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NEWS & LETTERS, MAY 2003
Black/Red View
Opportunities for mouthpieces can't cover up racial inequality
by John Alan Last January George W. Bush announced that he was
opposed to affirmative action. He said he arrived at that decision with the help
of his National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. However, according to the
March/April issue of CRISIS, the NAACP's magazine, Bush's decision to oppose
affirmative action was mainly developed by an influential "small clique of
right-wing Black lawyers, all Bush administration appointees." Shortly after Bush conferred with his conservative
African-American appointees, he announced that he had asked the Department of
Justice to file a friend of the court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court opposing
the University of Michigan affirmative action policies. President Bush is a
devious politician who knows that if you are going to play politics in America,
where race division is sharper than class division, it is very good to have
African Americans playing on your political team as a shield against charges of
racism. ROOTS OF A CONCEPT The concept of affirmative action has been around for a
long time. The term first appeared in a 1935 labor relations act prohibiting
racial discrimination in hiring. At that time the term "affirmative
action" only implied that a government agency would try to stop racial
discrimination. It was neither controversial nor effective. But with the birth
of the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s things changed radically. Nothing
could be only implied, race segregation and discrimination had to be uprooted. That change was indicated in the speech President Lyndon
Johnson gave at Howard University on June 4, 1965. He declared, "Our earth
is the home of revolution. In every corner of every continent men charged with
hope contend with ancient ways in the pursuit of justice. They reach for the
newest weapons to realize the oldest of dreams, that each may walk in freedom
and pride, stretching his talents, enjoying the fruits of the earth." Of course, Lyndon Johnson was not advocating a real
revolution to create a new kind of society without race and class antagonisms.
He was a capitalist politician caught in a tight political situation and had to
show African Americans that he was politically fighting racism. One of his
political solutions was affirmative action. He issued an executive order
establishing the office of Federal Contract Compliance which, along with the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, began requiring companies to set
numerical racial hiring goals. This was a small beginning for affirmative
action. LEVERAGING RACISM But it only set the stage for new struggles with racism.
The opponents of affirmative action began to vilify it by calling it
"reverse discrimination" that gave preference to African Americans,
harming whites while stigmatizing African Americans. Of course, this is totally
misleading. Almost 30 years ago, in 1974, Allan Bakke filed a
lawsuit against the University of California Medical School charging that the
institution's admissions policies were unconstitutional because the spaces
"set aside" for minorities prevented his admission. The Supreme Court
ruled that the University of California at Davis' admission policy was
unconstitutional. This ruling was in line with the growing opposition to
affirmative action after President Johnson launched it as a policy supported by
both Republicans and Democrats. Ronald Reagan, when he was governor of
California, started on his road to the White House by scuttling affirmative
action at the University of California. Later, Democrats like Bill Clinton and
Joseph Lieberman joined the chorus and announced that they also opposed
affirmative action because it was a "preferential policy based on race or
sex." Affirmative action remains only in small enclaves. Today, after three centuries of preferential treatment
for white Americans, a group of white students who wanted to enter the
University of Michigan are asking the Supreme Court to strike down affirmative
action there because they claim it violates the 14th Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution. The irony is that the 14th Amendment was originally added in 1868
to protect newly liberated African Americans from their former masters. Ten of
the 11 southern states rejected that amendment. As the political situation
changed, so has the Supreme Court's interpretation of the 14th Amendment. FINISH RECONSTRUCTION What African Americans have known for a long time, is
that the U.S. Constitution does not automatically dispense freedom and if they
don't fight for freedom they will live under a reign of racist terror. American
society, from its beginning, has been sharply divided between the white and
Black races. This division is good for capitalist politicians. Both Republicans and Democrats have outrageously
exploited this racial division and are using the issue of affirmative action to
drive a wedge between Black and white American youth by causing both races to
fight over limited spaces at a university. The current controversy over affirmative action only proves, if more proof is needed, that remedies seized by politicians cannot solve fundamental problems facing American society. When the African-American masses did have a say in setting up their own education, they did not just ask for a few African-American children to be placed in existing white schools. They created--during Reconstruction--a free public school system in the South, which was supposed to provide universal access to education for both Black and white youth. Reconstruction of the whole of society is still on the agenda. |
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