Bush, if not Affirmative Action,
then what: Reparations?
By Dr. RUFUS G.W
SANDERS
Exclusive commentary for USAfrica The
Newspaper, Houston, CLASS
magazine
USAfricaonline.com
and The
Black Business Journal
Affirmative Action has worked for the last 30 years to create a
Black middle class. It has helped to integrate the American society
and to truly diversify the American culture. It also
has
served to help nurture the socialization and the psychosocial
development of Black people in this country. It was through
affirmative education that Black people finally were able to
assimilate into the American mainstream; but now the president wants
to end the one social program in the history of America that even
came close to the closing of the gaps of racism. No other program has
had as much success..... Affirmative Action is about attempts to
bring historically underrepresented groups who have suffered
discrimination into a higher degree of participation within the
society. Affirmative Action attempts to remedy some of the vile-ness
by allowing for opportunity, chance and redress of being historically
taken advantage of by the state all because of the color of ones
skin. Bush has proposed nothing to replace the progress of
Affirmative Action. While he certainly is no visionary; he still must
be aware of the tremendous strides that have been made because of the
bold action taken by the Affirmative Action Program.
Initially, I was shocked when the President
George W. Bush announced that he would file a Supreme Court brief to
end Affirmative Action. On second thought, I probably shouldn't have
been. Recall that, after all , he's the son of the president George
Herbert Walker Bush who refused for two years to sign the Civil
Rights Act of 1991. You know the act that only wanted to restore and
strengthen the civil rights laws of 1964 and 1968 which had banned
discrimination in both employment and housing. The younger Bush
follows the Republican right wing manifesto. We recall, too that his
hero, President Ronald Reagan, in the mid-1980s refused to sign the
Civil Rights Act of 1982.
With Bush's January 2003 statement,
deliberately misusing and twisting affirmative action to mean "racial
quotas", I am convinced that like most of the dominant American
population, he is not only racially insensitive but also in denial
about the true American racial condition. Bush fails to understand
the true historical and psychological dynamics of cultural racism and
suffers from all the residuals of white privilege.
It was reported at the 2002 State of the Black World Conference that
in the United States, though the walls of legal segregation have been
abolished and multitudes of Black faces are now in elective office,
especially in rural areas of the Southern sections of the U.S., the
vestiges of institutional racism remain painfully intact. Black
farmers continue to lose land at an alarming rate and the urban
ghettos resemble "domestic colonies."
They are nothing but dis-empowered zones of
desolation, despair and nihilism where Black people still suffer from
the ravages of ongoing poverty and political neglect. While Black
people have made progress as middle class citizens and have become
upward mobile; not much of the progress or the middle class-ness has
translated into real economic and political power for the masses of
Black people.
This seems to be the piece that the dominant culture just can't seem
to get. The key reason being, of course, that in the White equation
for Black success have always seem to intentionally ignore that one
embarrassing variable -- the 400 years of involuntary servitude
called slavery, as well as just how extremely difficult it is for
Blacks to play catch up after only about 40 years of legal
desegregation.
What the powers that be won't do is to talk honestly about the living
legacies of structural racism. What we need in this country is open
and frank dialogue about the historical origins and meaning of race
in this society, and how we must begin to overcome the many maligning
residuals of the institutional. This would begin the process of
uprooting and deconstructing the structures of white privilege which
forms the very floor boards or American racism.
Every day white Americans wake up to the feeling that they are
entitled to the best treatment, better life quality, better
educational and job opportunities simply because they are Americans-
white Americans. They have higher rates of home ownership, longer
life expectancies, greater economic opportunities, larger personal
net worth, and assured protection by the police and court systems. As
professor Manning Marable has said, "It's woven into the fabric of
white daily living." If Blacks are truly Americans then they should
also awake with the same feelings of white euphoria but they
don't.
Blacks continue to face psychological hurdles and significant
challenges that linger from the horrific Jim Crow legacy of
institutional segregation. They worry on a daily basis about racial
profiling, police brutality, tougher criminal sentencing, and more
prisons, fleeting educational opportunities, economic dependency, and
the death penalty and so on.
It was because of the cultural context of the Black experience that
Affirmative Action was created in the first place, not to mention
that it was really a way to deal with white guilt which had become
internalized.
President G.W. Bush must know that in any
multi-racial community where democracy is elusive, the tyranny of the
majority can be most crippling, especially when it is based upon the
competitive forces of capitalism.
Rather than inspire us and lead us into discussions on how we can
create the "beloved Community," the president continues to socially
divides us by misappropriating terms such as quotas, set asides,
reverse discrimination, and preferential treatment. He never once
mentions the chronically deprived communities, or the remaining
discrimination in education, hiring practices or economic disparities
that are yet part of this democracy.
Therefore, I ask the question; if not Affirmative Action programs
exactly what is it that Bush proposes to do about the lingering
effects of discrimination. Reparations maybe?
Dr. Sanders,
contributing editor and columnist for The Black Business Journal
magazine, www.BBJonline.com
and USAfricaonline.com,
is a Suffragan Bishop in the Pentecostal Assemblies of the world, is
the founder and the pastor of the Emmanuel Temple church in Sandusky,
Ohio. He holds a Ph.D in American Culture Studies and has served in
many leadership capacities in the organization that include national
evangelist, international youth leader and missionary to West Africa.
Responses will be published in our online and print editions.
January 17, 2003
USAfrica
FORUM: IN THE HOUSE OF MANDELA: A
SILLY CRY FOR REPARATIONS
By Prof. Chimalum Nwankwo

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