In Defense of Affirmative Action

In Defense of Affirmative Action

By Rick Smith

"If you don't like affirmative action, what is your plan to guarantee a level playing field of opportunity?"

-Maynard Jackson, first black mayor of Atlanta

The continual legacy of discrimination in North America cannot be fully interpreted without a sentience for the robbery of labour-produced capital, land and community from, not to mention consistent social oppression of, those who have not fallen under a distinct religious, racial and sexual category. To counter this persistent trend in society, we must take steps to correct this problem, and this cannot be done without sacrificing the advantage of the white, male, Christian or all of the above cohorts. The only means of effecting justice to the subjugated elements of society is through affirmative action.

The trouble with affirmative action as a policy is that it meets with hostility by a population suffused with myths perpetuated by the right-wing agenda pundits. It appears that central myth is that affirmative action involves quotas and is therefore prone to involve the admission to university or hiring to a job of someone who is unqualified. Furthermore, affirmative action finds an audience in the narrow-thinking through the notorious sound-bite that it is “reverse discrimination”. To start, affirmative action does not involve quotas nor is it mandated by act of government. Instead, a workplace or institution takes up affirmative action as a policy to play their part in reversing the damage done by centuries of discrimination. To this end, they recognize that when someone who is white, male, Christian, or two or all of the above enters society, they do so with a distinct advantage in two ways. One of those ways is that they have folks similar to them in positions of power, and have the role models and connections necessary to reflect that trend. Secondly, they conclude that since humans organize into communities, it is conceivable that these communities can be as large as “white males”, or “black females”, or “Muslim Arab males”. Keeping that in mind, they also recognize that wealth is a component of communities and has been kept within these communities. To make affirmative action both practical and fair, the policy dictates that the company makes an honest, good-faith effort to search their applicants for racial minorities or women. The only cases in which quotas are set are when a judge rules that a company has racist hiring policies and must hire a certain number of minorities or women, and even these are often modest quotas. In fact, for businesses, one way to determine the number of members of disadvantaged cohorts is to determine the population of qualified members in their area. So, not only do they insist that those they hire be qualified, they hire proportional to the percentage of qualified members of disadvantaged cohorts in their area.

Nevertheless, the right-wing elements of society are typically less willing to listen to these arguments not because it collapses their network of lies, but also because it is simply against their fundamental beliefs. While claiming to not be racist, they oppose affirmative action for reasons mostly relating to individualistic approaches, feeling personally victimized by affirmative action, or they themselves have been wholly indoctrinated with nonsense tainted with racist undertones. Many people cannot warm up to affirmative action, and as it seems particularly so when it comes to race, as we live in a culture of individualism. They believe that they are separate from the society that enslaved and discriminated, and as such are not responsible for the repercussions. In essence, they believe that it should be about the “best man for the job, you do your best, you get the job”, (William Russ’ character in American History X). This begs the question not of who is responsible for the acts, but if the negative effects are still lingering today, then how can somebody not be held responsible? Affirmative action requires that people see themselves not as completely sovereign individuals in the past, present and future but rather components of a larger society and communities within that society. It is not about individual to individual interaction, but something much larger. This means that those who are white and male must be willing to give up the power they have accumulated on the grounds that it is illegitimate and was acquired through repressive, patriarchal and racist means. Just as women inherit the problems of sexism, Natives inherit the problems of genocide and cultural extermination, and blacks inherit the problems of having their people kept down and their wealth stolen for centuries, white males must come to terms with the past and seek to elevate those who continually suffer. In summary, the fact that we participate in society not as individual humans but as members of certain designations obligates us to ensure that these groups are equal before we can begin to see past them. Colour-blindness, for example, is a lofty dream unless we begin to correct our past mistakes. Otherwise, it is nothing but a cop-out of responsibility for the damage wreaked against non-whites.

Those who argue against affirmative action use the seemingly iron-clad argument that as affirmative action inherently involves discrimination, even towards a good end and because of the recognition of the current division of wealth and power as illegitimate, that we must search for other ways to equal things out. It would be wonderful if class were eliminated and this were not a concern, but even if that were to occur, the lingering psychological impact and the presence of discrimination still would not go away. The fact of the matter is that to transform Canadian, and indeed all societies, into these zones of equality, we must advance those who have suffered historically at the expense of those who have benefited from that suffering. It is not a slight to Caucasians or to males, but rather a demand that they cede their misbegotten power to those who have been barred from attaining it or had it outright stolen from them. If this happens, we will see many positive transformations in society. Many films seek to explore the roots of certain racial issues, and among these are race gangs. White neo-Nazi or supremacist gangs supposedly form in defense against other minority gangs. If this is true, those minority gangs can be eradicated by removing the need for them. That is to say, gangs most often form because of poverty – conflict logically being the natural result of being deprived of a livelihood in a dog-eat-dog atmosphere – and to remove inequalities would remove the imbalanced formation of minority gangs as opposed to white gangs. On top of that, greater social stability even among moderate elements would be attained. The Caledonia incident is a good example, where Native people occupied a housing subdivision just outside of the Southern Ontario town. The resulting assault by the Ontario Provincial Police left the community feeling attacked, and because of the history of suffering they have faced, there were predisposed tensions that resulted in an eruption. Hostilities materialized not just between Natives and the police but Natives and white residents of Caledonia. Had the Natives either been properly elevated in Canadian society or had reconciliation taken place prior to Caledonia, the crisis may have been averted. As it is, since Natives have no real power in Canadian society compared with others, they have no way of working on their behalf inside a government or society that at times allows the discrimination within to rear its ugly head. Evidently, policies which allow for the advancement of previously beaten down members of society would result in greater stability in society because conflict would not need to emerge as a means of dealing with problems.

It will come as no surprise that the more unprogressive folks will have a hard time understanding this. After all, they will either believe that Canadian society is utopian and are unwilling to shatter that dream, or they simply do not care as they are too hedonistic to recognize that they are not simply sovereign individuals as opposed to components of a functioning social web. Either way, it is learned, and to bring the opponents of affirmative action to a greater understanding of the roots, purpose and benefit of the policy is necessary in continuing a policy that has seen a phenomenon where, as Liberal commentator Steve Kangas put it, “between 1982 and 1995, the percentage of female managers and professionals in the U.S. rose from 40.5 to 48.0 percent; blacks from 5.5 to 7.5 percent, and Hispanics from 5.2 to 7.6 percent. By comparison, these groups form 51.2 percent, 12.6 percent, and 10.2 percent of the population, respectively. Progress has been steady, but still incomplete.” With results like that, and the morality to back it up, how can we continually reject such a protocol?