After a week of watching the full frontal race-carding of Republican senators in the Sotomayor confirmation hearings, I have decided that it is not the election of Barack Obama that the history books will mark as the end of the U.S. racial divisions as we know it. Instead, it will be these few weeks of entitled, privileged white men deciding to document and promote an "All-Race, All-the-Time" agenda to shut down this nomination the only way they know how. And it is not working. And their heads are exploding. Not just because the fish are swimming around the tried-and-true race bait...but perhaps because they truly cannot fathom that this Latina actually is wise. And capable. Or, worse, WISER. And MORE capable.
My friend has coined the term "Sotomayor Dissonance Syndrome," or SDS, for this inability of the privileged to accept an historical "other" as a peer or superior. It's nothing new to us (or many of you). But it is remarkably, refreshingly new to watch it play out in full public view, beyond the privacy of the locker room, dining hall or board room. And imagine how good it will feel to finally see this tactic lose. AGAIN. In the same 12-month period. Let's skip the jump and talk about it.
I got a link today on a list-serv to what I consider to be an ill-advised, ill-informed opinions piece from the New York Times about affirmative action and Sotomayor (Race in 2028). It flashed me back to my college stairwells, having endless arguments with students about policies they knew nothing about but were sure were secretly helping me and hurting their friends. Some of you know right now what I am talking about.
Before I go into more detail about affirmative action and why today's NYT piece was so anachronistic and ridiculous and uninformed in my view...let me add one more remarkable and refreshing thing. For all of you rich or not rich, wildly UNentitled white men that I have dialogued with and read and followed since social media made it possible to know that you exist - this diary is not about you. In fact, it is in part a hat tip to you. Because mountains have moved in reading your words and your stories and your sense of self as part of the progressive community in the past two years plus of Obama-locity. Who knew you were out there in such droves? Some of you know right now who and what I am talking about. (Tipping the rest of my hat to BlackKos, Jack and Jill Politics and Derrick at RENWL for more mountain moving!)
So now, I'd like to delve a bit into affirmative action, hoping to offer some foundation for reasoned discussion or private thought. This is not a legal opinion, just more information than many people I have encountered know about the affirmative action approach.
WHAT IS AFFIRMATIVE ACTION?
It's actually a catch-all phrase. It concerns federal, state and local government, and other institutional efforts, to redress past discrimination and/or effect increased or equal opportunities for historically underrepresented groups (women, people of color, the disabled, etc.). So it is not actually a single defined program; instead, it is an approach to hiring, admissions, promotions, etc. that institutions define for themselves, unless they are under the mandates of a federal consent decree.
It's important to note that affirmative action does not currently assist gay Americans and civil rights laws do not yet legally protect them from discrimination.
WHAT IS AN EXAMPLE OF AN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION STATEMENT?
The Federal language for contractors is:
"For federal contractors and subcontractors, affirmative action must be taken by covered employers to recruit and advance qualified minorities, women, persons with disabilities, and covered veterans. Affirmative actions include training programs, outreach efforts, and other positive steps. These procedures should be incorporated into the company's written personnel policies. Employers with written affirmative action programs must implement them, keep them on file and update them annually."
WHAT ABOUT QUOTAS?
UC Regents v Bakke in '78 brought numerical targets to the forefront, and they (somewhat) lost. At its simplest, the decision meant that race could not be used to keep someone out of the pool, but it could be used as a plus in consideration. Apart from government programs and consent decrees, it would be difficult to add quotas to any affirmative action plan you devised.
DOES EVERYBODY, INCLUDING PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS AND EMPLOYERS, HAVE TO HAVE AN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION POLICY?
No. But some choose to do so to further diversity in the institution, which they feel is an innate good or profitable approach to business.
WHY AM I PAYING FOR WHAT HAPPENED TO SOMEONE IN THE PAST?
Two thoughts. First, although President Kennedy first coined the term, and President Nixon oversaw the implementation of many of the formal policies (strict goals, time tables), it was Lyndon Johnson who said 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 say, 'you are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe that you have been completely fair."
(Howard University, 1965).
Second, it is important to realize that the inequities that affirmative action programs hope to address are not phantoms from America's distant past. Housing, employment and other institutionalized discrimination are still serious issues that are widespread in America even WITH affirmative action programs and anti-discrimination laws in place.
We have seen this year the gap between the ideal of an unregulated market and the reality of a financial sector infested with self-serving, extreme greed, even at the cost of institutional destruction. In the same way, we can, I hope, recognize the gap between the ideal of equal opportunity for all and the reality of red-lining, résumé coding, glass ceilings, cement basements and more.
WHY ISN'T THERE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION FOR WHITE PEOPLE?
It also can help to acknowledge that being white or male or straight or fully physically able has its own institutionalized affirmative action benefits that date back for centuries and have "paid forward" to today. That can be so hard for people to hear because it sounds like "you didn't earn what you have." But there is no such subtext in what I am writing. Instead, let me offer an example.
I once got the message through to an ex who was a very accomplished and privileged white man who fought intensely against any notion that he could possibly have benefited from being rich, white, handsome, tall, straight and a stockbroker. He insisted that he had worked hard to earn everything he had gotten completely on his own. Of course he worked hard - I witnessed it. But I offered this as a counter. "What if I told you that, as a woman, there was no way that my good looks ever helped me move ahead in life?" He told me I'd be delusional to believe that. And then he got it.
It's not that I didn't, that I don't, work incredibly hard and around the clock. It's that there were probably a lot of unspoken moments of doors physically and figuratively opening for me because I was a tall, attractive woman. And many doors shut because I was a woman, a Black one, too. Neither takes away from my accomplishments. But it makes me very aware that we must make sure that opportunities are not completely unregulated and left up to the kindness and charity and equanimity of humankind. We may only be able to legislate that for government-related contracts and jobs and housing. But do it we must in order to live up to what our country stands for.
WAS AFFIRMATIVE ACTION ACTUALLY AT PLAY - OR WAS IT JUST IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU TO IMAGINE A FEMALE-GAY-ETHNIC-DISABLED PERSON OBJECTIVELY BEING MORE QUALIFIED THAN A STRAIGHT-RICH-WHITE MALE?
I was 16 years old when I entered Stanford, a straight-A class valedictorian, world traveler, newspaper editor, athlete, multilingual, modeling, international choir singing, gymkhana-riding, national speaker. I cannot tell you how many times someone tearfully accused me in an argument that I had kept their friend from getting into Stanford. It was not possible for them to believe I could actually have earned my way in (and it never occurred to them to check if Stanford even had an affirmative action policy). Some people want to use such suspicions of incompetence as an argument against affirmative action, as if the existence of a policy that seeks a level playing field somehow made those students racists instead of the teachings of their families and personal environments.
My response to such arguments is not, of course, to dismantle any and all affirmative action programs in order to save the unjustified accusers the pangs of psychological dissonance (see snarky graphic below). Instead, I feel such accusations warrant an insistence that the accusers actually learn what affirmative action is before trying to use it to invalidate an accomplished woman or person of color or other "other" (thank you, Prof. Sylvia Winter!). And perhaps to look at their own lives, the extra steps up they may have received, as well as their own personal biases and cultural deficits that arise when someone they have been trained to think is innately "less than" actually exceeds their expectations...and personal abilities.
The solution is not to get rid of affirmative action, in its many forms, but to educate our population to believe that everyone actually is capable of competence and, yes, brilliance - and to challenge the personal beliefs that naggingly say...it's just not possible for a Latina to be as wise as a white man, much less wiser, much less Supreme Court material! I believe that is what we are witnessing today, and that collective cultural disbelief is what informs much of the ongoing pushback against affirmative action.
Perhaps a ***wildly snarky graphic*** would be useful for all sides of this experience:
**WILD SNARK ALERT! WILD SNARK ON THE LOOSE! DO NOT GET OUT OF YOUR JEEPS!**
Now back to the diary.
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION COST ME SOMETHING THAT WAS MY RIGHT!
There will be many stories from people who have, or know of people who have, lost out on opportunities due to some policy or program not being in their favor. That sometimes reads as people believing that all white candidates are qualified and all affirmative action candidates, or really, all non-white-male candidates (even in the absence of affirmative action at play) are unqualified. But affirmative action at its essence simply means you have to actually consider every qualified candidate instead of just the ones you know or like or prefer to interview or hire. And perhaps such an experience represents the real "leveling of the playing field." That is the world the rest of us live in, where being female or disabled or gay or ethnic or overweight or foreign, or just "different" than the presumed default costs you opportunities. So at least in that, we are all being treated equally. Sigh.
At the same time, it is important to reflect on when you have been given unearned opportunities that balance out or dramatically outweigh that one setback. Go way back to when your essay was posted as an example for the class and you were moved to the gifted program, while another student's essay was challenged as assuredly being plagiarized and they were suspended instead. Or when you were encouraged in math, science or computers when another student was held from taking advanced classes because boys or white students had priority. Or when you had a dozen different athletic programs to choose from when half of the students at school had neither sports, nor uniforms nor coaches to expand their prowess and Olympic dreams. When you got to buy a home in a certain neighborhood so your children had access to better schools while other families were steered away, priced out or deceptively mortgaged out of letting their children grow up there. Or when you had legacy admission to a school because a parent went there when someone else's parent could not legally have attended to create that legacy because back then, the school did not admit women or people of color (overtly or covertly). I am saying a parent, not grandparent or older, because those admissions laws and restrictions did not change until the '60s. These issues are not slavery from centuries past. They are still happening today. And it is still affecting us today. And it will still have repercussions tomorrow. Step on a butterfly...
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to any comments and dialogue. I am hopeful they will be researched, reasoned and constructive because, honestly, I aged out of knee-jerk, entitled rants against affirmative action a couple decades back when it didn't hurt my buns so much to sit on a cold, hard dorm stairwell for a couple of hours. If the rants come through, the SDS alerts may be raised in response...or maybe check the alert levels yourself first and say, wait - what is really bothering me here? Is it possible that the way I've always been told the world is...is not how it is at all? And that's actually...okay?
Years after our earlier arguments, my ex was traveling in South America. He entered a post office with a long line and was waiting in the heat. Then a supervisor hurried out and waved him to the front of the line. He was mortified. He did not want to go ahead of everybody. But the supervisor was embarrassed, the patrons were resentful, so he just mailed his stuff and got out. That would have registered differently for him before we had our many "fireside chats" about privilege. I wonder how much difference we could/will make with our discussion here today?