As Hurricane Katrina's ripped through the Gulf Coast, the storm tore away the shrouds of this country's racial views of poverty and neglect. This comes as no surprise since it took both
Bush Bush and
Congress four days to come back from their vacation to arrange for an emergency aid bill. These are the same people who rushed back to work late one night so they could save the life of
Terry Schiavo - who couldn't even feel pain - because life to them is so precious, yet, they couldn't manage to rush back to D.C. four days earlier to save the dying in New Orleans, who unlike Schiavo can indeed feel their own pain. What was the difference, people in New Orleans, unlike Schiavo are mostly
mostly poor and mostly black, and most importantly, provide little political capital.
As they returned, Congress was only able to muster up a little more than $10 billion to the relief effort - a slap in the face to the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. This is nothing more than a mere fraction of what our nation has spent to bomb and occupy Iraq, and mere pennies compared to what this nation willingly committed to bail out the
Savings and Loan industry; when it was looted by rich white guys.
As a nation, we continue to be non-committal to providing basic human rights; such as quality education for each and every child, universal high-quality health care, and a decent place to live for all people.
It is this non-commitment to our basic human rights that we now see in the web of deceit by anti-affirmative action activists who have been fighting effectively in the courts of law and public opinion. Their goal, reversing much of what constitutes the corpus of civil rights law and ending the practices that have opened the doors of opportunity to women and to people of color.
President Lyndon Johnson explained it best: "You do not take a person, who for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say 'you are free to compete with all the others,' and still believe that you have been completely fair."
Conservatives argue that affirmative action stigmatizes minorities and women, the sole beneficiaries of its generosity. They note - based on their deep concern for the psychological well-being of their dark-skinned brothers and sisters - that the elimination of such programs that impact college admissions, jobs, or government contracts would be in the best interest of those persons they were meant to help.
Recently, President George Bush decided to show this compassionate side - which Laura Bush claims he has - by allowing the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) to grant exemptions from Affirmative Action Program (AAP) requirements for new federal contracts handling Hurricane relief. The argument, however, was augmented by the concern over time delaying the aid that is desperately needed to aid victims of both hurricanes. Less government regulations, a speedier relief action.
This action does nothing more but add fuel an already racially-based fire. To set aside all equal employment practices that are currently in place and that guarantee an equal chance for the piece of the pie serves only to continue the racial divide, as this policy applies to new contracts. Without the safeguards that are provided by these very important equal employment practices, those communities that are in more need of access to opportunities would be excluded all together.
Putting it simply, this reverse discrimination as most conservatives call it has yet to put a dent in labor inequities. According to the Urban Institute, the labor market continues to be dominated by white males, with significant gaps in employment and earnings between minorities and white men. The thought that affirmative action stigmatizes women and minorities and therefore should be done away with just to protect the mental health of those it is to benefit is deceitful and outright racist. Additionally, whatever stigma could conceivably be attached with affirmative action surely dissipates once an individual has the opportunity to prove oneself on the job or in school. Indeed, persons of color only too well know that they will likely have to work twice as hard to get half as far or be considered half as good as whites. At least with affirmative action they get the chance to try and demonstrate their capabilities.
Further proof that the right-wing fringe continues on a course that will dismantle the progress made through affirmative action policies is the current confirmation of yet another Bush loyalist, John Roberts, to the Supreme Court as the next Chief Justice. Roberts is a conservative who penned some pretty scathing opinions about affirmative action and voting rights during the 1980s as Reagan's political appointee in the administration.
Last month, President Bush nominated Roberts to fill the Supreme Court seat of retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Behind the scenes, a deal was made that kept the Senate's Republican majority from voting into effect its "nuclear option," which would have blocked Democrats from filibustering any of Bush's judicial nominations. The deal, which was struck by seven moderate Democrats and seven moderate Republicans, would allow Democrats to filibuster a judicial nominee only in "extraordinary circumstances." Several key members of this group say that this exception can be triggered only when serious questions about a nominee's ethics or character arise.
Roberts' confirmation went without a hitch, by a vote of 78 to 22. There are plenty of warnings that women and minorities will pay for the deal that Democrats were all too willing to accept now that Roberts is seated on the court. This country would be bearable if senators stopped pampering their egos and started caring about the people who voted them into office. Democratic Senators should have stood by the Democratic Party's motto, "the Party of the People," and paid more attention to things that placed a flood light on the nominee's beliefs towards minorities and women, such as the offensive (bordering on bigoted) memos Roberts' wrote while working as a special assistant in the Reagan administration's Justice Department. In 1981, Roberts very clearly expressed his view of affirmative action: "affirmative action... [requires] the recruiting of inadequately prepared candidates." In a 1985 memo, Roberts insultingly expressed his views on gender in a memo: "Some might question whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good, but I suppose that is for the judges to decide." And if karma is a boomerang, conservative Eagle Forum president Phyllis Schlafly will be eating her words about Roberts when she is sent back to the kitchen: "[Roberts is] a young bachelor and hadn't seen a whole lot of life at that point."
Roberts' views on the Voting Rights Act are just as alarming. The Roberts court could conceivably bring back the Jim Crow laws by turning back the Voting Rights Act that currently makes it illegal to violate voting rules and discrimination.
And in 1983, as President Reagan was about to support pending legislation in Congress that would legalize millions of illegal immigrants living in the United States, most of them from Mexico, Roberts' only comments centered on the political gain that was to be had by granting amnesty, or at least making sure that it was printed in a Hispanic publication called Spanish Today. His real thoughts on Latinos, however, comes through in the way in which Roberts phrased his statement to White House Counsel Fred Fielding: "I think this audience would be pleased that we are trying to grant legal status to their illegal amigos." Illegal amigos, huh? Que bien, no? We not only look the same, we are all related as well.
But the saddest truth is that those who are fighting to defeat affirmative action are winning a war of perception, mainly achieved through the media with their target, ordinary citizens. Their success has been largely due to the utilization of buzz words such as "quotas," "preferential treatment," and "lowering standards" that have helped them define the affirmative action debate and playing on the fears of the uninformed. But one thing is for sure about conservatives, they are nothing if not cunning in the art of double-talk. Conservatives insist that people who favor affirmative action have abandoned the "race- and gender-neutral" vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.
However, those of us on the left are also at fault. We have yet to strongly establish the continuing need for affirmative action and have failed to get the public response generated by a vigorous opposition. Affirmative action casts a wider net to include a larger number of qualified applicants to compete and participate. It allows women and people of color access to higher education, jobs, and business opportunities which have been historically out of their reach. Affirmative action is a system of goals and programs that strengthens our national economy. It helps to ensure that the public sector is reflective of the populations it serves. Quotas and preferential treatment have never been a part of any affirmative action equation. Why is this argument no longer viable or a justification for outrage?
Could it be that anti-affirmative action foes wave the banner of wanting to achieve a color blind society by exploiting conservative minorities who have benefited from affirmative action such as Collin Powell, Alberto Gonzales, Condaleeza Rice, and Karen Hughes to support their cause? Worse yet, anti-affirmative action advocates have even recruited minority spin doctors and pundits to convince others that "discrimination is a thing of the past."
Black conservatives like Larry Elder, Shelby Steele, Walter Williams, Ken Hamblin AKA "The Black Avenger," Thomas Sowell, and, of course, Clarence Thomas are always willing to say the things that most white conservative men love to hear: that blacks are the sources of their own problems in life. Black cultural pathology and bad behavior, according to these black conservatives, explain everything from black poverty rates to black incarceration rates. Conservative women like Nancy Pfotenhauer, president of Independent Women's Forum are quick to argue that women are playing victim to discrimination.
The truth is that discrimination is still alive and well in this country. In spite of the opportunities afforded minorities and women, the ones benefiting in the work place, on university campuses, and from public contracts continue to be white males. On a national level, women represent 51.2% of the adult population, African Americans represent 12.4%, and Hispanics represent 9.5%. Yet in the labor market:
- 69% of all doctors are white men, 22% are white women, 4% are Black, and only 5% are Hispanic;
- 70% of all lawyers are white men, 24% are white women, 3% are Black, and 3% are Hispanic;
- 80% of all architects are white men, 16% are white women, 1% are Black, and 1% are Hispanic; and
- 85% of all engineers are white men, 8% are White women, 4% are Black, and 3% are Hispanic.
In Texas alone 81% of all CEOs, executives, and business managers are white, 11% are Hispanic, and 6% are Black, while Asians and other minorities make up only 2%. So where is the
reverse discrimination that all the "
angry white men" are talking about? Do any of these figures truly point to an era of equality and equity among whites and minority groups? Has parity been reached since the introduction of Affirmative Action? Sadly, no. Why? It is pundits like
Bill O'Reilly who continue to instill bigoted stereotypes by calling them "thugs" who made a conscious decision to rebuff evacuation orders because "they weren't going to get turned off from their source [drug-dealers]."
The facts are clear; women and minorities still have a long way to go to reach equality in the work place. Affirmative Action is not only the right thing to do but it is the only fair thing to do. Just as our forefathers fought to achieve civil rights, so must we progressives fight to retain those rights, now more than ever with John (Mr. Illegal Amigo) Roberts as Chief Justice.
Crossposted from ePluribus Media