Reverse Racism Concept Invalid
In early June, the U.S. Supreme Court struck several major blows against the very fragile and deteriorating legal structure upon which Affirmative Action programs rest. These decisions include: the Wards Cove Packing Co. case in which the court placed the burden of proof on victims of discrimination to prove that such discrimination was unwarranted; the case of the United Steel Workers v. Weber which decreed that whites who feel they have been affected by the settlement of a discrimination case can petition for the entire case to be reopened; and, finally, the Richmond v. Croson case which placed severe constraints on the setting of Affirmative Action goals for awarding public contracts to minority contractors.
These new court decisions are only the most recent in a series of systematic assaults upon the minimal gains won by oppressed racial minorities and women since the Reagan/Bush regime came to power in 1980. They should, nonetheless, be viewed with appropriate outrage and alarm as an insult and an affront to those who struggled so hard and sacrificed so much in the civil rights and women's liberation movements of the past three decades.
The gradual erosion of Affirmative Action over the past 10 years sadly suggests that the ideals of racial and sexual equality and justice in America have proven elusive once again. These decisions also demonstrate, with painful clarity, the limits of many reform victories and suggest the need for a revitalized and sustained progressive movement, without which we are seemingly doomed to re-enact the same battles, generation after generation, losing and regaining ground, but only inching forward by miniscule increments.
The arguments against Affirmative Action also point to some fundamental misunderstandings about the very specific nature and origins of racism in America. In other words, racism cannot be extracted from its social and historical context and still be fully or correctly understood. The history of racism in America is, like it or not, a one-way street. It originated with policies, laws and systematic practices that became, over time, engrained in our culture, imprinted in our consciousness, and manifest in individual attitudes as well as corporate and government policy. White supremacy has been the ideological centerpiece of American racism and has simultaneously sought to justify the inferiority of Blacks and other people of color. It is this very specific history of racism that must be considered in evaluating the necessity of aggressive policies to combat it and to lessen the disparity and inequity it has produced.
The concrete reality of racism in this country has never been a simple matter of whites hating Blacks and Blacks hating whites, or any other type of generic intolerance of differences. Racism has not hurt whites directly, just as sexism has not hurt men directly. Both racism and sexism are specific social phenomena rooted in a specific cultural and historical experience. Defining racism as two sides of the same coin misses the point. Blacks, for example, did not enslave whites, conquer and colonize Europe, disenfranchise white minorities in Africa, steal the land of native peoples or legalize racial segregation. These were policies initiated by powerful white elites to subjugate millions of people of color in this country and around the globe.
From its inception, racism has been rooted in the myth of white supremacy. And white supremacist ideology, the so-called "white man's burden" to civilize the savages, has served as convenient justification for a wide range of economic and political practices. These practices have extended from the imperial domination of much of the Third World, to the theft of Indian land and African bodies in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Not only do those who argue against Affirmative Action fail to define racism specifically, but the hollow solution most often advanced as an alternative is colorblindness. Such a myopic proposition is ill-timed at best, given the fact that America has systematically enforced, legally sanctioned and culturally legitimized racism for most of its 200-year history. Native American genocide, African slavery and other forms of discrimination against Asians and Latinos have been the hallmarks of America's very color-conscious policies on race. It is only now, when historically oppressed and subjugated groups are demanding remedy, parity and retribution, that America wants to uphold the virtuous principle of colorblindness.
An often-cited illustration of the injustice inherent in such a proposition is a scenario in which person A challenges person B to a race, but beforehand pulls out a gun, shoots B in both legs, ties B's hands in back, and places B face down 10 yards behind the starting line. Then person A puts the gun away, apologizes for his/her actions and calls for a "fair" race to begin.
Racism is so rampant in our society and has left us all with such a legacy that aggressive measures must be taken to arrest it. If a car is speeding down a hill, the passive response of taking one's foot off the accelerator will not halt that car; only firm application of the brake will do that. An end to racism will not come out of the air. Racism did not come out of the air either; it was very deliberately and systematically contrived. And thus dismantling it will have to be a very conscious, aggressive and systematic process.
Moreover, we cannot, as history has demonstrated, rely on courts or politicians to lead this fight. Affirmative Action and other small but significant buttresses against the tidal wave of racism were hard-won victories. They were achieved by militant mass movements of progressive forces, led by people of color. If we want a kinder, gentler and more just nation, we know we cannot rely on the likes of George Bush, Ronald Reagan or Reagan 's Supreme Court cronies to realize it for us. Again, we need to invest our energies in the rebuilding of a progressive mass movement which can reverse the right-wing climate in this country, launch a protracted struggle for real justice, and eventually make some of the fundamental and lasting changes so many have fought so long to realize.