Racial Inequality, Affirmative
Action, and Colorblindness
***
A Brief Prelude
This blog comes in two parts:- A look at racial inequality, in context of Bryan Stevenson’s TED talk and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.
- A look beyond the text, at our present situation, at current policies around affirmative action and colorblindness, with an emphasis on the presently occurring supreme court case Fisher v. University of Texas.
Before continuing, consider this…
We often take freedom for granted in our country.
But, I encourage you to think again, about what gives us freedom, about how much freedom we have, and about how much freedom, in particular, African Americans have.
Even our national anthem (though referring to Britain, not to blacks), questions freedom in our country:
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Despite
attaining national liberty, with the United States independent from Britain at
last, the question mark remains, and
so does the question.
As you read and explore, I ask you to question, to engage in a conversation that many desperately try to avoid but that we cannot morally avoid any longer.
As you read and explore, I ask you to question, to engage in a conversation that many desperately try to avoid but that we cannot morally avoid any longer.
***
Part 1: Racial Inequality
Stevenson’s
words are haunting:
1 out of 3 black men between the ages of eighteen and thirty is in jail, in prison, on probation, or on parole.
One out of three has experienced this:
This incarceration rate affects real people, however
distant they may seem.
At this moment, (including all adults over eighteen), one out of fifteen
African American men is in jail.
In other words, more than 6.5% of African American males are currently in jail, compared to less than 1% of white males.
This disproportionately high prison rate has an extended ripple of consequences. Many states disenfranchise (sometimes permanently) any individuals who have committed felonies.
According to McLaughlin in the Huffington Post, 7% of all black men are disenfranchised (in comparison to only 1.8% of everyone else). Not only that, but the percentage of black disenfranchisement drastically increases in certain states, to 20% in Virginia and 23% in Florida.
With projections ten years into the future, Stevenson claims that "the level of disenfranchisement will be as high as it's been since prior to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and there is this stunning silence."
Once again, the level of African American disenfranchisement has almost reverted to before the litigation of the Civil Rights Movement. Nonetheless, here we are, naively pretending to live in an era of complete racial equality; I myself, at least, had never been aware, until now, of this blatant injustice.
Despite my previous disconnect, I find Stevenson's words considerably chilling:
What would it feel like to be living in a world where the nation-state of Germany were executing people, especially if they were disproportionately Jewish?
...And yet, in this country, in the states of the Old South, we execute people where you're 11 times more likely to get the death penalty if the victim is white than if the victim is black, 22 times more likely to get it if the defendant is black and the victim is white.
What
happens to our society when such seeming injustice occurs? What happens when,
driven through endless cycles of poverty, African Americans still find
themselves hindered by the repercussions of a distant past, by the echoes of
slavery and tenant farming?
In “Let America Be America Again,” Langston Hughes references “slavery’s scars,” deep, indelible marks that still haven’t faded.
In “Let America Be America Again,” Langston Hughes references “slavery’s scars,” deep, indelible marks that still haven’t faded.
Even once free, blacks still wear the bonds of slavery, unable to escape their socioeconomic impoverishment.
Just as Avery Gordon presents the concept of "complex personhood" in Ghostly Matters, Morrison portrays individuals as complicated beings, arising from entangled historical pasts. By fracturing the narrative and offering multiple characters' perspectives, she unveils the intricate forces behind people's actions. As Stevenson says, "Each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done."
Indeed, unlike the initial connotations around rapists and blacks, and unlike the theory of biological determinism, Cholly is not inherently perverted or genetically inferior. On the other hand, he tries desperately to love Pecola, to care for his daughter, "the only one who loved her enough to touch her, envelop her, give something of himself to her" (206).
However, he doesn’t know how to love in a world that hasn’t provided any love to him as an example. He runs away from home as a child because of his own father’s abandonment. He molests Pecola because of his own rape - forced sex under the exposed glare of white men.
By molesting Pecola, however sick and twisted, he’s loving her in the only way he knows how, mimicking his own experiences from his own tragic life. Despite his efforts, “his touch [is] fatal” (206), continuing the cycle of social death to another generation.
With racial inequality to an extreme, the Breedloves aren’t truly alive: “the only living thing in [their] house [is] the coal stove” (37). However much they try to attain social mobility, however much they strive for the American dream, they "stir out of their dreams of affluence and vengeance into the anonymous misery of their storefront" (39).
Morrison always comes back to the
“storefront,” to the dismal, “anonymous” dwelling. The Breedloves are unable to make a name for themselves, unable to rise in socioeconomic status because they are tethered
to their origins, weighed down by their previous circumstances. This poverty leads to a leaden, ashen hopelessness and despair as they remain, from one generation to the next, stuck
in poverty, in the endless cycle of social death.
Indeed, Morrison describes the
Breedlove house before she describes
the Breedlove family. Their house,
as in environmental determinism, has directly
led to their present state; it is nearly impossible for them function
properly and to gain any affluence at all while living in an abandoned storefront.
Similarly, Morrison, through the symbolic rotting of Pauline's tooth, describes how the root of one's existence entirely shapes that existence:
The weakened roots, having grown accustomed to the poisin, responded one day to severe pressure, and the tooth fell free, leaving a ragged stump behind. But even before the little brown speck, there must have been the conditions, the setting that would allow it to exist in the first place. (116)
Metaphorically, Pauline has become entirely "accustomed" to her disadvantages. She's learned to plow onward, in her ghostlike existence, numbing her pain - and also her joy. In the end, though, unable to accomplish the American Dream, stuck instead with the losers that make winning possible, her tooth falls out, and her family life deteriorates.
According to David R. Dow, a death penalty lawyer from Houston, in his TEDxAustin talk, "Eighty percent of the people on death row are people who came from ... [a] dysfunctional family."
Evidently, one's environment plays a crucial role in one's subsequent existence. Clearly, African Americans, as a result of their origins - cycles of poverty, violence, imprisonment, and disenfranchisement - are not fully equal, even today.
So, what happens next?
***
Part 2: Affirmative Action and Colorblindness
During my short lifetime, just four brief years ago, the
U.S. elected its first African American president. As a young high school student, I may regard this new piece
of history as inspirational, perhaps even as monumental, but certainly not as
earth-shattering. Nonetheless, a
black president would have seemed utterly
impossible to anyone living a mere half century ago. Indeed, the U.S. passed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act less
than fifty years ago.
Clearly, blacks have experienced an incredible increase in influence and social mobility.
But, considering the lingering racial inequality, when is it enough?
At what point have African Americans achieved equality of opportunity?
When can we stop reimbursing them for their seemingly distant past?
Can we ever declare that we have fully cleaned up the "waste which we dumped" (205), that we have made up for the years of slavery, discrimination, and poverty?
With affirmative action, we have certainly tried to bridge the gap of injustice.
For each supporter of affirmative action, however, there is a supporter of colorblindness, the ideology of ignoring race entirely. To many, colorblindness seems to be the optimal path, leading us down a "post-racial era." As a result, the discussion of race has faded away; afraid of being politically incorrect - unsure of when to use "African American" or "black" or "colored" - and uncomfortable with our muddled history, many attempt to ignore the conversation altogether, claiming instead that the races are now equal, that there is no difference at all between them.
This "post-racial" viewpoint has several social repercussions. For an African American, the "absence of race" can cause individuals to sever any ties with their "black identity" and to lose a sense of their true selves, such as in the case of Geraldine. Morrison refers to these African Americans as merely "they." In desperately attempt to conform and to attain bourgeois respectability, "they" have lost all individuality and personality, a too-clean facade:
The laugh that is a little too loud; the enunciation that is a little too round; the gesture that is a little too generous. They hold their behind in for fear of a sway too free; when they wear lipstick, they never cover the entire mouth for fear of lips too thick, and they worry, worry, worry about the edges of their hair. (83)By trying to blend in with other races (or really, in the novel, to "become white" and to get rid of "Funk"), they overdo the performance with "too" much of everything, as though fake actors. Colorblind minorities can't truly be themselves until they acknowledge their race.
Conversely, when whites are colorblind, they lose a full picture of society. Regardless of their views on affirmative action, they ignore our entire history when they ignore race, and history — individual, cultural, and societal — is everything that makes us who we are.
Right now, an exciting event is occurring that will potentially alter the laws on affirmative action and colorblindness. Originating locally, the Supreme Court is currently hearing the trial Fisher v. University of Texas.
A Very Brief History of Recent Affirmative Action Policy
In the 2003 trial Grutter v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that universities could regard race on applications in terms of a "holistic review." Schools could use race as one of many factors for applicants and could consider race in order to attain a "beneficial level of diversity."
The Upcoming Case: Fisher v. University of Texas
Abigail Fisher wanted to go to UT. Her sister and father had both attended, but she herself barely missed the top 10% of her class and found herself rejected. Blaming UT's consideration of race, she sued the school. Now, four years later, after graduating from Louisiana State University, the case has arrived at the supreme court.
Since the Grutter v. Bollinger case, the composition of the court has changed, especially with Sandra O'Connor's retirement. (She served as the swing vote in the previous trial.) As a result, the policy may very well shift, especially with the apparent outlook of the justices so far.
According to Sherman in the Huffington Post, Alito, who succeeded Connor, "has consistently voted against racial preferences." Likewise, "Kennedy, whose vote could be decisive, looked skeptically on Texas' defense of the program." It appears as though the justices have heavily supported Fisher, and may overturn the previous ruling.
The prospects for UT and affirmative appear bleak, but many businesses, colleges, and programs (such as Teach for America) have provided the two with overwhelming support.
Those in favor of UT and affirmative action worry that a policy of colorblindness will severely limit diversity at universities and decrease the already limited opportunity of minorities.
If Fisher wins, will an official policy of colorblindness prevent equality of opportunity? Will it cause blacks to lose an aspect of their identity and whites to lose a historical perspective of their complex society?
Politically and socially, will it have a significant impact?
The Truth of the Top 10%
and The Impact of the Case
UT admits around 75% of its students from roughly the top 10% of their classes. (The actual percentage changes every year.)
While not directly mentioning race at all, this rule nonetheless manages to dramatically increase diversity at UT.
As a result of average income rates and household net worths, coupled with consequent living locations, high schools are still often "segregated" based on race.
Median Household Net Worth
Even in Austin, there's still "segregation" based on race and socioeconomic status. Whereas Del Valle High School has 17% black enrollment, Westlake High School has only 1% black enrollment.
Therefore, despite average lower test scores, African Americans and other minorities can still get into UT at high rates because they place in the top 10% of their relatively less competitive schools.
Although the top 10% rule is not legally or officially a form of affirmative action, UT still uses it to diversify their student population. (Fisher sued UT for racial consideration in the remaining applicants.)
If Fisher does win the case, the ruling will significantly cripple equality of opportunity across impoverished minorities. Top universities, Ivy Leagues, businesses, and organizations will suddenly become less diverse. Over time, some schools (but certainly not all) may find methods like UT's top 10% rule