Affirmative action

Another issue is cropping up again in front of the Supreme Court. Affirmative action, a remedy seeking to balance out centuries of discrimination, is once again being contested.  I don't know whether affirmative action will suffer a reverse or whether it will be strengthened.  And frankly, I don't know what the answer should be.

I grew up in the age of affirmative action.  I attended a school in the early '70's that had kids bused in from the inner city for a couple of years.  Back then I certainly didn't know what to make of it.  I wasn't scarred by the experience.  Honestly, I don't remember much about the period other than all of a sudden one day, there were black kids attending our school.

Throughout my academic career, I learned next to minority students, more and more with each level I progressed.  I can't say that I noticed a huge difference between them and me anymore than I noticed a difference between me and other white students.  When I taught, I saw more differences, especially in grammar.

I cannot, however, attribute the differences in those students to any one cause.  It could have been socio-economic, but it could have been indolence as well.  There's also some backlash in the black community that by talking properly, one is talking like whitey, which is frowned upon in some sectors.

In all my time in academia, I only heard one white person complain about the effects affirmative action had on him, and he was speculating.  If I was ever affected by it, I never knew it.  I don't think it played a role in how I was educated and what opportunities I had, but I'll never know.  And I don't really care.

But there are legitimate questions as to the continued viability of affirmative action.  George Will, a prescient thinker who bases his opinion on reason and facts more than most people, has descried efforts to prolong the civil rights movement as the Forever Selma project.  Agitators like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would have people believe the Jim Crow continues to reign in this country.

To be sure, there are pockets of abject discrimination.  Yet courts are far better equipped and more resolute in prosecuting claims of discrimination than they were before the 1960's.  No longer is it likely that a claim of discrimination will be thrown out simply because it was brought by a minority.  For some people, however, any verdict that is not in favor of the plaintiff is evidence of racism.

Affirmative action has a stigmatizing effect.  There are whites who will look askance at minorities and wonder if it was merit or law that put them in their positions.  But there are troubling questions that persist irrespective of whites' attitudes about minorities and affirmative action:

If a wealthy black celebrity's child is in competition for a slot with a middle class white person's child, what are the hindrances or hurdles that the black's child has had to overcome?

How do we apportion the time for affirmative action to particular groups?  That is, how long are blacks to receive preferential treatment?  When does affirmative action end for Latinos?  How about Native Americans?

Do we apply affirmative action to all groups who have suffered discrimination irrespective of race? The Irish were discriminated against at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries.  Should they get a period of affirmative action to redress the wrongs they suffered?

The people who suffered the discrimination are no longer with us, but their descendants are.  Those that discriminated are no longer with us either, but to balance the scales, the descendants, who in many cases have never done anything wrong, are now asked to bear the burden of their ancestors' wrongs.  Are the proverbial sins of the fathers being visited upon their children, and is that fair?

Asians suffered discrimination, equal to that suffered by blacks, but bore their grievances more quietly.  At the same time, Asians excel better than any other minority group.  How are we to redress the wrongs they suffered?

How do we decide when the imbalances have been corrected?  What empirical standard should we apply?

Blacks excel in sports; they comprise nearly eighty percent of the NBA.  Should there be an adjustment to provide opportunities for other groups and mandate that so many positions be held open for other minorities in the NBA?

There are infinitely more questions that can be asked and not easily answered.  I don't know whether the Court is going to strike down affirmative action; if I had to make a guess, I'd say it won't.

Either way, the debate isn't going to end with the Court's latest pronouncement.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles