I am aware that affirmative action is a relatively volatile issue. These days, it is very difficult to get away with public racial preference of any kind. Indeed, when someone calls for colorblind admissions policies it is often very hard to offer a retort. I remember Rush Limbaugh saying once (don't go crazy, now) that 'if someone asked you if you would support a bill to make it illegal to consider ethnic status at all when hiring or accepting someone, what would you say?' This is not an exact quotation, but you can see how hardly anyone, at first glance, would oppose such a bill. This is the American dream, no? A colorblind society is good, no? What Mr. Limbaugh was talking about was an anti-affirmative action referendum in California. It passed. Afterwards, minority acceptance to colleges and institutions of "higher" learning in California plummeted.
This is the real tragedy here. People like Rush and groups like this one placing all the ads are basically taking statements against racial inequality out of context and using them to act against the hopes and dreams of those who said them in the first place. They are, in essence, misquoting Dr. Martin Luther King. To take the stance that minority status should have nothing to do with college admissions or job hiring because we want the world to be color blind misses the point. For it supposes that the rest of the country's inner workings operate on a colorblind basis as well -- something which is, in every sense of the words, an absolute falsehood. Are we to believe that in this great country, where everything from loans to low insurance rates to good credit is doled out equally, the one problem on which we should concentrate our attention is the evil pestilence of affirmative action? You have got to be kidding me.
That is why this ad campaign offends me. Not because it's a basically ignorant maneuver, but because it denies and advances the realities of injustice by disguising itself in the trappings of righteousness. The tacit insistence that this country is free of injustice that accompanies any such push to end affirmative action is the real demon at work here. Unless individuals begin to come to terms with the prejudices present in each one of us, nothing will change. Each person must come to terms with his or her own shortcomings in order to affect or change or work through them at all. If we admit that injustice is woven into the very fabric of our country's history, both social and legal, then we can learn to detect and eliminate further violations of human rights.
Every age can hide from its wrongs. In fact, every age has. And while I know today and yesterday didn't "feel" like history ... Surprise! It was! Tomorrow will be, too! It's easy to say how wrong the slave-owners were or how blind the Supreme Court was in 1858, but, instead of condemning them, look at the situation now. Why is that group trying to stop affirmative action? Maybe because acknowledging that it is a necessary thing would in some way give credence to the fact that prejudice exists even today.
I am a white kid. Yes, maybe by affirmative action I won't get picked first for everything, but I think that I've got to realize that even though I'm not actively oppressing anyone (an argument that some whites feel is quite convincing, oddly enough), I still reap the benefits that America has set aside for whites alone. On the other hand, if I were black, I definitely would not want anyone to think that I didn't deserve what I got. But to anyone who even feels the slightest inkling that another's position was not entirely deserved, I say this: What breaks have you got? Aren't all the "deserving" white acceptances products of America's real affirmative action program?
You may not agree with what I'm saying about affirmative action. I can deal with that; everyone has their own ideas. But to mobilize an army of privileged money to fight it is, to me, mind-boggling. Where does their energy come from? What they are working to effect is essentially a large scale denial. Because while it may be the only avenue to real change, to admit to prejudices publicly is unacceptable in our society. One is only good if one declares oneself colorblind, free from all prejudice. Instead of destroying injustice, we sweep it under the carpet.
Our society is flawed. Not because of affirmative action, but because our country needs it. If you want to end affirmative action, work for justice until such time when those programs are out-of-date. It's time to stop looking "out there" and "back then," and start examining "in here" and "right now."