It's worth actually watching Obama responding to questions at UNITY and his specific assessment of the future of Affirmative Action before you decide what you think. As you guys know, I've always been kind of luke-warm to AA. I think that pro-AA folks have a point that there's going to be AA no matter what (legacies for instance), and the real question is what kind. That said, the prospect of an upper middle class black or Latino kid getting preference over a poor white kid from Virginia should rankle all of us. I basically agree with Obama's assessment--that AA isn't really the future, that AA does nothing for masses of black kids dropping out of school, that decent health-care and better schools will be the best AA, in that they will help whites and disproportionately help blacks, but finally that the time is not yet now to phase them out.
Chris Bodenner, who is officially my new favorite sparring partner, cites the The Corner's reaction to Obama's speech:
Obama's criticism is wrongheaded for at least three reasons: (1) it is obviously preferential policies that are divisive, not their abolition; (2) the “big problem” of helping people from disadvantaged backgrounds can be addressed by helping people of all colors who are disadvantaged, rather than crudely and unfairly using race as a proxy for disadvantage; and (3) Obama himself has recognized as much, ... acknowledging the divisiveness of preferential treatment (in his Philadelphia speech), and the fact that his own daughters, for starters, come from privileged backgrounds and thus are “probably” not deserving of preferential treatment.
...
This is a solid, important commitment by [McCain] to the principle of E pluribus unum, and Americans across the political spectrum, but especially conservatives, should applaud him. As for Barack Obama: This is a critical moment in his campaign. Is he a candidate of change who will transcend race and bring us all together, rejecting divisive policies he knows in his heart are outdated and irrelevant—or just another Democratic pol who lacks the courage to stand up to powerful but aging interests in his own party, which remain hopelessly infatuated with identity politics and insist on perpetuating a set of policies that have always been unfair and divisive and are now outmoded to boot?
And Lashawn Barber:
The whole point of the civil rights movement was to bar the government from preferring one citizen over another based on factors like race. But our government continues this odious practice, and I can think of nothing more unfair or divisive, no matter which race or sex benefits from the discrimination. A government with the power to discriminate in favor of blacks has the power to discriminate against blacks.
Here is something that grates on my nerves as much as the term “African American”: People use the terms “affirmative action” and “race preferences” interchangeably, but they are not even synonymous. Affirmative action was a policy designed to provide qualified blacks with opportunities to compete with others for jobs. The “cast a wider” imagery described the process. The goal was to include more qualified blacks into the hiring pool. Affirmative action as conceived quickly became what’s known today as race preferences. Under this standard, blacks are not expected to compete against whites, only against one another. Public colleges and universities are notorious for unofficial separate admissions tracks, for example. It is truly tasteless.
A quick aside--I believe in looking at wealth, instead of race, in terms of AA. Having said that, I admire Obama's refusal to use AA as some sort of foil to reach white voters. There's a basic logic problem here, as well as one of perspective. Barber's proceeds from a reductionist argument--that the Civil Rights movement was about barring "the government from preferring one citizen over another based on factors like race." In fact, the CRM had much a loftier goal--full citizenship for African-Americans. The problem wasn't merely race-based discrimination (i.e. you can't go here because of your color) but an entire system that worked to cripple black communities. Indeed when you consider the period spanning post-Reconstruction to the CRM, simply describing that era as a time when whites preferred "one citizen over another based on factors like race" is Orwellian.
For blacks, Jim Crow America meant, not simply white people not wanting to be around them, it meant a concerted effort to restrict the creation of wealth. Redlining wasn't just offering a racial preference to whites (indeed it actually punished whites for living around black people) it was a government-conceived and sponsored effort to devalue the homes of black people, thus draining what little wealth there was in the communities. When post-slavery Southern and Midwestern blacks--following Booker T's conservative line--created wealth by working the land, and building their own businesses, white terrorists violently undermined their efforts at every turn while the government refused to do its most basic job--protecting its citizens. The spectacle of lynching is horrifying--but its actual effects, dissuading black people from competing with whites--were (are) devastating. Indeed couple that with housing discrimination, job discrimination, the defunding of segregated schools and you see a comprehensive effort to render black people a servile class.
Affirmative Action is fundamentally different. I suspect even it's critics would agree, that AA simply does not have the power--nor does it seek--to destroy the very structures (the right to vote, the right to hold a job, to own a home, to go to a decent school) essential for any community to progress. Let's be clear--that doesn't mean that Affirmative Action is perfect or even the best solution. I'm convinced that there are better ways to deal with the race-gap, and I have problems with pro-AAers who think that fate of black America hangs on this one issue.
But the conservative who principally believes that race-based AA is wrong, who is interested in honest dialogue and getting folks--especially black folks--to see his argument, needs to recognize two barriers. The first is that the very same outlets that now raise the banner of King, or talk about fairness under the law, are the very same outlets that backed segregation and thought nothing of King while he was alive, who thought nothing of Mandela when he was in jail. The second thing concerns intellectual honesty. Any attempt to argue that AA is somehow equivalent of what black people when through pre-CRM will be met--rightfully--with raucous laughter.
A conservative critique needs to say that AA is wrong not because it looks like Jim Crow, but because its merits are wanting. Then the critique needs to say what we should be doing instead. Black folks would listen to that. I think many of us--especially in the middle class--agree with Barack, there's no way our kids should be treated like they just stepped off the plantation, while all whites are treated like Boston Brahmin.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I also thought those comments (Obama's that is) were really good and interesting. The point that fair universal health care and good schools would disproportionately help blacks (in relation to the situation now) while, overall, helping more blacks than Affirmative Action at the college level is a great one, and it's exciting to see a kind of post-DLC commitment (rhetorically, at least) to real public services.
I think an under-told part of recent political history was how, recognizing this, the racial backlash played out as a distaste for government services.
Some very quick thoughts off the top of my head (they probably need some polishing, but I don't have the time):
I've written this in response to your many other posts on "affirmative action" --an all-purpose term which encompasses many kinds of processes, programs, and timetables directed at different aspects (e.g., education or employment) of American social circumstance: A class-based affirmative action and race-based affirmative action are two different processes with little overlap. Therefore, the outcome for one will be very much different from the outcome of the other.
Class-based "affirmative action" will disproportionately benefit whites, given that there are more poor and working-class whites in the US. I have no problems with this approach, but keep in mind that it will not accomplish what you think it might accomplish. Chances are good that blacks will still be under-represented within this selected pool.
Also, who says that non-poor and non-working-class blacks aren't discriminated against? They tend to be better educated and better prepared than the poor and working class, yet they tend to be lumped with them the way all blacks are usually lumped together, for good and for ill. What if race-based "affirmative action" is necessary for the maintenance of a secure black-middle-class? Would you change your mind then? If it weren't for some kind of race-based "affirmative action," we would not see the numbers of blacks we now see in relatively secure government positions (local, state, and federal). These workers are to a large extent the avant-garde of the black-middle-class. Without them, the state of black America would be a little more dire.
But if you pull away the equivalence with Jim Crow, why would any conservative politician even care about the issue? The Right likes to talk about AA because it's an issue that lets them go to white people, tell them they're victims, and imply that any advance for a minority group comes at a white person's expense. An honest, purely policy-based discussion about AA that acknowledged the continuing impacts of Jim Crow would not be nearly as politically useful.
I think race and class should be considered. AS BMW stated, middle class black kids do face discrimination. Trust, being one of the few black kids in a school and having teachers assume failure isn't exactly the greatest environment for intellectual growth. I shutter when it seems people confuse racism with classicism or think middle class black people don't face discrimination when Affirmative Action is honestly meant for them, those who were ready but were getting screwed in the process. Affirmative Action doesn't help poor blacks but that's a strawman argument, it was never meant to lift people from poverty but to give those who could the chance to move on when those opportunities were blocked. Lets be clear about what it was meant to do, so we can accurately note its failures and its successes. But, honestly, this debate is moot. White women benefit from affirmative action more than any other minority so why this isn't brought up or why people make this a black/white issue is just so people who benefit from the program can act as if they don't and those who hear "benefits blacks" and are instantly against it can play their roles.
I think this is such a difficult discussion. But I also think we talk about it in ways that make it easy to throw out affirmative action without figuring out how we protect opportunities for black folks that we JUST got.
We have to understand that life is not equal in this country. Preferential treatment only makes sense if everyone is treated the same. If black folks aren't normally in the pool of applicants, but the government merely comes in and says "hey you should try to get some black folks into the mix" that isn't preferential treatment. Why? Because black people weren't on equal footing to begin with.
Sure, jobs are scarce. College is scarce. But its a numbers game that white folks don't like. When it was just white elite men competing for a few slots, no one was cryin about poor white folks. But now you gotta compete with a bigger pool and that pool has been widened by active recruitment of people you don't really like you wanna start trippin. Please! This is not about fairness, even if it sounds like it.
Also - white folks get advantages by virtue of being white. Simply true. That there are poor white people who are relatively disadvantaged doesn't mean that there shouldn't be some form of assurance that black folks are taken seriously when applying for a job or admission to school.
Quotas are one thing. But recruitment and retention programs -- what we like to call actual affirmative action programs -- are another. Having this discussion in the context of preferential treatment is disingenuous and wrongheaded.
I agree that affirmative action as presently constituted doesnt' really work the way it should. But throwing it out so you can further entrench whiteness as privilege isn't really fair just because there is a mistaken belief that the 64 Act made everything equal.
In the absence of federal protections, there will be discrimination against black people that poor whites will never experience. Simply true. Shit, there is discrimination either way.
I don't think its an either/or proposition. You can have affirmative action for poor whites ALSO. But why you gotta get rid of affirmative action for women and black folks first? No one asks that question.
Let's be clear - this is not about poor whites. It's about using them as a way to rollback some of the only avenues for protection that black people have against discrimination.
Further, comparing the plight of poor whites to the lives of all black folks in America is comparing apples and oranges. They are simply not comparable. Sure, rich blacks live relatively better than poor whites, but affirmative action isn't really about class. Again, you want a class-dimension...add it. But a trade? Nah homie!
Of course part of the reason the debate is held so poorly is the pro-affirmative action advocates weak language, but let's stop pretending like protecting opportunity for black people is the same as depriving black people of opportunity. Fixing the problems of race in the country by ignoring race is absurd on its face.
I like Barber's call to delineate the concepts of "affirmative action" and "racial preference".
Informal affirmative action means questioning the dependence upon lazy decision patterns based on personal comfort and prejudice. Such decision patterns go far beyond race. Questioning these patterns is a noble effort in obtaining a greater self-awareness that practically benefits everyone involved.
Unfortunately formal Affirmative Action eventually boils down to a preference engine, pure and simple. The bureaucracy demands this outcome. A preference engine is neither noble nor does it benefit everyone involved. It can be argued whether the downside is less than the upside, for whatever the goal, but it cannot be honestly argued that there isn't a significant price to pay.
I saw Howard Dean tell a story about affirmative action that I find helpful. He said his chief of staff for a long time was a woman, and that he noticed at some point that ALL his staff were starting to be women. He asked the chief of staff about this and she said "I just can't find any who are qualified" with a kind of wink to acknowledge she got caught.
Affirmative action in people's minds seems to have come to mean "giving unqualified black people something over better qualified white people." But I see it more as an institutional effort to be a check on the kind of "preferences" that operate all the time where people in power give a boost to their connections and people who they see as being like them. Maybe we don't need it forever, but how about until people of color and women are appropriately represented in positions to be the hirers and deciders?
Our site takes a more supportive view on affirmative action. But yours is certainly defensible. Thanks for adding your voice to the blogging universe.
Anyone who grew up with the deck stacked against them should get a bit of a preference in things like college admissions, hiring, etc., not (just) because of fairness, but because this is somebody with a fire under their butt who will likely do well.
Conservatives obviously buy this, because they fetishize "self-made" men. The decent human beings among them probably object to AA because it tries to mandate codify this process. Some may even legitimately believe that racism is no longer a problem, but I've run across enough racists (in positions of power and not) as a middle-class, midwestern, white guy that I don't really believe other middle-class, midwestern, white guys when they say they haven't.
Of course, even if racism were completely dead, we'd still have the lingering effects (hard to borrow money from your parents to buy a house when they don't have any), but that's a separate issue.
As others have said better than I, though, I think mostly the AA debate is heavily influenced by the white racists the Repubs have come to depend upon for votes, cash, and general thuggery.
"A conservative critique needs to say that AA is wrong not because it looks like Jim Crow, but because its merits are wanting. Then the critique needs to say what we should be doing instead. Black folks would listen to that. I think many of us--especially in the middle class--agree with Barack, there's no way our kids should be treated like they just stepped off the plantation, while all whites are treated like Boston Brahmin."
To TaNehisi and all other AA supporters:
Can we PLEASE stop looking at AA as strictly a policy that applies to blacks??? I understand why blacks evaluate it in that context, but let me assure you that AA is a policy businesses and universities use to hire and accept any person who is either a) not Caucasian and/or b) not a dude.
That's the problem some (in my view, most) people have with it. Granted, it may be a policy that disproportionally affects blacks (and now Hispanics). But it's an excuse for adopting a hiring and admission policy to discriminate against white guys. It is merit-less and outdated, particularly in an age when the Hispanic population in the US is exponentially increasing, it applies to them as well, and they have ZERO claim to racial injustices at the levels blacks and Native Americans historically experienced. What about Asians? Did you know that AA applies to them as well? On average, they are the best students in the country. They certainly don't need the help. How does AA apply to Pacific Islanders, Central and Southern Americans, Africans, Indians, etc....???
If you are naive enough to think that institutions don't use AA as an excuse to promote "diversity," good luck to you in life. I hate AA as a policy, though it has never affected me and probably never will. It's a complete affront to personal liberty and freedom-of-choice, but I guess the left doesn't care much about those things anymore.
Quick anecdote: I had a friend in high school who had a 4.0 GPA, got a 1600 on his SATs, was an active athlete, scholar, and communitarian, the top chemistry student in my state, and was one of the top science students in the region. He applied to MIT and got rejected. There was litterally NOTHING more he could do to be a better student or person and the smartest kid I ever knew. However, he was a white male. I will go to my grave believing that MIT would have accepted him without question had he been some other non-Caucasian race and/or a girl. It was their loss. I bet this happens all over the country every year.
Let's stop it with class-based or race-based quota machines and hire/accept people base on their merit. (Yes that means no more legacies.)
I object to your strenuous use of question marks and caps, but in all seriousness:
"Can we PLEASE stop looking at AA as strictly a policy that applies to blacks??? "
Point taken. Also if AA disproportionately benefits anyone, it's white women.
"Let's stop it with class-based or race-based quota machines and hire/accept people base on their merit. (Yes that means no more legacies.)"
-mattc
Too bad this won't happen. Meritocracy? When was that ever the way things were? Never. Wealth has long been protected and passed down. Children inherit this wealth through more than legacy. They attain it through support from mom and dad that allow them to train in athletics, to attend better schools, to have role models of responsible wealth creation.
As someone who graduated as the only black in his department from the second oldest university in our country I can assure you that white male dominance has only really been challenged by better qualified white women.
But beyond that how do you suggest we deal with structural inequality that was bred by the government and people of the US? Do your deny the past? You've apparently read an entire post that seeks to expand the debate but ignore it to jump on a soap box.
My grandparents and their parents were terrorized into not stepping out of line. People were killed, hung, and crosses burned. That's one generation ago. I guess it is easy to forget such horrible realities when you haven't suffered. Try some empathy. Because your "assurances" don't line up with the America I've lived in and see before me now;.
@ Chaz
Clearly you didn't read my first sentence, which asked AA supporters to please step out from behind the curtain that protects AA as a "blacks only" policy. That was/is an attempt to expand the debate, and not a soapbox speech.
As for the meritocracy, it has its faults no doubt, but you say it doesn't exist while at the same time we are on the cusp of watching the first black person become President of this country. So how did he get there? We indeed have a meritocracy and it works most of the time. There are far too many examples of Americans who did not come from wealth (yours truly), went to generic public schools (again, me), worked their way up the ladder and made themselves a marketable comodity. To use your analogy: one generation ago my DNA was on another continent, living poorly, not speaking English.
You laugh at the idea of a meritocracy, then state that you were the only black in your department to graduate from the nation's second oldest university (W&M). You refute your own theory. Did your race get you there? Did it magically make you graduate? I would bet not, and I would additionally bet that anyone who told you otherwise would probably get an unkind response from you. Your claim that we live in a legacy-only system is completely unfounded. If you come from such a disadvantaged background...and it is only "wealth" that produces success...how on earth did you succeed? Yes that's a rhetorical question, because society knows how you got there: through accomplishment.
You ask the question "But beyond that how do you suggest we deal with structural inequality that was bred by the government and people of the US? Do you deny the past?"
No, I do not deny the past. I also do not live in it. I wasn't here for any of that, and quite frankly I'm not responsible for it. Millions of Americans are in the same boat as me. We do aknowledge, though, that there was and still is a great deal of inequity in opportunity as it relates to our evolving merit-based system, specifically for blacks and ever moreso for Hispanics (mostly for Native Americans but let's leave that one for a rainy day.)
How do we get around structural inequality? Let's go away from policies like AA and towards policies like school vouchers for one. I want every parent living in a disadvantaged school system, who cares about their child's education, to have the option to send their kid to whatever school in the country they wish. States should pay whatever it costs for this to happen. This ehances equality in education, which builds scholastic and technical skill, which translates to merit. If my state tax dollars went to this I would not be opposed to it at all.
Let's go away from policies like AA towards policies like tuition reimbursement for diadvantaged students, who can't afford the more expensive, private colleges. They take out government-backed loans to pay the cost initially, then upon graduation with a minimum GPA they get it fully reimbursed - i.e. they have the loan balance absorbed (maybe they pay the interest I don't know). This is a policy that businesses across the country use to entice their employees to go back to school and develop their skills and is also a retention tool (I essentially got a Masters degree for free). Why don't we have something similar for the general population?
Philosophically I believe in a Constitutional, Ron Paul-government. Realistically we will never get there, but we can work on ideas with it in mind that benefit disadvantaged groups of people and aid them in their pursuit. However, I cannot and will not ever support AA because it is the antithesis of a free society.
the fact that individual black people have achieved success despite the twin legacies of slavery and Jim Crow does not disturb the fact that when measured as a whole, black people lag behind their white counterparts in areas like health care, education, wealth, etc.
seeing Barak Obama seriously contend for the presidency is a good thing, having imimigrant families pull themselves out of poverty in 1-2 generations is great. Hovever you can't compare the levels of African American wealth with immigrant wealth.
Why? Because although African Americans have had comparable rights with immigrants for the last 1-2 generations, African Americans have been living and working here for 12-16 generations. If African Americans had been able to access the fair value of their work, save it, and pass it on for all that time, do you think black folk would disproportionately suffer from poverty? I doubt it. I'm more likely to turn a critical eye on oppressive policies like redlining, lynching, etc. whose effect has been to siphon wealth away from the community.
For as long as African Americans have been here, we could have getting admitted to schools like Harvard, Princeton, and Yale when they first opened. We wouldn't need Afirmative Action programs, because we'd have the same 350 years of legacy admissions that white students (like our president) have (and that's not just a race thing, that's a class thing -- poor and immigrant families suffer the same lack of legacy access to elite-education).
We are poised to elect Barak Obama just 40 years after the voting rights act. But, how many times could this already have happened if black people'd had access to the polls for 400 years? If you take issue with that at the presidential level, then what about minorities in the US Senate, and many other state and local elected offices?
do you see where i'm going with this?