| NO, By Thomas Dye |
| YES, for now, By Neil Jummonville |
Do we still need affirmative action?
YES.
By Bill Jones, FSU professor of religion and director of Black Studies Program
Opponents of affirmative action erroneously affirm the demise of racial discrimination. Implicitly, they also claim that something akin to a level playing field is now in place.
I want to show that the evidence affirms not the demise of racial oppression but its disguise.
Let me focus on white America's history of uncorrected racial oppression in education.
Four periods are instructive: slavery, post-slavery, the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision and today's attack on affirmative action.
During slavery, it was illegal to teach blacks to read and write. Can anyone doubt that this created fundamental inequalities that gave whites an advantage that was sponsored and institutionalized by the government?
After slavery, we find the separate-but-equal doctrine that, at first glance, appears to correct discrimination.
But this policy instead perpetuated the defects, deficits and disadvantages created by the prior discrimination based on race.
The 1954 Supreme Court decree also perpetuated the DDDs - defects, deficits and disadvantages - by treating equal access as if it were equal opportunity. Think of the earlier separate-but-equal doctrine as a circle with a line down the middle.
Blacks are on one side, whites on the other. In 1954, the Supreme Court erased the line. In short, everyone has equal access to all parts of the circle, without regard to race.
But the Supreme Court did not mandate equal opportunity. That would have dealt a death blow to white supremacy.
To understand how equal opportunity differs from equal access, reflect on the picture of an Olympic track and runners. One track goes uphill, another downhill; one is strewn with rocks, another with glass; and the fifth is both level and free of debris.
No runner is excluded, and each can start at the same time and run the same distance.
But equal opportunity presupposes a level playing field.
Lyndon Johnson identified a second prerequisite for equal opportunity. Imagine a playing field that truly is level for everyone.
But pick one runner and strap his or her legs together. Make the athlete live that way for awhile. Then remove the strap at the hour of the race. Yes, the runner will have equal access, but no, the athlete will not have an equal opportunity to win.
Thus what at first glance appears to be the demise of discrimination - a level field for all - is simply its disguise. Dismantling a structure does not obliterate its effects. Nor does inclusion end discrimination, as the glass ceiling demonstrates.
It is childishly easy for the government to use policies and standards that no longer exclude on the basis of race but use instead one of the defects, deficits and disadvantages created by the prior discrimination.
That is clearly the agenda behind the attack on affirmative action. Tell me why a death blow to affirmative action would not kill black hope that non-violent tactics, rather than armed struggle, will ensure "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" for all God's children.