A reply to The Raven in re: Affirmative Action…

My highly esteemed fellow blogger The Raven left a comment at Rob Salkowitz’ Emphasis Added in regards to Affirmative Action.  The response I felt these comments deserved won’t fit in a comment; here they are; you really need to catch both Rob's post and Raven's comments to jump in.

I do take issue with the use of white immigrants versus non-white immigrants as an example.  Look at the way Japanese Americans were rounded up and put in camps, where German Americans were not.  That's because much of the issue of discrimination today is based on appearance, not on ethnicity.  The substantive majority of white peoples of Euro cultures assimilated into the US within a span of 50 to 70 years.  If one is Irish or Polish, one will not expect to be pulled over in traffic by reason of their ethnicity or race; in fact, one could reasonably aspire to the highest political office in America, as John Kennedy proved.

The recent study of names in relation to hiring is another example -- on appearance of a name alone people are called/not called for a job.  "Werner" would have a far better chance than "Rashad".  This issue of appearance persists 140 years after Emancipation, 61 years after Japanese Americans were first interred, 39 years after the Civil Rights Act – multiple generations have come and gone and we’re still not making progress.

While we’re at it, let’s also throw in that women still do not have the degree of equity they deserve, even though they’ve had the vote for 80+ years.  They’re grossly underrepresented in board rooms and in leadership roles (ex: percentage of Senators that are female does not in any way approximate the number of women voters).  Your arguments about numbers (i.e., number of black air traffic controllers) don’t stand up when we look at the opportunity versus outcome.  Women’s salaries are still struggling to catch up to men’s salaries in comparable roles – so much for buying power, so much for equitable political representation.

There are glass ceilings and bottlenecks that continue to exist because they are institutionalized – if a white woman from a privileged background with money and education can’t make it to the top, how the hell will a highly-talented black person make it without the legacy, money, and education?

What I find most exasperating is that there are no new solutions, only more rhetoric, and now under this Administration, backsliding on the progress that’s been made.

What do you propose to solve this problem?  Or is it not a problem because you can’t see it?  I recently heard on NPR a description of “racial capital” – that which people take for granted, are blind to, by virtue of their race/ethnicity. 

To demonstrate this concept, let’s assume a board room filled with 9 white men, seated.  None of them will expect anyone of the rest of them to get the coffee, by virtue of their racial (and gender) capital.  The first woman who walks into that room will be looked at and assessed carefully – is she going to get the coffee, the whiteboard, the erasers? Unless they know her and have extended her the same capital, they won’t wonder if she’s a board member FIRST before wondering if she’s bringing them coffee.  And they won’t see it, because of their racial capital.  They’re not offended because they’d never dream anyone would expect anything differently of them.

Extrapolate the example of the sole white woman.  Make her African-American.  Roll around in it for a while, do some role-playing.  She expects the negativity she gets, by virtue of being both female and non-white.

But the white male board members don’t expect ANY negativity of any kind.

When 20,000 or more white people of highly similar talents apply for 5,000 positions in a school using quotas, some 15,000 will be screened out.  Reduce the available slots by a 12% quota and now there’s 15,600 disappointed applicants.  But those 400 slots, that 12%, mean ALL of the positions available to ALL of the minority applicants, no matter how many.  (Let’s not get into achievement here – minorities expect to work damn hard to even apply and be considered; the minority applicants expect to have to work every bit as hard as their white counterparts, or their degrees are worthless.  They still have compete for jobs against the 4400 other students.)  But tell me why it is that the 15,600 white students simply don’t see themselves as needing to be better than anyone in their cadre for 4,400 slots?  They see the 600 slots as the issue and not the 4,400 slots that they didn’t make.  It may be the first time the racial capital they’ve taken for granted and counted on all their lives is simply not effective enough to grant them their wishes.  Even if all the slots were available and there were no set-asides, racial capital won’t work for 15,000 applicants.  I think it’s simply time to move on and apply to back-up schools; it’s what minority students have had to do forever, and that’s equitable.

The issue that spawned this week’s discussion is about a school which DOES NOT use quotas and set-asides, only a weighting system.  There very well may be far less than 12% of slots available for minority students because of this weighting.  Still, the 15,000+ white students may see themselves as victims of reverse discrimination, missing out on a smaller number of slots, than looking at themselves long and hard as not being competitive for more than 4,000 slots.  Unless the school was all white, I don’t think these applicants would be happy with rejection.  It’s time to see that rejection is a pretty normal occurrence when a commodity is scarce.  It’s also time to see that for most of 140 years and more, minorities in America have had to deal with rejection every day, in a very real way – and it doesn’t look good for tomorrow, either.

Until there really is equity in power, both in elected office and in buying power, when no one questions a leader’s ability because they’re not white and male (like the press questioning Carly Fiorina’s ability when she took the helm at HP), we will still need some methodology to resolve this real problem.  If you don’t like the solution in place, find another one that WILL work.

2:12:58 PM    comment []

Duh-bya…

After reading this article yesterday, I had to read it a second and third time.  It just makes me want to shake my head and shout, Duh!!!!

No leader of the largest economy, the largest democracy, the perceived leader of the so-called free world, can possibly be this stupid.

I must be living in a nightmare – pinch me, no, slap me, please, so I can wake up.

President Bush, evoking the memory of Martin Luther King Jr., proclaimed Monday "there is still work to do" to fulfill the assassinated civil rights leader's dream of equality in America.

WE have work to do on race, it’s implied.  No, Duh-bya, YOU have work to do on race.  WE have to stop voting for people like you, who don’t understand the issue of race in America, because your entitlements granted by virtue of being white and wealthy make you blind.

"It is fitting that we honor Martin Luther King in a church," Bush said, "because I believe, like you, that the power of his words, the clarity of his vision, the courage of his leadership, occurred because he put his faith in the Almighty."

Well, Duh!!!!  Mr. King certainly didn’t put his faith in men like you, Duh-bya!

Wonder if he’ll ever figure out why he only won 9% of the black vote in this country or if his handlers will ever clue in and break it to him. 

Duh!!!!

12:42:06 PM    comment []