[Peace-discuss] Will I.P. elect McCain? On affirmative action and privilege

Sun Aug 3 15:10:40 CDT 2008

On Sun, Aug 03, 2008 at 02:03:09PM -0500, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> "Affirmative action," with its overtone of courageous dedication, is an
> advertiser's phrase, a weasel-word.  The British have a more accurate term 
> for
> it -- "positive discrimination."
>
> Most Americans agree that discrimination, negative or positive, is unjust. 
> That's why referenda against it have succeeded across the country.  
> McCain's alliance with this sentiment -- especially if his opponent is 
> regarded as an "affirmative action baby" (see Stephen Carter's book by that 
> title) -- may help to make him president.
>
> It would seem to me that the effective counter to McCain's position is a 
> more serious call for social justice and equality, at home and abroad -- 
> far more serious that the accommodationist Obama is willing to make, as his 
> book shows.

But, race-based and gender-based discrimination are *endemic* in the US.
Calling for reducing class differences is fine, and important, but if our
primary measure of "class" is by way of money, such efforts won't begin to counter
the attitudes that already exist, and the practices that go with them.

For example, there was a beautiful study published in 2003,
where resumes were prepared and sent with applications for
job interviews, for a variety of jobs (from entry-level to executives)
and industries.  Some resumes used a name that might well be a
US-born white person; others had names that are uncommon among whites,
but common among blacks.  They compared callback rates.
Just having a "white" name got 50% more callbacks than "black" names,
with identical resumes.  And, a higher-quality resume got 30% more callbacks
for "white" names, while for "black" names the difference was much smaller.
And lots more.

Abstract here:
   "Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?
    A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination"

   http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=422902
	(abstract & reference to journal article)
   http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0DXK/is_9_20/ai_104521293
	("Black Issues in Higher Education" article about the study)

I strongly recommend Tim Wise's video, "On White Privilege", which was shown
& discussed at NCMR.  (He has a book of the same title which I've not read.)

A few of many good points he makes:

   - Privileged people (for us, white people) don't bear the "burden of
	representation".  If a white student underperforms,
	it's a personal failing.  If a black student does, then well,
	isn't that just what black people do, isn't it, what can we expect?

	Timothy McVeigh's bombing isn't used to argue that white people,
	or Christians, are prone to be terrorists.

   - Unequal law enforcement.  Wise cites a figure that [in some area?]
	rates of stopping black drivers for drug searches were about three times
	those of white people.  But, at the same time, the chances of actually
	*finding* drugs on them was several times greater for white people.

   - For every group getting extra scrutiny, another gets by with less scrutiny.
	He mentions the Columbine High School kids, who went to some
	home-supply store to get the parts they used for pipe bombs.
	They were able to buy them, explaining they were for a
	science fair project.  If they'd been black kids, (or Muslim kids,
	these days!) would that explanation have been accepted?

   - Past discrimination -- including discrimination in housing --
	has very current effects.  If there are lots of places that
	black people (or Hispanic or ...) cannot settle, that leaves
	more housing choices (and therefore, economists would predict,
	also less expensive housing choices) for privileged people.
	Even though redlining etc. is illegal now, the damage is done.

   - Comparing income alone isn't a good measure of even economic status.
	I don't have my notes here, but Wise mentioned a comparison of *net worth*
	for white vs. black families at some particular income level ($60K/year?).
	White families had something like four times the accumulated wealth of
	their black peers: if something went wrong, whites had far more resources
	to fall back on.

   - Wise examines the common term "underprivileged".   How did "underprivileged"
	people get to be that way?  Who controls Privilege anyway,
	that they should be "under" it?

Discrimination on bases other than income is in the bones of this country
(and others I'm sure).  Pretending that it doesn't exist, that our essential
inequalities are due to class, with the unstated implication that "class"
is tied *primarily* to income -- and that therefore we're better off if
government and private actions are simply color-blind and gender-blind --
only works to perpetuate those persistent aspects of inequality.

> Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
>> So the train incident was an example of (and demonstrating the necessity 
>> for)
>> affirmative action? Because it just as easily could have been an example 
>> of
>> the sufficiency of the civil rights amendment (i e no necessity for
>> affirmative action), so I wasn't sure... As I understand it, affirmative
>> action doesn't (always) require a quota based on race and/or gender, nor 
>> does
>> it preclude taking socio-economic factors into account as well. No such 
>> thing
>> as a utopia nor a perfect system for choosing and eliminating candidates, 
>> but
>> I don't understand why it isn't fair and advisable to try to level the 
>> playing field as much as possible. --Jenifer
>> --- On *Sun, 8/3/08, Robert Naiman /<naiman.uiuc at gmail.com>/* wrote:
>> From: Robert Naiman <naiman.uiuc at gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] 
>> Will
>> I.P. elect McCain? To: kmedina at illinois.edu Cc: "peace-discuss"
>> <peace-discuss at anti-war.net> Date: Sunday, August 3, 2008, 8:18 AM
>> My point was that in considering how dogmatic and strident to be about the
>> insignificance of "at best stopgap" reforms, it's ok to give some 
>> deference
>> to the question of whether one belongs to the category(s) of people who 
>> have
>> benefited or were intended to benefit from the "at best stopgap" reforms.
>> if the folks who were the stated intended beneficiaries of such reforms, 
>> by
>> and large, hold them to be meaningful, that ought to cool somewhat the 
>> ardor
>> of those who wish to dismiss them as meaningless.
>> On Sun, Aug 3, 2008 at 5:41 AM, Karen Medina <kmedina at illinois.edu> wrote:
>>> Jenifer,
>>> I think Bob Naiman's point is that sometimes the rules help make the
>> change, and without them things would be much the same as they were.
>>> Societal rules, like seggregation, do take a long time to reverse. And
>> sometimes we need rules like affirmative action to counter the 
>> seggretation rules. Does affirmative action work? Well at least we can 
>> talk to each other
>> on the train.
>>> Knowing when to let the rules fade is not easy.
>>> I'll just point out a few other things that society still accepts
>> without much of a fight:
>>> * Women still do not have equal pay. In some places, yes, but overall, 
>>> not
>> yet.
>>> * Neighbors still look the other way with spouse abuse, elder abuse, and
>> child abuse.
>>> * Homeless people are treated as trash.
>>> Yes, the rules that are supposed to move us in the right direction can be
>> taken advantage of (just as an example, a woman can wrongly accuse a man 
>> of sexual assault in order to hurt the man), and that is most unfortunate. 
>> But, overall, we hope that the rules help more than they hurt.
>>> There are many places that we have given power to the person who society
>> has made weak. Yes, the new power will be abused. All power is abused.
>>> Somehow, we need to find a balance.
>>> -karen medina
>>> ---- Original message ----
>>>> Date: Sat, 2 Aug 2008 23:24:46 -0500 From: "Robert Naiman"
>>>> <naiman.uiuc at gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Will I.P. elect
>>>> McCain? To: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu> Cc: peace-discuss
>>>> <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
>>>> once, many many moons ago, when i was a young radical whippersnapper, i
>>>> happened to be on the amtrak train between champaign and chicago, and
>>>> fell into a conversation about politics with a middle-aged 
>>>> african-american guy.
>>>> in the course of the conversation, i expounded views not dissimilar to 
>>>> the ones that carl is currently expounding about affirmative action.
>>>> he patiently waited for me to finish ranting, and said,
>>>> "well, you have a point...on the other hand..." - here he
>> paused for
>>>> dramatic effect - "we _are_ sitting together on this train, having this
>>>> conversation." then he smiled.
>>>> of course, i had to concede that he also had a point.
>>>> i think that interaction permanently cured me of being ultra-left about
>>>> affirmative action.
>>>> On Sat, Aug 2, 2008 at 5:08 PM, C. G. Estabrook
>> <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:
>>>>> It is, as I say, at best a stop-gap, a temporary measure to
>> correct some
>>>>> small part of historic exploitation -- not to end the exploitation
>> itself, which
>>>>> is endemic to capitalism.  In fact, affirmative action accepts that 
>>>>> exploitation in principle while it tries to get a better deal for those
>> "identified" by
>>>>> race, gender, etc. (which is why it's generally been resented by the
>> white working
>>>>> class).
>>>>> In the spring tide of American socialism, more than a century ago,
>> one of
>>>>> the leading US capitalists, Jay Gould, said, "I can always hire
>> one half of the
>>>>> American working class -- to kill the other half." That
>> ruling class policy
>>>>> accounts for the United States' having one of the bloodiest
>> labor histories
>>>>> in the world.  And affirmative action was the acceptable face of that
>> policy.
>>>>> There were those who said a generation ago -- only half in jest --
>> that when
>>>>> the revolution finally came, the barricades of the old order would be
>> defended
>>>>> by those blacks and women who'd made it under affirmative
>> action...
>>>>> The history of identity politics in the US is pretty clear.  It
>> was the
>>>>> position to which soi-disant progressives retreated when the
>>>>> revolutionary
>> and
>>>>> transformative goals of "the sixties" (and well into the
>> 1970s) were given
>>>>> up.
>>>>> When the assault of neoliberalism began to look like winning, ca.
>> 30 years
>>>>> ago, and progressives gave up class-based politics in defeat, there was
>> a rather
>>>>> unseemly scramble on the Left as groups looked for other,
>> non-class
>>>>> identities as bases for progressive political action -- notably women,
>>>>> people
>> of color,
>>>>> ethnics, sexual minorities, etc. But the search was predicated on
>> the
>>>>> conclusion that no fundamental transformation of class relations was
>>>>> possible
>> (or
>>>>> perhaps even desirable).
>>>>> By the 1990s there was a general condemnation on the Left of a
>> trinity of
>>>>> oppressions -- by gender, race and class -- but little recognition
>> that they
>>>>> were not alike.  In principle, the first two can be solved by
>> reconciliation
>>>>> (affirmative action, if you like), however difficult that is in
>> practice.
>>>>> But oppression by class cannot be solved that way.  Exploiter and
>> exploited
>>>>> cannot be reconciled -- their formal antagonism is what makes the
>>>>> system
>> go.
>>>>> (Crudely, owners must purchase labor as cheaply as possible while
>>>>> workers
>> must sell it
>>>>> as expensively as possible.)  Exploitation by class can be solved
>> only by the
>>>>> liquidation of the exploiter (the social role, not necessarily the
>> person).
>>>>> Staring into this abyss, the modern left has generally preferred
>> to take the
>>>>> sop-gap options offered, and it's only inconvenient people
>> like Benn
>>>>> Michaels (and three centuries of economists who tried to puzzle out how
>> capitalism
>>>>> worked) who point out that diversity offers a false vision of
>> social justice
>>>>> -- by allowing us to neglect the difference that really matters, that
>> between
>>>>> rich and poor, and its source.  --CGE
>
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