the salt makers

I think at some level we have to accept that institutional "racism" does exist. Sorry to use a PC buzz word, but I think cyclical poverty is pretty evident. Now, I'm as existential as the next guy, and I believe that we're all responsible for our actions and their consequences, but I think any reasonable person can recognize the limitations of possibility caused by years and years of slavery, followed by years and years of disenfranchisement, followed by years and years of poverty, followed by years and years of violent cultural messages. That is, black folks have reached an unfortunate situation, for which the American majority is partially responsible.

I must emphasize that the black community bears much responsibility for its position as well. As Bill Cosby has pointed out (and for which he received much unwarranted criticism and hate), much of black youth culture punishes success in academia and so-called white collar occupations. While black folks blame white people for their problems, they crush most oppurtunities for capital success at a tender age. Black kids are taught that speaking correctly is to act "white", to do well in school is to act "white", to get a good job and support a monogamous, unified family is to act "white". These different qualities, as most will attest, are the cornerstones of civility: education, stability, and some manner of familial support. This leaves the black community in a deep hole where viably ameliorating job oppurtunities are concerned. To leave the hood, is to betray your heritage. This, I assure all of you, is where much of the black man's plight comes from. His own misguided sense of racial pride.

Now, as I mentioned, White America is partially to blame as well. We were the slave-masters, the Jim Crow enforcers, and the prejudiced employers of the past 140 years. While many modern day conservatives try to excuse themselves by saying "I didn't own any slaves, this isn't my fault", they fail to include cultural history and the amount of time necessary to alter a culture's view on fundamental issues. This historically based argument works only on reparations. Sure I didn't own any slaves, and today's black folks aren't themselves slaves, so fuck that I don't owe you any money. But 140 years isn't so long in terms of history, and in that period we did do a pretty good job of keeping blackie down. The Seperate But Equal doctrine struck down in the 1960's had kept racial bindings on the black community similar to those enforced over 400 years of slavery. Yes, black people are poor because of slavery, there I said it. Impoverishing a community for that long does have a tendency to undermine its productive capabilities, and has a deleterious affect on their cultural understanding of themselves.

Now current Affirmitive Action laws may be unfortunate. They are riddled with contradictions, and do not have as much success as we would like. But as Zach decided to look at the practical implications of AA in terms of how many black folks actually benefited from it, let's have a little thought experiement and consider how many white folks were actually affected by it? There are over 4000 institutions of higher education in the United States, only 10% of our population is made up of blacks, while a solid 70% is white. Do you mean to tell me that a black man's "unfair" admission into one of these colleges has kept whitey out of school? Forget the principles involved and look at the numbers. Obviously, I'm no economist or sociologist so I don't have all the specific numbers, but I can make a reasonable guess about the actual affect of Affirmitive Affirimitive action on the White community. We get rubbed the wrong way because blacks may be getting the easy route into school. They score lower on tests, perform worse when there in the university, it violates all notions of rewards of excellence. But has this really tended toward the impoverishment of the white majority? I don't think so.

Furthermore, I would argue that if the system works for 1% of black folks it's set out to aid, it's doing its job, because that 1% can increase exponentially over the years until affirmitive action is an obsolete system. In this regard, AA operates as an incentive program, hopefully rasing the lowest standard for blacks. Sure they have lower scores, but they also have lower aspirations. Perhaps by raising the height of their goals we can elevate their performances.

Of course, I must issue this one caveat: who will turn off the faucet before we the well runs dry? If AA works at remedying the black cultural plight, then who in this worthless, PC, lazy bureacracy we call a government will stop it before its too late? This is where I think we must take any issue with AA as an institution, it has the potential to wreak more havoc if it is successful. In this regard AA is like democracy, it's a terrible way to fix the problem but its the best we've got.