Argument for Affirmative
Action
Racism and sexism necessitate affirmative action.
Affirmative action, now under attack, must be defended by the emerging new
civil rights movement in the most rigorous way possible. Through this
struggle, the nation will either move backward toward increasing segregation,
inequality and discrimination or forward toward integration and equality for
black and other minority people and for women of all races. Students and youth
involved in this fight will have an opportunity to leave a positive mark on
history.
Race relations are now and have been determined by
struggle. They are fluid, not fixed; there have been both huge steps forward
and crushing steps backward. It is through struggle - courageous, tenacious
struggle - that we have come as far as we have. The immense popularity of
integration and the fight for equality among people of all races in our
society is a testament to the strength of the original Civil Rights Movement.
The progress we have achieved, while it in no way precludes momentous steps
backward, puts us in a very strong position to move the whole society forward
again; whether we achieve this depends on what we do now.
Deepening the discussion over affirmative action is
necessitated by the paramount importance of the fight and by the question’s
immediacy.
Social and Historical Context
To understand affirmative action and why defending it is
so fundamentally important, it must be put in context - both the historical
context in which it arose and the current social context that necessitates it.
To construct a strong and comprehensive defense of affirmative action requires
looking carefully and critically at American history and society.
Affirmative action, along with other social policies and
programs designed to remedy the segregation and inequality of American
society, arose out of the most recent formative transition period of the
nation. The civil rights struggles and urban rebellions of the 1960s forced a
partial, progressive reorganization of American social relations; affirmative
action is one component of that partial reorganization.
Affirmative action was codified into law by Lyndon
Johnson’s administration in September 1965, two months after the rebellion in
Watts, Los Angeles. The policy was widely recognized as necessary among ruling
circles because broad masses of black people, other minorities, and antiracist
white youth would no longer tolerate the pervasive racist inequality and
segregation - conditions that existed side by side with and in spite of the
belatedly achieved outlawing of formal legal segregation between the races.
The contradiction between the newly achieved steps in the
direction of equality before the law and the persisting stark social
inequality between black and white was the material context and the reason for
implementation of affirmative action. Mass struggle was the order of the day;
affirmative action along with other civil rights programs of the 1960s and
1970s was a concession to these mass struggles. At the University of Michigan,
affirmative action in admissions has been the result of an ongoing student
struggle to integrate the school - a struggle that has not yet been fully
realized.
For the first time in American history, as a result of
affirmative action and the other changes forced by the civil rights struggles,
significant numbers of black, Latina/o and Native American people, with
increasing numbers of other minorities, and working-class people and women of
all races, gained access to historically segregated, elitist universities,
jobs and other institutions. Before the Civil Rights Movement and affirmative
action, elite higher education overwhelmingly excluded anyone not wealthy,
white and male. As a result of the fight to integrate higher education, many
white people as well as people from Asian national or ethnic groups who never
would have had a chance to go to college now do have that opportunity.
The sharp contrast between the on-paper, formal legal
equality between the races and the stark segregation and inequality of actual
social life is the point of departure for affirmative action. (Virtually all
indices indicate social inequality between black and white, from the most
obvious areas, such as employment and quality of healthcare and education, to
less obvious areas, such as the pedestrian traffic-accident death rate. Black
first-time juvenile offenders are, according to a juvenile justice report
released in Spring 2000, six times more likely than white first-time juvenile
offenders to go to a lockup for similar offenses.)
Racism in Elementary and Secondary Education
From kindergarten through high school, racist inequality
and segregation permeate education in America. Majority black and Latino
schools receive less per-pupil funding, have fewer books, less academic,
sports and art equipment and facilities, have less diversity of course
options, more uncertified teachers, and larger class sizes. Latina/o K-12
students face more segregated conditions now than in the 1950s and 1960s.
Racism also weighs on black and other minority students
in majority white schools through, among other things, tracking (which
disproportionately pushes minority students into narrow vocational training),
unequal discipline, higher suspension rates, and lower teacher expectations.
Added to this, complex forms of prejudice challenge minority students in
majority white schools, forcing students who would otherwise spend their full
energy learning about the world and working out who they are to spend precious
energy negotiating the rock-strewn waters between self-effacement and angry
overreaction. Complicating this job further are both the variety of white
comments and gestures that express some form of prejudice and also the
uncertainty of calculating the proportions of ignorance and/or ill-will behind
these comments and gestures.
Experience hones social-assessment skills, enabling black
and other minority students to relate to people from a variety of different
backgrounds often at a higher level of understanding than their white peers.
These critical leadership skills are not adequately taken account of in
traditional college admissions procedures.
Racism compels the development of resolve and thoughtful
reflection. Character sown in the fields of racism harvests hard-won
strengths.
Adding responsibility to education, black, Latino/a and
other minority students in majority white schools are impelled to represent
their race in a way that society never asks of white students; this task can
be an honor and a source of pride but also, at times, a burden.
Thoroughgoing inequality remains; the profound, sometimes
plain, sometimes camouflaged, privileges given to white people and to men
remain. A perceptual blindspot is an important aspect of white privilege - a
kind of privilege not to see. White privilege is more profound and expressed
in more ways than white people are inclined to recognize. White students’
disproportionate reward from the crude mechanics of “legacy” admissions for
applicants with alumni relatives and the preference given to the children of
wealthy donors are obvious biases aiding white admissions. Another key element
of white advantage in college and university admissions is the discriminatory
impact of standardized admissions tests. Without affirmative action there is
no way to combat this multifaceted privilege.
Affirmative action in college admissions today serves to
offset the racism of our society generally and of the education system
specifically. Racism and sexism have an encumbering effect: they absorb mental
energy, undermine self-confidence, and influence academic performance.
Affirmative action recognizes the encumbering effect of racism and sexism on
student performance and seeks to countervail it - to reduce the effects of
inequality and discrimination. Any real element of integration in higher
education in today’s America is not possible without countervailing the
effects of racism by means of affirmative action.
The History of the Nation and Affirmative Action
The importance of affirmative action can also be
expressed in a related, broader way - in terms of the centrality of the
questions of racism and integration to American history. The fate of
affirmative action will determine the direction of the nation. The formation,
existence and necessity of affirmative action are inextricably bound up with
the defining peculiarities of the nation’s development.
America developed late and very rapidly among the now
dominant industrial nations. It spread a technologically advanced European
population eventually over the entire breadth of a vast, resource-rich
continent, driving out, marginalizing and massacring the indigenous peoples of
the Americas. A vast portion of what was to become the United States was
acquired through the colonial subjugation and annexation of a huge portion of
the nation of Mexico. The whole first period of American economic development
was based on the exceptionally brutal and profitable exploitation of black
slave labor. These features of America’s economic development gave rise to
sophisticated systems of economic, social, political and legal discrimination
and ideological self-justification.
With slavery crushed and national union secured by the
Civil War, a period of deep-going flux in the society and in race relations
began. Radical Reconstruction, second only to the Civil War as the most rapid
period of black progress in American history, laid the groundwork for a series
of massive, extremely militant integrated labor struggles. It was in response
to this threat of integrated workers’ revolution, with black workers and youth
playing an audacious role in the vanguard, that the American ruling class
began pressing in earnest for the system of Jim Crow segregation based on
maintaining a permanent inferior social position for black people and other
minorities. A central aim of the segregationist policy was to limit integrated
working-class struggle and to limit the leading role that black workers were
giving to that struggle.
 |
| Black high school youth march
defiantly through downtown Birmingham taunting police, May 7, 1963.
Young people played a decisive role in the Birmingham campaign that
ended Jim Crow segregation. |
Starting in the decades after the Civil War, the system
of Jim Crow divided and conquered the poor, blocked the organizing of trade
unions, held back economic development, and deformed all human relations in
the American South and much of the North as well, until Brown v. Board of
Education in 1954 signaled the beginning of the end of legal segregation.
Today’s American society is the result of the history and legacy of slavery
and segregation.
Understanding the history of the nation demands
comprehending these basic facts; they form the material foundation of our
nation. This history must be grasped in order to understand where the nation
stands now. Social inequality for black, Latino and Native American people
exists throughout American society as a result of this still potent and
ongoing history; for serious people asking the question “why?”, the answer
must begin with these material facts.
Integration and the Direction of the Nation
Integration is the historical litmus test of the nation.
Many Americans who cannot state in words exactly why this is nonetheless feel
it to be true very intensely. Even white people still mired in substantial
prejudice can often feel deep pride at the accomplishments of integration. The
reason for this seldom finds clear, public expression. It is that integration
and equality are inseparable and the degree to which they have been achieved
measures the real progress and the real democracy of the nation.
Racism and segregation define the parameters of democracy
and progress in America. The struggle against racism and for integration and
equality has been the central axis of the history of our nation. Steps forward
or backward on this front have always produced corresponding steps in the
mutually overlapping areas of basic democracy and progress. Many of the basic
democratic rights and civil liberties that we take for granted as a nation
were secured during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. A series of very
important gains for civil liberties were secured as a result of the forward
movement of the society during the last Civil Rights Movement, from expanded
rights to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure and suspects’ right to
legal counsel and to remain silent to the previously unrecognized free speech
rights of high school students.
Other individual freedoms, such as the right to birth
control and the right to abortion, were also advanced - and could only be won - in
the context of the civil rights struggle and the struggle of the mass movement
against the war in Vietnam.
The struggle between the mutually defining poles of
integration and segregation forms a decisive defining characteristic of our
national history. The historic importance of the fate of affirmative action
stems from the fact that it represents a very important step toward
integration in many institutions where without it there would be none.
In the struggle to defend affirmative action we will open
up historic opportunities - not only to defend the previous gains of civil
rights struggle - but to move our society forward toward integration and
equality, toward a more just social order where the talents and ingenuity of
all are developed to the fullest. Ó
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Myth > Fact
Myth: Affirmative action
hurts Asian Americans.
Fact: Asian Pacific Americans (APAs) benefit from affirmative action
programs because affirmative action has helped integrate this society and has
undercut the influence of racist and sexist discrimination. In fields of study
and work where APAs are underrepresented, affirmative action has been directly
beneficial.
Discrimination against APAs persists:
college-educated APAs on average earn 11% less than their white counterparts,
and high school-educated APAs earn 26% less than their white counterparts.
The defeat of affirmative action in
the University of California system led to a decrease in Filipino, Pacific
Islander, Chinese, Indian and Pakistani enrollment at UC Berkeley graduate
programs and also led to a dramatic increase in racist hate-crimes against
APAs in the city of Berkeley.
|
Exposing the Racist Lie
Behind
the Attack on Affirmative Action
The bigoted lie that differences in human biology have
produced our social order is at the base of the attack on affirmative action.
The fundamental, if often unspoken, logic of the attacks on the gains of the
Civil Rights Movement derives from the claims of the pseudoscientific theory
of biological determinism that says that the inequality that pervades our
society and structures the social order is “natural” and therefore both
immutable and just, and that no social policy either can or ought to remedy
this inequality.
The lie that genetics, rather than social relations, has
created the patterns of inequality in our society is not new - it has been
around since the authority of religion as a justification of the social order
was compromised and superseded by the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century leaps
in scientific knowledge. The Southern slaveholders justified the American
system of black slavery with lies about the permanence and biological
“naturalness” of that social order. After the Civil War, Jim Crow segregation
was also justified by racist, lying references to human biology. Both these
racist social systems were, in their day, justified as either a good thing
that should not be changed or as something biologically “natural” that social
policy could not change.
Today, opponents of affirmative action take the position
that the racist inequality and segregation of our society is something that
either cannot be changed or should not be changed - or both. They aim to
eliminate the only social policies that have been an effective counterweight
to the racism and sexism of our society - the only social policies that have
achieved some measure of integration in higher education and employment.
The Biological-Determinist Backdrop to the Debate
Theories parallel to the American slaveholders’ racist
slander of black people as inferior - theories of the biological inferiority of
minorities, women and working-class people, theories that should have been
decisively discarded as fake science a very long time ago - have swung back into
a kind of fashion. We saw this in the disgraceful media hype a few years ago
over the publication of The Bell Curve, essentially a crude
biological-determinist book dressing up old-fashioned racist notions with
scientific-looking charts and numbers.
Those whose profession involves justifying the social
order have called on biology - science now being the recognized source of
authoritative human knowledge - to explain and approve the social inequality of
our society. But the transition in the justification of the social order from
“The people at the top are closer to God” to “The people at the top are
biologically smarter” is not a transition that science (abused, but in the end
victorious) can sustain. The biological-determinist justification of the
social order that seeks explanation for the stratification of our society in
human genetics is as tenacious as the social order it sanctifies. It has been
destroyed by scientific criticism repeatedly, marred by fraud from its
inception, and yet it keeps reappearing. An unequal society must produce and
reproduce bigoted ideological self-justifications as long as it produces and
reproduces inequality.
 |
| May 4, 1963. Demonstrators face down
police watercannons in the struggle for integration and equality in
Birmingham. |
The underrepresentation of black, Latina/o, Native
American and certain Asian Pacific American ethnic groups in higher education
is a social product of racist inequality and discrimination, not the product
of biology. But, if a person is under the false impression that there is a
genetic component to the unequal average-academic-preparedness upon high
school graduation between the so-called races, it follows that they would
oppose affirmative action - “you can’t change biology.” If a person is under the
correct impression that there is no genetic element whatsoever to the
underrepresentation of minority students in higher education - that it is a
product of society and social history, not biology - then it follows quite
obviously that society both can and ought to correct its own wrong. A social
problem demands a policy solution.
Surprisingly, many opponents of affirmative action have
not thought this question through. We defenders of affirmative action should
put this question to the opponents bluntly. If the opponents of affirmative
action are to be defending a modernized version of the slaveholders’
falsification of human biology, they must be forced to do so openly.
Ignorance and Prejudice
A mixture of ignorance and prejudice forms the basis of
all opposition to affirmative action; the proportions of these two features
are then given varying meaning by their position on a scale of relative
cynicism which ranges from almost naive innocence to thoroughgoing,
mean-spirited racism. The majority of opponents of affirmative action,
however, are not deep or hard in their conviction; their stance is
characterized by absurdly superficial logic conditioned by prejudice.
We, the determined and proud defenders of affirmative
action, must approach this pronouncedly heterogeneous group of opponents by
matching the variations in their positions with effective variations in our
method, tone, and argument: from sharp, sarcastic and ridiculing to genuinely
respectful, empathetic and patient.
Most opponents of affirmative action do not go much
beyond asserting that affirmative action is “wrong” because it “discriminates”
by helping some minority applicants get into universities like the University
of Michigan or Harvard with standardized test scores lower than some white
students who were rejected. The key mechanism of the opponents’ logical trick
is to tear the question of college admissions out of its context - out of the
reality of life and racism in American society. Racism dictates that opponents
of affirmative action target minority students rather than white students
accepted with lower test scores than other white students who were rejected.
The logic runs like this: if a spot was stolen, it must have been a minority
who did the stealing, not the white son of a wealthy alumnus. (An increase in
the number of places in quality higher education is one necessary step to
avoid this false counterposition of interests that competition for scarce
resources fosters.)
One could more sensibly assert that students who claim to
have been “discriminated against” by affirmative action were, in fact, not
“discriminated against” - they were discriminated for somewhat less than usual.
To see through the lie of “reverse discrimination,” it is only necessary to
look at the question of college and university admissions in context and
honestly.
Racism, ‘Merit’ & Opposition to Affirmative Action
What gives the opponents’ arguments the appearance of
some strength is not the force of the arguments themselves but the prominence
of racism in American politics and psychology and the ways in which the
opposition to affirmative action provides an outlet to that racism.
In reality, the hard ideological opponents of affirmative
action are unable to recognize that their black, Latina/o and Native American
peers are their intellectual equals. The use of the term “less qualified” to
describe the beneficiaries of affirmative action is the ordinary way this
racism is expressed. The false assumption common to these opponents of
affirmative action that a university admissions system minus affirmative
action would measure “merit” and be “race-blind” lead them to racist
conclusions and justifications.
A university admissions system without affirmative action
would be no more “race-blind” than the society in which it operates. A
university admissions system weighs applicants’ access to quality academic
preparation. This in turn is a function of race, class and a mix of other,
varyingly important secondary factors.
Often unconsciously, opponents of affirmative action
ascribe to standardized tests both a degree of objectivity and a subject of
measurement far more broad and fundamental than the test providers themselves
ever claim. There are no standardized tests that measure “merit,” how
qualified a student is for higher education or an individual’s capacity for
intellectual endeavor or professional accomplishment. The standardized tests
on which current college and graduate admissions rely so heavily function
primarily as proxies for privilege that consistently understate the general
academic - not to mention general intellectual - capacity of black, Latina/o and
Native American students. Standardized test scores do not correlate well to
general academic or career performance for any racial group; they correlate
even less for black, Latina/o and Native American students.
The Bogus “Too Late” Argument
The causes of unequal average-academic preparedness upon
high school graduation between the so-called races are social - not genetic.
Some opponents of affirmative action will immediately and honestly concede
this point only to say that while the problem is social (i.e., racism),
college is too late to remedy the problem. In the context of the ongoing
attacks on the quality of education at all levels for poor people, and
therefore disproportionately black, Latina/o and Native American students, the
argument that affirmative action in college admissions is too late is really
just a cynical evasion, even if some opponents of affirmative action do not
realize it. To propose dismantling the gains we have made, supposedly because
we have not achieved enough (not eliminated enough racist inequality) is an
inconsistent and foolish argument. It is true that K-12 education must be
improved, integrated and made equal - but that fact is no argument for
resegregating higher education.
The unequal average-academic preparedness of high school
graduates is a profound indictment of the segregation, inequality and
inadequacy of our current K-12 education system, a system long-starved of the
financial resources necessary to adequately carry out its task; the new civil
rights movement must weigh in on this question.
The “It’s Been Too Long” Complaint
Some of the opponents of affirmative action who concede
that there is no biological component to social inequality also concede that
when affirmative action was first instituted it was necessary and legitimate.
They will then say, without thinking, “But it’s been over thirty years, that’s
too long.” This argument is destroyed by the simple question: specifically
when and by what criteria did you make the judgment that affirmative action
was no longer necessary?
If affirmative action was necessary at its inception,
then it is necessary now. 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; they are an
important step forward.
The “It’s not Constitutional” Rubbish
Some opponents of affirmative action say “affirmative
action is not Constitutional”. This is a stupid, circular argument. What they
actually mean to say is “American society should revise its interpretation of
the Constitution to attack the social gains of minorities and women.” The
attacks on affirmative action are not a matter of correcting some absentminded
40-year misinterpretation of the Constitution by the courts, university
administrations and political leaders of the United States. It was the social
struggles of the 1960s that compelled the powers-that-be to open opportunities
that discrimination and prejudice had closed for black, Latina/o and Native
American people and women of all races through a series of measures including
affirmative-action policies. Now, certain right-wing and racist forces are
attempting - with some initial success - to impose their redefinition of the
Constitution in the hoped-for absence of a new civil rights movement strong
enough to defend and extend the Constitutional gains begun with the US Supreme
Court’s rejection of the “separate but equal” principle in 1954 in Brown v.
Board of Education. The question is not one of some mystical, suprahistorical,
abstract Meaning of the Constitution; it is a question of which of these two
social forces - the reactionary racists or the progressive egalitarians - will
prevail.
The Question of Culture
The outward expressions of unequal social conditions are
often utilized as a justification for social policies that perpetuate those
same unequal social conditions. The argument that the cultures of black,
Latina/o and Native American people are the causes of social inequality
including underrepresentation in higher education is a prejudiced and circular
argument.
Culture is a social product. The cultures of different
communities cannot be extracted from the material condition of the society nor
from the rest of culture; the interaction of the many, diverse parts of
American culture has created the whole. The culture of each oppressed
community represents both the particular strengths gained from its special
history of solidarity and struggle against unequal and unfair conditions and,
necessarily, the disadvantages imposed by those same unequal and unfair
conditions. The negative cultural impact of racist inequality and segregation
can be changed - not by racist moral admonishment nor by the same moral
admonishment by conservative, accommodationist minority intellectuals - they can
be changed by the development of militant, integrated, mass struggle against
the segregated, unequal conditions that inevitably disadvantage and deform the
vibrant and rich cultures of black, Latina/o and Native American communities.
The Social Roots of Inequality Must be Exposed
The nature and conditions of segregation - if they are left
unexplained - will be used to reinforce racist stereotypes. The social roots of
the poor conditions in the black and Latina/o inner cities and barrios and on
Native American reservations must be exposed and criticized or they will be
used illogically and hypocritically by racists as the basis for an indictment.
The broken, oppressed condition of slaves was often used as a justification
for the slave system. Breaking this circular, dishonest, self-justifying logic
requires a critical look at the social situation which necessitates
affirmative action.
Social inequality generally, and the dramatic
underrepresentation of black, Latina/o and Native American students in higher
education specifically, demand an explanation. Two theories present
themselves: one false, and based on a spurious genetic-reductionist argument,
and one that corresponds to what actually exists and is based on an
understanding of social history, the realities of segregation and inequality
and the impact they have on human beings.
Miscellaneous Strawmen: ‘Stigma,’ ‘Reverse Racism,’ etc.
Opponents of affirmative action set up many strawmen
which we will deal with quickly now.
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