movement.
On the one hand, farsighted
administrators are seeking to avoid a repetition of this type of volatile,
"disruptive" struggle, just as farsighted government policy-makers have
opposed the attack on affirmative action, not so much out of genuine
commitment to social equality, as out of fear of the instability that struggle
precipitates. On the other hand, the movement comprehends that progress is the
child of struggle-especially volatile, "disruptive" struggle.
The Administration, the Lawsuits & the Struggle
The administration is
focused on the legal threat to their admissions policies. As a result they
have taken up the superficial, inadequate "diversity" language of the 1978
Bakke Supreme Court decision. The administration's legal and public
political defense has, up until now, been timid and narrow; it has largely
focused on the insufficient claim that "diversity" enriches everyone's
educational experience. The U of M administration artificially circumscribes
the field of discussion so as to avoid questions of institutionalized racism
or sexism or an implied conclusion of far-reaching criticism of K-12 education
and American society in general.
To the movement, "diversity", while a
positive thing in itself, is tertiary-the real question is one of equality.
We refuse to be confined to the hollow, tokenist language of the Supreme
Court's capricious rulings. For us, broadening the debate to include public
education and other, wider social questions has been a central tactical aim;
broadening the debate is also a precondition for both an honest discussion
and for victory.
The U of M administration is under a
great deal of pressure to weaken its affirmative action policies and it has
bowed to that pressure in spite of the fact that it is defending its
admissions policy in court.
At the first sign of a legal threat to
affirmative action on the horizon, the U of M administration began to scale
back black freshman admissions. Rather than moving toward the 10% black
enrollment commitment that the U of M administration made to the Black Action
Movement in 1970, they are moving in the opposite direction. According to
The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, black freshman enrollment at U
of M dropped from 600 students in the fall of 1995 to 400 students in the fall
of 1997! Between the fall of 1997 and the fall of 1998 black freshman
enrollment dropped substantially (in fact, approximately 17%) according to the
Ann Arbor News.
The Coalition to Defend Affirmative
Action By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), along with 41 current and prospective
students of the U of M law school and two other pro-affirmative action
coalitions, United for Equality and Affirmative Action and Law Students for
Affirmative Action, has attempted to intervene as a defendant in the lawsuit
against the U of M law school's admissions policy.
While understanding the historical (and
the concrete, immediate) supremacy of mass social struggle in determining the
outcome of the fight, we have taken the question of the legal struggle with
the utmost seriousness. Our legal strategy has been aggressive.
We intend to introduce the substantive
questions of social inequality into to the courtroom. Our aim has been to
introduce the mass struggle into the legal proceedings at every moment
possible, including starting our first written legal material with the real
genesis of affirmative action at U of M: the BAM I strike.
Our intention is to picket and fill the
courtroom at every opportunity. We want action on all fronts. Our method is to
use the legal fight to build the mass struggle and, to the greatest extent
possible, to make the legal fight the voice of the mass struggle in the
courtroom.
The greater the activity and breadth of
the movement, the greater support and pressure there is for the U of M
administration to maintain the most rigorous legal defense possible. They are
on the same side of the fight over this issue right now, but they are a
vacillating and conciliatory ally that must not be relied upon. Their aims and
their methods put them on very different ground from the movement.
For this set of reasons, the movement
must maintain independence from the administration.
The Birth of a Movement
The struggle to defend
affirmative action at U of M last school year developed rapidly. Virtually
unprepared for the fight in September 1997, the U of M campus was turned into
one of the best-organized campuses by the spring of 1998.
The anti-affirmative action lawsuits
initiated by the so-called Center for Individual Rights (a right-wing, racist
Washington, DC-based law firm) served as a wake-up call to the student body by
turning U of M into a battleground. BAMN worked very hard to organize and
prepare the U of M campus for the defense of affirmative action. The first
affirmative action forum in September 1997 was attended by 50 people; five
months later, the February 24th
National Day of Action drew the participation of a thousand students, and
included a mass rally on the Diag, a several-hours-long sit-in in the
fishbowl, and the largest march on the U of M campus in a decade.
In the days and weeks leading up
to February 24th, student organizations with widely
varying political perspectives forged a working relationship. United for
Affirmative Action was formed to bring people together from the many
organizations that by January and February of 1998 were active in building the
movement. The breadth of the impact we've made thus far can largely be
attributed to the unity that was built through this process.
On March 18th, 600
students faced off with lead anti-affirmative action demagogue, Ward Connerly.
Not to be dissuaded by having nothing of consequence to say, Ward Connerly
trotted out some worn-out anecdotes for 10 minutes and was promptly crushed in
the Q & A period. Through the course of the evening, as students exposed the
weakness and hollowness of the right wing's arguments, the movement gained a
new level of self-confidence.
The role U of M played in the success of
the February 24th National Day of Action set the stage
for a second nationwide action of even greater scope. Students in New York and
New Jersey initiated the second National Day of Action on April 1st.
In response to BAMN's taking up and spreading this call, the April 1st
action drew the participation of over 70 campuses across the country, with
actions ranging from rallies, marches and strikes to forums, speakouts and
teach-ins. This was the first real nationally coordinated event of the
movement to defend affirmative action, and set a strong national precedent for
the movement.
Enormous progress has been made at U of
M and nationally on changing the terms of debate of affirmative action. One
year ago the opponents of affirmative action had successfully framed the
debate in terms designed to obscure the substance of the questions at hand.
One year ago, the mainstream "defenders" of affirmative action could hardly be
gotten to utter the term "affirmative action"! The substance of the
issue is now better expressed in the terms of debate. The fact that racism and
sexism are living factors in today's society has made part of the arduous
journey from daily life into the discussion. From the beginning of the fight,
BAMN has framed the issue as one of resegregation. The fact that the
resegregation of higher education is threatened is now quite widely
acknowledged.
What we need now at U of M and across
the country is for the various progressive student leaderships to form a
united front for defense. The historic importance of defending the gains of
the Civil Rights Movement provides a great impetus towards unity; with some
work, it should be enough to overcome the various leaderships' resistance to
struggle and the sectarianism that issues from that resistance. The alliance
of campus organizations that are fighting for the defense of affirmative
action must be fostered and developed.
Students who participated in the series
of actions in defense of affirmative action at U of M over the past year
should take pride in what has been accomplished so far: a movement has been
initiated, and new leaders are stepping forward to defend the gains secured
through great hardship by the generation of fighters that preceded us.
What happens on the U of M campus will
resonate throughout the country-what we do here will be very important.
If we are to win, the movement must take another important step forward.
February 24, 1998 Rally at University of Michigan
(Photo: Michigan Daily)
BAMN's
Fight to Admit the 800 at UC Berkeley
The impact of the
outlawing of affirmative action at UC Berkeley is now clear. In the first
post-Proposition 209 undergraduate admissions, black admissions for fall
semester 1998 plummeted 65%. Chicano and Native American admissions dropped
58% and 61%, respectively. Among those who were denied admission were 808
black, Chicano, Latino and Native American students who had at least a 4.0 GPA
and an average SAT score of 1170.
BAMN has recognized that fighting for
the admission of these 808 students is an important part of the strategy that
can defeat the attack on affirmative action.
Meaning of the Fight
The rejection of the 808 students is
incompatible with all notions of fairness and equality. They exemplify who and
what the fight over affirmative action is really about. The movement to defend
affirmative action must fight for their admission; winning this fight can play
an important role in the defense.
University admissions are a roundly
subjective process that reflect and perpetuate an array of discriminatory
practices. Affirmative action is the only effective pressure against an
admissions policy that reflects and even amplifies the racist and
elitist patterns in the society.
Racist inequality and segregation
throughout the society and within the University's admissions policy itself
combine to deny equal educational opportunities to blacks, Chicanos, and other
minorities, no matter how high their grades and test scores, no matter how
much mentoring, tutoring and outreach they receive. As soon as Proposition 209
had outlawed affirmative action, the pressure on the admissions process to
counter the racist segregation and inequality that pervade this society was
eliminated. The result has been an admissions process that more clearly
reflects, not merit, but privilege and inequality in society at large.
The right wing's arguments against
affirmative action-that it is a handout for "unqualified minorities", that it
is no longer necessary, etc.-are exposed as lies in the face of the rejection
of these 808 minority students from UC Berkeley this fall. Even according to
the biased and ill-conceived standards by which the University measures
applicants, these students outshine hundreds of white students who were
admitted. It is incontestable that these students are eminently qualified,
talented, and deserving of admission to the University.
BAMN's PROGRAM
- Defend Affirmative Action! No resegregation of higher
education!
- Stop the implementation of the racist, sexist
Proposition 209 in California.
- Force the University of California Regents to rescind
their vote to destroy Affirmative Action.
- 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.
- Stop the implementation of racist anti-immigrant
Proposition 187 in California.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
|
Backsliding and Evasion from the Administration
Making matters worse, in the same year
that UC Berkeley acquiesced to Proposition 209 and the Regents' decision, they
strengthened the elitist, racist bias of their admissions process by lifting
the 4.0 GPA cap.
Lifting the 4.0 GPA cap means allowing
honors and advanced placement classes to boost a student's grade above an "A"
average. Doing this enables applicants who attend wealthier, better equipped
high schools to be considered with GPAs as high as 5.0. This puts more
privileged students at an even greater advantage over against those
students who are denied the opportunity to compete for these higher
grades by the absence of course offerings in underfunded schools. The
University thereby makes it virtually impossible for many black and Latino
youth-as well as many working-class and poor white and Asian youth who attend
poorly funded high schools-to compete effectively with more privileged
applicants.
Berkeley continues to give preferences
to applicants who have connections to alumni, politicians, and big donors. Now
they give preferences to applicants from schools considered to be especially
"rigorous" as well-in other words, elite schools attended disproportionately
by white, wealthy students.
Over the past three years, since the
July 1995 Regents' decision, the UC administration concocted various schemes
to make the racist attack on affirmative action easier to swallow. They set up
special programs, financed through the Chancellor's special "discretionary
fund", to mentor and recruit minority high school students. A part of the
movement to defend affirmative action wrongly supported these half-step
measures, one of the central aims of which was to placate and quiet the
movement. BAMN consistently exposed the real nature of these programs. The
Fall 1998 admissions statistics have exposed once and for all the utter
inadequacy of these "alternative measures".
The UC Berkeley administration's only
response to the rejection of the 800 has been to say that numerous white and
Asian students with high scores were rejected as well. This "defense" of their
policy only sidesteps the issue of the racist inequality reflected in the
composition of the admitted class-that this year's freshman class has
historically low numbers of black, Chicano, and Native American students. The
question of qualified white and Asian students being denied admission is bound
up with the declining number of total admissions and the general "downsizing"
of educational opportunity, whereas the issue of the rejection of qualified
under-represented minorities is bound up specifically with racist inequality
and segregation in the society and in the UC admissions system.
The right wing wants white people, and
even Asian-Americans, to believe that they will benefit from an end to
affirmative action. But in actual fact, there was no significant change in the
numbers of whites and Asians admitted to UC Berkeley this year. The thousands
of white and Asian students who were denied admission can only gain by being
on the side of the struggle to defend affirmative action and fighting
alongside black and Latino/Chicano youth to make the universities more
accessible to everyone.
While blacks, Chicanos, Latinos and
Native Americans are 48% of the total number of 18-year-olds in
California-together they make up only 10.4% of the admitted class to the
University of California at Berkeley this fall! To tolerate this vast
disparity means to accept a system based on birthright and skin privilege.
We say that the educational institutions
must be accountable to the black, Chicano, Latino and Native American
communities. The institutions cannot be allowed to discriminate. This
is a basic condition for any society that strives toward equality and
democracy.
"Admit
the 800!" and the Direction of the Movement
BAMN has argued that struggling for the
admission of the 808 students is an especially effective way to build the
movement to defend affirmative action right now.
The campaign has already won some
important victories. Several black and Chicano high school students who were
initially denied admission to UC Berkeley have since been admitted, which
proves that the University does indeed have the option of admitting these
students if it so chooses. In defense of the students' right to admission,
many forces have been stirred to action. The Oakland teachers' union (Oakland
Education Association), the UC-Berkeley student government (ASUC), the Black
Student Union, and a number of Berkeley professors have taken up BAMN's demand
to "Admit the 800!"
If the University gave in to our demands
to admit the 800, the opponents of affirmative action would have two options
before them, both of which would be to our advantage. They could ignore it and
send the signal that the attack on affirmative action is unenforceable,
clearing the way for open defiance of 209 across the state. Or they could sue
the University and thus reopen the question of the legality of Proposition
209. Any ensuing legal battle would put the right wing in the very difficult
position of trying to justify the rejection of 808 undeniably deserving black,
Chicano, Latino and Native American students. Their racist agenda would be
even more thoroughly revealed, and an even larger cross section of California
would rally in defense of the 808's right to admission and in defense of
affirmative action.
The Admit the 800 campaign has
undertaken to secure the admission of these wholly qualified minority students
to UC Berkeley, but it has also done much more. The Admit the 800 campaign has
served as a rallying point for the effort to reverse the attack on affirmative
action in California.
Myth > Fact
Myth:
Affirmative action should be based on socioeconomic status, not race or sex.
Fact:
First, programs that offset the disadvantages to which poor people of all
races are subjected are not counterposed to race- and sex-based
affirmative action . This is not an argument against affirmative action-it
is an argument for expanding the scope of affirmative action.
For the racists who use the cover of the so-called
"merit" argument to advance this proposal is sheer hypocrisy. Poor people of
all races tend to do worse on the SAT and other standardized tests-so from the
"logic" of their demagogy, programs that give "preferences" to people of
"lower socioeconomic status" would mean that "unqualified poor people" are
taking places that "qualified rich people should have gotten".
This is a hypocritical attempt to conceal the elitist
nature of the argument against affirmative action with a dishonest claim to
speak in the interest of poor people of all races. The primary reason for the
inaccessibility of higher education to poor people is money. The primary
obstacle keeping poor white students specifically out of higher education is
not the small number of black and other minority students-it's money. If these
racist hypocrites meant what they say, they would be fighting to lower tuition
and expand grants and financial aid.
Second, racism and sexism are living factors in
today's society. Middle class and affluent black and other minority people
face racism and middle class and affluent women of all races face sexism.
"By
any means necessary."
The question of equality for
minorities and women is central to the character and direction of our society
as a whole. No government, no court, no authority, and no popular vote has the
right to relegate minorities and women to second-class citizenship-not before
the Civil War, not in the 1950's and 60's and not now.
We do not accept the "right" of
the University of California Regents, the Supreme Court, or any other small
group of wealthy political puppets to decide amongst themselves to resegregate
the public universities. We do not accept this "right" any more than we think
early white Americans had the "right" to enslave black people or colonize a
third of Mexico.
We will not bow down
before racist segregation and inequality-whether it is "popular" or not.
A ballot initiative in
Mississippi in 1963 would have endorsed Jim Crow. That would not have made us
any less determined to raze the Jim Crow structure to the ground.
California's Proposition
209, the anti-affirmative action ballot initiative which was passed with
intentionally deceptive language and the lowest voter turnout since the
1920's, is now law. We say this law must be defied, not only because it was
passed by a tiny electoral majority of disproportionately upper and middle
class white voters, but even more fundamentally because no popular (or
unpopular) mandate has the "right" to enforce racist segregation and
inequality.
We declare that we will
continue the struggle for equality when necessary even in spite of the law. We
will make use of the law when and where we can, but never subordinate our
struggle to it.
The means and methods
availed to us by the powers that be as "legitimate" are not sufficient for the
defense of affirmative action-they would not have been sufficient to take this
society forward at any of its most important turning points. Electoral efforts
and litigation alone will no more be able to successfully defend affirmative
action now than they would have been capable of winning affirmative action in
the first place.
We recognize the
historical fact that gains toward equality for minorities and women, as well
as historical progress generally, have come only as the consequence of mass
social struggle. Emancipation from slavery required the bloodiest war of this
nation's history. Winning voting rights, the right to organize unions,
desegregation, bilingual education, abortion rights, affirmative action-all
have required mass movements in the streets and the threat of social upheaval.
Malcolm X
|
The American legal and
political system is as plagued with inequality and favoritism for the
privileged as the society on which it rests. The existing government is a
structure in the service of the elite; wealth, and the political power that
flows from it, dominates American law and policy.
Injustices such as these
lead us, as they led Malcolm X, to the conclusion that democracy is "nothing
but disguised hypocrisy" and that we need "action on all fronts by whatever
means necessary."
The means that are
necessary now to defend affirmative action consist primarily of a new mass,
militant, integrated civil rights movement.
Winning is our aim; our methods
are determined by what will help the fight to defend affirmative action win.
There are those who would tie our hands in the face of this attack by limiting
our means and methods to those deemed "legitimate" by the powers that be. The
phrase "by any means necessary" says that we will not cede any means
that will help us secure victory in the struggle for equality.
View/print page in Adobe PDF format
