The Future of Affirmative Action

In looking at race relations in America there is possibly no other topic that is as vitriolic as that of affirmative action. In asking what form of ethnic diversity should our nation pursue, either assimilation or pluralism, we must also consider how to accomplish that. Indeed after decades of state sanctioned racial discrimination which kept minorities, particularly African Americans, in a state of economic and political suppression programs like affirmative action were necessary. The efforts of affirmative action programs were to correct the past mistakes of racism and discrimination. Now nearly fifty years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act there are those who feel the concept of affirmative action now stands to facilitate the very evils it was enacted to end.

In the 2003 Supreme Court case Grutter v. Bollinger, the court ruled that state governments could use race in determining who could be accepted. What this did not include was a standardized point system. Now that decision is being challenged by the upcoming case Fischer v. University of Texas. With the current court leaning just right of center, there is a significant chance that such policies as that use race as an attempt to increase diversity on campus could be ruled unconstitutional.

Proponents of these practices claim that it allows for greater academic diversity by accepting applicants from various socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. To do away with such practices, proponents claim, would sharply reduce the acceptance of African and Latino Americans. Indeed diversity is important, especially in colleges and universities, for it is during this time in the lives of young adults when they are most exposed to new ideas and new people. To have that diversity reduced would be unfortunate. However, those who oppose these pseudo-affirmative action policies do so out of any feelings of racism, instead they feel that taking a person’s race into account under any circumstances is wrong.

The person who filed the suit that has led to the case which will be heard by the Supreme Court is Abigail Fischer, who felt that her race prevented her from achieving enrollment at the university. In Texas the top ten percent of students from each high school are automatically accepted, a criterion the Ms. Fischer did not meet. This placed her into a secondary category in which race plays an unspecified role in determining accepted applicants. One can certainly see how this could cause one to feel frustrated, and at worst discriminated against. Now with this upcoming case the question of the necessity of affirmative action on a post-Civil Rights America is falling back into the public eye.

Personally, while I understand that using race as a factor in acceptance policies may seem counter-productive at first glimpse, I also acknowledge the legitimate role that these polices and those like them have played in undoing the drastic ethnic inequalities that were the result of prolonged legal discrimination. In her majority opinion of the 2003 Grutter case former Justice Sandra Day O’Conner believed there would eventually come the day in which “the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary”. Some believe that day has come and only time will tell if the Supreme Court agrees.

The New York Times article can be found here.

As I have posted in the past I think an important aspect of understanding racial and ethnic relations is to recognize when there is evidence that highlights real progress has been made in alleviating discrimination and prejudice. While traditionally the American South was most infamous for its segregationist policies the entire nation openly practiced such discriminatory practices by maintain a racially segregated housing market.

By using openly segregated practices suburban neighborhoods remained racially separated for years, and even after legislation made it illegal to use race as a factor in determining housing loans the system had already been set up in a way to maintain the status quo. This represents how primary level discrimination, which is usually the actions of an individual, are able to morph into structural discrimination, which is the most subtle form discrimination takes. Fortunately, housing segregation in America’s metropolitan areas has taken a turn for the better. According to a study performed by two fellows from the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research organization, racial integration in cities is at its highest rates since 1910.

While this a welcomed accomplishment there is still much work to be done in addressing separation between Caucasians and African-Americans, especially in regards to public education. With a decline in busing some public school districts have become even more racially homogenous in recent years and the averages for Caucasians show they still live in neighborhoods which generally consist of seventy-eight percent white residents.

Luckily a welcomed statistic is that today roughly only twenty percent of African Americans live in areas defined as ‘ghetto’, or low-income, which is down from a rate of close to fifty percent a half-century earlier. Ironically, the cities greatly improving in increased racial integration are in the Sun Belt, where many of the nation’s strictest segregation laws persisted up to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. One factor contributing to this is the influx of immigrants, many of whom choose the major Sun Belt cities to live.

So while much is left to be accomplished there is also much to celebrate in the battle for racial equality. Making housing less segregated is arguably one of the first steps to increasing association and intermingling between people.

You can find the New York Times article here.

We Must Overcome

Racism and discrimination is often a conflict between what we perceive and what is real. In our post-September eleventh world much has changed in America. Anyone waiting in line to board an airplane can testify to enormous changes that have occurred in the last decade since that tragic event and American foreign policy has undergone drastic changes as well as our nation and allies struggle to fight a new type of enemy, terrorism. There is no doubt that terrorism is a legitimate threat and one group that has utilized these tactics is the numerous fundamentalist Islamic militia cells scattered across.

However, we must acknowledge that this is not our only threat we face and we must strive to rise above our initial reactions. Recently news broke out that the New York Police Department had shown the film “The Third Jihad” to at approximately fifteen-hundred officers during their training. This film depicts an America which is under constant attack from an internal threat, Muslim terrorists hiding in wait.

Now while one could exclaim that the police are promoting racism it is better to ask why such a film was shown. Clearly, the police believe there is a legitimate risk which we face. Unfortunately, the scars of September eleventh have permeated and many of the immediate feelings of fear and anger are still present. In race relations there are many factors which influence how different ethnic groups interact. One such factor is timing of contact. This factor relates to the greater events occurring in the world during the time in which two groups come into contact with one another. In the case of Muslim Americans and immigrants from the Near East America has experienced an attack from a small group of people proclaiming the ideals of their own perverted vision of Islam. Unfortunately, this has significantly shaped how many Americans view the religion and its adherents, a religion that most new next to nothing about before the attack.

One thing I believe needs asking is whether this is what the terrorists want. Indeed to stir up feelings of mistrust and hatred among Americans would be in the best interest of its enemies, both fundamentalist Islamists and other threats. Homegrown and foreign terrorists of all ethnic backgrounds are intent on the destruction or reshaping of America and by dividing and turning against each other simply plays into their interest.

Instead we must stand firm and united against the threats we face. We must not give into our fears and then use those fears top legitimize racial, ethnic, and religious profiling. Once we acknowledge that the legitimate dangers our nation faces come from a diverse collection of dangerous individuals and groups we can become better equipped to address them.

The article can be found here.

Looking Beyond the Rose Veil

During last Thursday’s class we discussed the various levels of discrimination and how they differ in both what parties they encompass and how discrimination at each level is carried out. Most tension in ethnic relations occurs at the micro level and usually involves individuals. Whether it be a store owner who discriminates against a customer or a police officer treating a motorist unjustly because of their ethnicity these situations tend to be where racial animosity occurs most frequently. These situations are also the easiest to highlight as having a racial component.

Unfortunately, the other two forms of discrimination are much more difficult to address. They include macro-level discrimination and structural discrimination. Macro-discrimination is when discrimination against a particular group is imbedded into the society’s legal, political, and social institutions to perpetuate a system of sustained inequality. However, this form of discrimination is still noticeable, such as the case of Jim Crow laws in the South before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While one could turn a blind eye to such discrimination it can still be tackled, but only by changing the attitudes and ideology of an entire nation or community rather than the personal beliefs of a single individual.

The final level of discrimination is perhaps the most elusive and opaque form to handle. In most modern societies the apparent systems of institutional discrimination such as apartheid or Jim Crow have been largely abandoned. Instead discrimination on the macro level occurs in the manner known as structural discrimination. Rather than ethnicity serving as the primary motivation of the discrimination it instead relates only indirectly to the discrimination taking place. One example is when a bank refuses to give a loan to someone so they can make a major necessary repair. Their reason is that the house is in a low-profit neighborhood and therefore the applicant cannot afford the repair and the value of the house plummets. Coincidentally the applicant was African American and the neighborhood in question is made up almost entirely of African Americans. However, that was not technically the reason the applicant was denied the loan, instead they were denied for a reason that, to anyone on the surface, appears perfectly logical and reasonable.

It is this aspect of structural discrimination is what makes it the most effective and pervasive form of discriminatory action. It thrives off our logic as well as being the ultimate byproduct of other forms of ethnic discrimination. The reasons so many predominantly African-American neighborhoods have lower property values is the direct result of years of intentional institutional discrimination. Whether it was Caucasians refusing to let African Americans move into their neighborhoods or simply fleeing when they could not prevent them or whether it was banks refusing to give loans solely because of their ethnicity this has overtime created a self-perpetuating cycle. Now that such actions are no longer legal it is no longer even necessary since now discrimination can be based off facts that appear completely logical, yet are the direct result of previous decades of open discrimination.

In the end the ultimate goal of addressing these issues would involve a much more radical approach. T would have to involve looking at and questioning the logic behind many of the decisions and practices our society makes in fields such as housing, education, and employment. It would require us as a society to ask more of the institutions we have created and force us to remove the rose-colored glasses and admit that even after a half century since the Civil Rights Act there is still much work to be done. What I have learned is that I need to look deeper as well, rather than simply believing discrimination is now only an isolated incident.

In dealing with racial and ethnic relations these interactions can take on a variety of dynamics. What all these relationships have in common is that they involve a dominate group asserting authority over one or more subordinate groups. These subordinate groups themselves react differently to their situation. These actions range from assimilating, passively resisting, and even violently resisting. While the United States and other industrialized nations do have ethnic issues, these problems do not normally include prolonged ethnic violence. Unfortunately, in much of the developing world ethnic tensions have evolved into warfare. One such example currently happening is in the Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar. Aside from simply being a conflict between two antagonistic ethnic groups the conflict ensuing in Myanmar has garnered the attention of major global powers such as the United States and China, for political, social, and economic reasons.

Formerly referred to as Burma, Myanmar is home to a major ethnic group known as the Kachin. This group posses its own military, political leadership, and sub territory. In many ways the Kachin can be seen as secessionist minority given the greater political independence and the fact that the portion of the country they occupy is regarded separately from Myanmar. Ethnic tensions between the Burmese government and the Kachin disintegrated back in June of 2011 after a nearly seventeen year ceasefire was brought to end. One possible reason for this, according to some within the Kachin military leadership, is that the Burmese government wishes to have greater influence over the Kachin-occupied territory which has in recent years become an important resource-rich region.

Here is where the situation becomes complicated, and becomes an issue of interest for not only the people of Myanmar. The northern portion of the nation, where the Kachin mostly live, is rich in jade, gold, and timber, all valuable resources to the Chinese. The area also has rivers which serve as sites for major Chinese-backed hydroelectric power projects. Here is just one example of how racial and ethnic issues is directly influenced by real world issues, namely in the case of Myanmar, access to valuable resources. Normally, it is the unequal access to these valuables that allows for the majority group within any given society to continue to assert its dominance over other subordinate groups. However, in this particular example it is the minority group that has access to these resources, and in response the other group attempts to forcibly take it.

As for China and even United States, there is a desire to see that this ethnic conflict cease, though each nation has a preferred outcome they liked to see reached. The United States is namely interested in ending the accused abuses that Kachin civilians are suffering at the hands of the Burmese military, while China is mainly interested in bringing stability to back to the profitable region. The Chinese would also prefer dealing with the Burmese military, and would therefore prefer for the region to fall under their control. Here we see how economic and political issues have fueled ethnic tensions leading to an all out war, which has claimed responsibility for the death of at least 140 Kachin soldiers and the displacement of at least five thousand civilians on the Chinese border, and over ten thousand civilians live in camps under the control of the Burmese government.

This is merely one example of how racial and ethnic issues are interwoven and how seemingly simple things such as trees, rivers, and jade can cause such terrible conflict. This story has helped me in understanding how simple phrases like secessionist minority, and ethnic stratification, which I once viewed as merely vocabulary terms, are real problems that have dramatic consequences.

You can find the full story here.

A Ray of Hope

Often times studying racial ethnic relations can be depressing. Considering my background in history I have studied human history and one of the most common themes that continues to rear its head is racism. In the case of the U.S. I try to look at how deplorable things were in comparison today, and that helps me realize just how far we have come as a nation and as a people.

Unfortunately, there is still a long way to go and believing that racism has been eradicated is dangerously naive. We must always strive to tackle the real issues of ethnic stratification, rather than kid ourselves into believing that they no longer exist. I recently read a New York Times article in which those issues were being addressed by a group that perhaps has the greatest potential in overcoming our racial and ethnic differences.

At Roosevelt Intermediate School in Wesfield, New Jersey; and Cedarbrooke K-8 Center in Plainfield, New Jersey; two different groups of eighth graders were learning about the same novel, John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. What makes their study of the book so unique is that the students of both schools studied the novel together. Facilitated by modern technology, such as Skype, the students were able to ask questions to each other about their feeling and ideas about the book and its characters.

Coming from different backgrounds each group of students had a preconceived concept of the other, with Westfield's mostly white students associating Plainsfield with 'fried chicken' and 'hair salons', while students from Plainsfield thought of Westfield as 'rich' and 'snotty'. Once brought together each group benefited from their experienced. Students from Westfield were exposed to people from a very different background, and the students from Plainsfield were encouraged to know they were equally capable of doing the same academic work as students from Westfield.

While this story may come off as idealistic and cheesy to some I believe stories like this are important for several reasons. One is that it shows that there is still much work to be done in the way of ethnic assumptions, stratification, and interracial relations. Second is that it helps show how we can use classic works like Steinbeck in conjunction with modern technology such as Facebook to allow teens to engage with both literature and each other. Finally, it shows us that not all is wrong in the world and that there is progress being made, and frankly who does not enjoy something positive?

You can read the article here

Catching Flies

"One can catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than a gallon of vinegar". This phrase is commonly used in politics, business, and foreign relations as a means of explaining that forced coercion is not always the most effective means of accomplishing one's goals. However, this also relates to how a dominate ethnic group can continually maintain a place of authority over various other subordinate groups.

One of the general areas of racial ethnic relations deals with ethnic stratification, and how that arranges ethnic groups hierarchically and determines their access to the various forms of power. In general social stratification is defined as a system of structured inequality that distributes an unequal amount of a society's valued resources. Ethnic stratification is merely different in that it bases it hierarchy primarily on ethnicity. Overall, within every society there exists a hierarchy based on a variety of factors beyond ethnicity such as age, religion, gender, and class. These systems of inequality are used by the dominant group to ensure a continued occupation of the upper levels of the ethnic hierarchy.

One idea discussed in the chapter was how the dominate group approaches exerting their power over the subordinate groups. Two examples were used in the text, one being Whites in South Africa who used the system of apartheid to keep the significant proportion of non-whites in a state of subjugation. The other was White slave owners in the antebellum South in the US. In both of these cases the dominate groups used extreme force and regularly employed violence and fear to maintain the racial hierarchies they had put in place. Another similarity shared by these two examples is that neither exist any longer. While force has its advantages the most effective way to ensure the continuation of ethnic stratification is through shaping the culture, ideology, and presumptions of a nation so that the general populace will involuntarily see the established system of inequality as natural and fair. Unfortunately, this can be said of the US today as many see our nation as one a meritocracy, in which a person's lot in life is directly influenced by that person's abilities and motivation. The success of certain individuals from an ethnic group that largely occupy the lower end of society only further supports this assumption.

In the end while the US has made great strides in recent decades in making social mobility a greater possibility for individuals who in previous years would not have such opportunity there is more work yet to be done. I believe the first step in this process is to just simply have an open discussion on how race and ethnicity shape our lives even today. By merely admitting that there is still work to be done, rather than simply lure ourselves into a false reality we can begin to further improve these issues of ethnic stratification.