This has been bugging me since our second class meeting. We sat around and talked about diversity in the classroom (which was a major topic of the small group discussion I was a part of) and our group talked about diversity as encompassing not only different races of people but also people of different backgrounds, lifestyles, experiences, etc. It made me stop and go "hmmm."
Now let me stop and preface this. In a few weeks we will read an excerpt from a book titled "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Classroom" by Beverly Daniel Tatum. The article we are reading is titled "Defining Racism," which sets out to do just that. The article presents an alternative definition of racism that isn't grounded with hatred, as we typically see it. I thought it would be worthwhile for us to have a forum and discuss what we believe racism is and how it functions in our society. Because my view of racism is so closely aligned with Tatum, I will withhold my views and wait to see if other people comment.
Back to the class discussion. Earlier in the week of this class I had been thinking about the concept of reverse discrimination. I believe it is a racist concept, one that is invented by the white Culture of Power to suppress or hold back people of more color. Take for example affirmative action, which is often argued to be an example of reverse discrimination. While it is controversial on both sides of the fence, is it really discrimination against white people? Are white people as a whole really losing jobs, becoming unemployed because preference is given to people of more color? Is the scale of inequality tipping and causing white people to become the majority of the undereducated, under-supported, under-represented underclass? I would say that isn't the case, yet it is labeled by some whites as reverse discrimination. Why could that possibly be but to keep the system in status quo, to protect the rights and opportunity white people get based on the color of their skin. Protecting the racism of our society.
So in our small group discussion we re-defined diversity. Shouldn't be a problem, all we did was change a definition and people do that all the time. But is it not a way to change a definition so that we can claim we have something we don't? Does it not in some way perpetuate the system of white opportunity that true racial diversity would hypothetically counteract?
I'm getting a little verklempt. Talk amongst yourselves. I'll give you a topic. This definition of diversity is neither diverse nor racially sensitive. Discuss.
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Okay so yes I do realize that there is a lot of discrimination out there, but I also realize that the only people who are racist are the ones who don't fully understand and who were raised to think like their parents/grandparents/etc. I come from a very racist family, yet it has not made me a racist, I have grown up hearing and experiencing racism yet it has not made me into that type of person.
You say that affirmative action hasn't really hurt anyone but have you checked? Have you talked to some of the people who have not gotten a raise or who have lost jobs solely because the company was told they need more diversity. My mom was told that after taking four years of classes to get to a higher level at her job she would get the raise, but once she was there they told her that she couldnt have it and they gave it to another woman who had no education in the field and no experience, but because she was black they needed her. Affirmative action is not a good thing, I understand that a majority of minority students come from schools with less resources and worse environments but do you really want to know that the only reason you got accepted into a university was because your race?
Affirmative action is another piece of legislation that is meant to help advance some people, but in the process holds others back. In a nation with so many diverse groups of people, with different skill sets, ambitions and drives is it hard to create legislation that will benefit all people. I had a high school friend who once said, "I can't believe they rejected me so some dumb -racial slur- could play basketball."
That comment stopped me in my tracks. I understand the anxiety that comes along with not being accepted into the school of your choice, or not getting the promotion or job, but to blame the people that can benefit from Affirmative Action is totally out of line. I highly doubt the minority college students who get accepted to fill quota lobbied for it to be that way. Sure it is nice for them to have the opportunity, however, it is unfair to take anger out on the students who did not have a say. Furthermore, I think sometimes that it scares whites when the scale begins to even out. Minorities have never received equal treatment in this country and probably will not for years to come. So any legislation that attempts to balance the scale is a step in the right direction. Also, when whites are upset that "unqualified" minorities get jobs, acceptance letters, etc., we have to take a step back and investigate why those people are "unqualified"
Is it because the 100 million ethnic or racial minorities are all lazy, poor, unmotivated, or stupid? Or is it instead the policies white males enacted years ago to keep those minorities, well minor. When an "unqualified" individual takes the place of a white due to Affirmative Action, it is a step. Then they have something past minorities have not; a chance. Indeed, if you are willing and able to go out look for a job, apply to college, or even want to do so then you are not one of the stereotypes that have pegged people of color for hundreds of years. Plus, there are plenty of whites who do not take up the opportunities given to them and just complain that their jobs are being taken.
Affirmative Action may not be fair to all, but what is these days. It is a step in the right direction. It is a fragile piece of legislation that may need to be reworked in the future. Other plans will come up and the process will continue. Our nation is HUGE. Nothing is ever going to be fair. But what is fair is to give those who have never had an opportunity a starting point. Somewhere to place their feet and stand without the fear that there is someone to knock them right back down. It is not ideal, but it is something. And it is not fair for the people whose ancestors have suppressed the diversity of this country to start complaining that now the trend won't continue in their favor.
Here is my resolution to Affirmative Action. Have it apply to the poor in this country as well. Their are non-minorities not given the same opportunities as other minorities with Affirmative Action. For example, the poor schools with poor resources turn out students with learning deficits. Having an 'A' at there school may be equivalent to a 'C' or 'D' at a higher ranking college prep. high school. These students will not score as well on standardized tests and will have difficulty getting into schools. They need a leg up and an opportunity for success. They need the benefits of affirmative action as much as minorities.
I was told numerous times that I was promoted at my job based on the color of my skin. Nothing will ever make me angrier than that! If anyone blindly compared my resume to the other candidates, I had more experience and I was the only one with an A.S. degree. My placement scores for the job were higher as well. My co-workers doubted my ability and second-guessed me because I was African-American and I was probably chosen to fill a quota. I worked very hard to prove that I could do the job, and well. I had to prove my intelligence. I wish their was a questionnaire on an application that said do you want to use the Affirmative Action card today, but instead I leave the pick your nationality/race off my application. I want to be hired and promoted for my skills and level of education, but Affirmative Action needs to remain in place because their are companies that will avoid hiring anyone of 'color' or females unless they have a quota to fill. Its the sad truth of it all.
Thanks, Michael, for starting this provocative thread. I hope more people will join the conversation. I have a lot to say about affirmative action, but I'm going to withhold my comments until more people have had a chance to weigh in on the topic. I don't want my views to stifle a discussion that is really just getting started.
I would like to remind everyone, however, that Michael's original post wasn't just about affirmative action. He also asked two more general, but equally important, questions: How do you define racism? How do you think it functions (if at all, I guess I should add) in our society? Anyone care to tackle one or both of those?
Also, Michael, I'd like you to clarify what you meant when you said that your group during week 2 re-defined diversity "to claim we have something we don't." I think I know what you meant, but I'm not sure it was clear to everyone.
As for my definition of diversity, I do think it involves more than race. I think it's about human differences, and that can mean differences related to religion, economic level, gender, sexual orientation, age, ability/disability, language, etc. However, I think some people are content with minimizing the importance of race and culture in thinking about what constitutes a truly diverse group. For example, the idea that a classroom of thirty white students -- if a few are from different socioeconomic backgrounds or from different suburbs -- is "diverse." In a technical sense, of course, it is. But if true diversity is, as Henry Louis Gates has said, "a conversation among many voices," aren't there a chorus of voices missing from such a picture?
So much to say! Exciting!
First I would like to resolve Greg's question. He asked
'I'd like you to clarify what you meant when you said that your group during week 2 re-defined diversity "to claim we have something we don't."'
My argument is that the culture of power often changes meanings of words in order to benefit itself. I was suggesting an example of this. Our group redefined diversity as "encompassing not only different races of people but also people of different backgrounds, lifestyles, experiences, etc." (as per my first post). My argument, though I did make it subtlety, was that this distinction from a definition of diversity that focuses on race does so in order to downplay the importance of race in diversity. Thus enabling a group of people to call themselves diverse when they do not meet a racial definition of diversity. Why would someone want to appear diverse when they are not? I argue that it is an example of racism in our society. If the importance of race is downplayed in diversity it could be unethically argued that our society is past the need to examine ourselves in terms of inclusion/racial integration/equality.
To counter what Megan commented on "the only people who are racist are the ones who don't fully understand and who were raised to think like their parents/grandparents/etc." I would instead suggest that as the beneficiaries of a racist society white people are socially formed into racists. This does not extend itself to the level of hatred that is commonly associated with the term, but instead is a more insidious kind of racism. That of allowance. By continually benefiting from a racist culture and doing nothing to counter the white preference and privilege in our society we are perpetuating the racist system we live in. This is what I believe is the heart of being a racist person. In order for a white person to purge themselves from racism they must be actively pursuing a society in which racism and white privilege is exterminated.
A final comment. Affirmative Action can and does hurt individuals, this much I will agree to. I never once said it doesn't hurt anyone, and I would never make such an assertion. I did however question if Affirmative Action is in some way tipping the scales of white privilege away from white people, or if the Culture of Power was re-balancing itself and is controlled by black people or Latinos. I would not question the problems that it would cause for an individual, but with regards to groups of people, blacks and whites, the number of white people who are hurt by Affirmative Action is nowhere near the number of black people who are hurt by white privilege. If someone is always going to be hurt by not getting a job, why is it always a black person? And further, by what criteria do we say that the black people getting the jobs are unqualified?
Tis a very slippery slope methinks.
Does anyone else want to try to define racism? Racist?
Bueller? Bueller?
According to the Urban Dictionary, this is how racism is defined
1. politically correct racism,
the socially accepted attitude that it's OK to be racist as long as your skin doesn't have a hue of white.
Black Man: "get outta my way you stupid Cracker"
White man: "yes Mr. African American, I accept your politically correct racism and bigotry because of the hate my "ancestors" put upon you, and therefore will get out of your way."
I think definitions and interpretations like these are the tangible affects of what Affirmative Action actually does best. For a Politically Correct society to act completely fair, then do both sides of an arguement have to experience all the ill effects of the other, in order for the pedulum to swing back to a happy middle? There is a saying that a smart man learns from his mistakes but that a wise man learns from the mistakes of others. I see Affirmative Action as a wise man using a smart man to do his dirty work. I do not see any equality coming out of Affirmative Action. All I see is a few people of color getting a leg up here and there at the expense of providing enough fear and paranoia to keep the status quo of white privelege going for years to come. I also think that when others start seeing the ill effects of this system another infrastructure will aready be put in place to blind side us and keep us infighting for even more years to come. Time for a change is evident and there are some truly inspiring individuals who are working very hard for all people to have equal opportunity with equal access to our constitutional right of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I do not think Affirmative Action is hopeless I would just like to see it do what it touts, to find real peacekeeping solutions to problems of inequality throughout our country. I have included here a brief history about Affirmative Action taken from http://www.infoplease.com/spot/affirmative1.html
So you can refresh your memory if you choose.
Affirmative Action History
A History and Timeline of Affirmative Action
by Borgna Brunner
March 6, 1961 Executive Order 10925 makes the first mention of "affirmative action"…
July 2, 1964 Civil Rights Act signed by President Lyndon Johnson…
June 4, 1965 Johnson speech defining concept of affirmative action…
Sept. 24, 1965 Executive Order 11246 enforces affirmative action for the first time…
June 28, 1978 Regents of the University of California v. Blake…
July 2, 1980 Fullilove s. Klutznick…
May 19, 1986 Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education…
Feb. 25, 1987 United States v. Paradise…
Jan. 23, 1989 City of Richmond v. Croson…
July 19, 1995 White House guidelines on affirmative action…
March 18, 1996 Hopwood v. University of Texas Law School…
Nov. 3, 1997 Proposition 209 enacted in California…
June 23, 2003 The Supreme Court upholds the University of Michigan Law School's policy, ruling that race can be one of many factors considered…
[ Complete Timeline… ]
Blacks have a 375-year history on this continent: 245 involving slavery, 100 involving discrimination, and only 30 involving anything else.
— Historian Roger Wilkins
Perhaps the most important lesson I've learned is that there are no airtight, completely coherent, unassailable, and holistic answers on the question of affirmative action
— John Bunzel, president of San Jose State Univ.
In its tumultuous 45-year history, affirmative action has been both praised and pilloried as an answer to racial inequality. The term "affirmative action" was first introduced by President Kennedy in 1961 as a method of redressing discrimination that had persisted in spite of civil rights laws and constitutional guarantees. It was developed and enforced for the first time by President Johnson. "This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights," Johnson asserted. "We seek… not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result."
A Temporary Measure to Level the Playing Field
Focusing in particular on education and jobs, affirmative action policies required that active measures be taken to ensure that blacks and other minorities enjoyed the same opportunities for promotions, salary increases, career advancement, school admissions, scholarships, and financial aid that had been the nearly exclusive province of whites. From the outset, affirmative action was envisioned as a temporary remedy that would end once there was a "level playing field" for all Americans.
Bakke and Reverse Discrimination
By the late '70s, however, flaws in the policy began to show up amid its good intentions. Reverse discrimination became an issue, epitomized by the famous Bakke case in 1978. Allan Bakke, a white male, had been rejected two years in a row by a medical school that had accepted less qualified minority applicants-the school had a separate admissions policy for minorities and reserved 16 out of 100 places for minority students. The Supreme Court outlawed inflexible quota systems in affirmative action programs, which in this case had unfairly discriminated against a white applicant. In the same ruling, however, the Court upheld the legality of affirmative action per se.
A Zero-Sum Game for Conservatives
Fueled by "angry white men," a backlash against affirmative action began to mount. To conservatives, the system was a zero-sum game that opened the door for jobs, promotions, or education to minorities while it shut the door on whites. In a country that prized the values of self-reliance and pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps, conservatives resented the idea that some unqualified minorities were getting a free ride on the American system. "Preferential treatment" and "quotas" became expressions of contempt. Even more contentious was the accusation that some minorities enjoyed playing the role of professional victim. Why could some minorities who had also experienced terrible adversity and racism-Jews and Asians, in particular-manage to make the American way work for them without government handouts?
"Justice and Freedom for All" Still in Its Infancy
Liberals countered that "the land of opportunity" was a very different place for the European immigrants who landed on its shores than it was for those who arrived in the chains of slavery. As historian Roger Wilkins pointed out, "blacks have a 375-year history on this continent: 245 involving slavery, 100 involving legalized discrimination, and only 30 involving anything else."
Considering that Jim Crow laws and lynching existed well into the '60s, and that myriad subtler forms of racism in housing, employment, and education persisted well beyond the civil rights movement, conservatives impatient for blacks to "get over" the legacy of slavery needed to realize that slavery was just the beginning of racism in America. Liberals also pointed out that another popular conservative argument-that because of affirmative action, minorities were threatening the jobs of whites-belied the reality that white men were still the undisputed rulers of the roost when it came to salaries, positions, and prestige.
Black-and-White Polemics Turn Gray
The debate about affirmative action has also grown more murky and difficult as the public has come to appreciate its complexity. Many liberals, for example, can understand the injustice of affirmative action in a case like Wygant (1986): black employees kept their jobs while white employees with seniority were laid off. And many conservatives would be hard pressed to come up with a better alternative to the imposition of a strict quota system in Paradise (1987), in which the defiantly racist Alabama Department of Public Safety refused to promote any black above entry level even after a full 12 years of court orders demanded they did.
The Supreme Court: Wary of "Abstractions Going Wrong"
The Supreme Court justices have been divided in their opinions in affirmative action cases, partially because of opposing political ideologies but also because the issue is simply so complex. The Court has approached most of the cases in a piecemeal fashion, focusing on narrow aspects of policy rather than grappling with the whole.
Even in Bakke-the closest thing to a landmark affirmative action case-the Court was split 5-4, and the judges' various opinions were far more nuanced than most glosses of the case indicate. Sandra Day O'Connor, often characterized as the pivotal judge in such cases because she straddles conservative and liberal views about affirmative action, has been described by University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein as "nervous about rules and abstractions going wrong. She's very alert to the need for the Court to depend on the details of each case."
Landmark Ruling Buttresses Affirmative Action
But in a landmark 2003 case involving the University of Michigan's affirmative action policies-one of the most important rulings on the issue in twenty-five years-the Supreme Court decisively upheld the right of affirmative action in higher education. Two cases, first tried in federal courts in 2000 and 2001, were involved: the University of Michigan's undergraduate program (Gratz v. Bollinger) and its law school (Grutter v. Bollinger). The Supreme Court (5-4) upheld the University of Michigan Law School's policy, ruling that race can be one of many factors considered by colleges when selecting their students because it furthers "a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body." The Supreme Court, however, ruled (6-3) that the more formulaic approach of the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions program, which uses a point system that rate students and awards additional points to minorities, had to be modified. The undergraduate program, unlike the law school's, did not provide the "individualized consideration" of applicants deemed necessary in previous Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action.
In the Michigan cases, the Supreme Court ruled that although affirmative action was no longer justified as a way of redressing past oppression and injustice, it promoted a "compelling state interest" in diversity at all levels of society. A record number of "friend-of-court" briefs were filed in support of Michigan's affirmative action case by hundreds of organizations representing academia, business, labor unions, and the military, arguing the benefits of broad racial representation. As Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for the majority, "In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity."
Bibliography and Links
Historic Supreme Court Decisions
Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School
For summaries and the complete text of all Supreme Court decision referred to in the article.
"Re-rethinking Affirmative Action," Steven A. Holmes
The New York Times, April 5, 1998
"A Case on Race Puts Justice O'Connor in a Familiar Pivotal Role," Linda Greenhouse
The New York Times, August 4, 1997
"On Civil Rights, Clinton Steers a Bumpy Course," Steven A. Holmes
The New York Times, October 20, 1996
Information Please® Database, © 2007 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
I completely agree with what megan when she said "only people who are racist are the ones who don't fully understand..." However i don't think that she elaborated enough on the matter. If you have ever read a truly racist piece of literature or heard someone talking about their views on a specific matter 9 times out of 10 they know their stuff. They have historical dates and reasons and theories and philosophers and a whole lot of information to back up and support their ideas. The information however that they are lacking is that of they ignore. The other side of the spectrum, that if they were to allow someone to give them might change their thinking on a lot of matters. I have a belief that it is okay to hate or be bias against something if and only if you know both sides. If someone were to come up to me and preach about how terrible solar energy was (i am trying to use an example that isn't as connected to the one we are talking about here) and could give me reasons as to why someone may claim that it is good but counter every claim with a factual statement well then have your opinion and go about you merry life! but all too ofter that is not the case. Ignorance feeds fear and if we have not learned anything through the Bush administration fear is a very deadly thing that causes hatred to run wild.
As far as Affirmative Action is concerned, i really like what Sharli said about making it not about color but more about what kind of economic background you come from. I will say that when students regardless of color are accepted to a school with lower GPA's or test scores, what are we saying to them? "we understand that because you are a person of color you need a us to lower our standards?" That is racism i believe. Although I had A.A. work in my favor my senior year of high school. I applied to Howard University with all intention of them saying that i could not get in based on my test scores not being as high as they would like. However my acceptance letter came with a promise of scholarships, and the only reason was because i was white. So in a crazy way the role was reversed. Because of other circumstances, obviously, i did not go to Howard but what if i did? Affirmative Action is something that i don't really believe in for school systems but in the work place it is unfortunately necessary sometimes. it is pathetic to think that we are giving jobs to less qualified people. However until we are living in a world where skin type no longer runs our lives here we are.
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