Richard Rothstein suggests that, instead of using self-identified race as a criterion, University of Texas should use a history of (American) enslavement.
“And although no race-neutral advocates have actually proposed this, I have a suggestion that can simplify the process considerably: Texas should give preference to applicants, regardless of race or ethnicity, who are descended from American slaves. This will be more effective than any other method in increasing African-American enrollment, and is fully race-neutral.”
As an ardent supporter of AA, this makes sense to me, although I can’t tell if his suggestion is tongue in cheek. It essentially extends a helping hand into higher academia for a group specifically harmed.
I suspect it would not be well-received by many selective institutions, who are happier finding foreigners and recent immigrants who self-identify as black in order to serve the cause of diversity, but if the fundamental tenet of AA is to help correct vestigial ramifications of history, I find this notion appealing.
Outside of how to define the group (and I would propose self-attestation), is there a fundamental flaw in this approach?
If the purpose of AA is to correct the wrongs of slavery, I can see that. But if it’s also to correct the wrongs of 100+ years of institutional racism, it would miss lots of folks. And if it’s for something else entirely (I haven’t poled anyone for opinions), then maybe it wouldn’t work well at all.
The problem is, I don’t see the purpose of Affirmative Action as any sort of “reparation”, nor an attempt to correct for past mistakes. It’s simply a program to fix racial disparity here and now. The only way history really comes into it is using our racial history as a guide to how racial class disparity and racial hiring/admission bias manifests itself in our country and formulating appropriate steps to stop it from happening the same way in the future.
Now, we can argue all day about whether it’s effective, desirable, or beneficial to society, but I feel like making it about slavery is rather missing the point. The only way slavery really enters into it is via the very indirect route that slavery is, historically, a root cause for much of the US’ existing racial class disparity.
Yeah, what’s the point of affirmative action? The intended directive was the opposite of this; government employers were directed to “…take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.”
That being said, setting up a program that encourages Americans to trace their heritage back to indentured servants in the early Colonial days would be very interesting. I don’t think it would help much any cause, but it would be interesting.
I don’t believe the majority of blacks in the US can actually trace their roots back to enslavement. Census records at that time only recorded the number of slaves and their genders, not their names. It’s sometimes possible, using plantation records, for blacks to trace their ancestry back to a particular owner, but that’s a hit or miss proposition.
This might be an interesting hypothetical (I don’t think it is, but some might think so), but it wouldn’t work in the actual world we live in.
I’d take the opposite view and say that if you are 1) black 2) in the Americas; unless you’re an immigrant from Africa (or the recent descendant of one) the chances are overwhelming that your roots can (in some way) be traced back to the slave trade. The slave trade was, until the recent post WWII repeal of race-based immigration laws, the only way for black Africans to arrive in the new world.
I think the biggest problem with Rothstein’s proposal is that it would likely self-skew toward the ethnically white, but with a relativelyl small proportion of black heritage population, in that I suspect that if preference and aid were involved, would come out of the woodwork claiming that small portion of black heritage.
So you’d have to set a minimum level of “blackness” to get the results that the program is probably actually looking for.
Sorry; I thought I had made it clear that I support (race-based) AA.
Short of race-based AA, there is no mechanism by which we can attain representation for blacks in any reasonable proportion for many arenas, here in the US.
In the same way that we use voluntary, self-identification, for a race category, I think we could use self-attestation for a history of enslavement. I agree it would not work to demand documentation of some kind, but I don’t think abuse would be broad enough to worry about, any more than it is for race.
“Race” is already a social construct, with categorization purely by self-identification (as Navin Johnson will attest to).
There may be a small number of abusers (people with little or no sub-saharan genetic makeup claiming to identify with black), but it does not seem like the abuse is very widespread…
Is AA targeted solely at blacks? What about other underrepresented groups (latinos, women in the sciences, underprivileged whites) that benefit from affirmative action? Your proposal would eliminate those from consideration.
I thought the biggest complaint about AA is that it benefits people who aren’t socioeconomically disadvantaged. You know, all those Oprahs and Michael Jordans out there. A lot of anti-AA folks can see the value in giving poor people an extra boost (particularly in college admissions) but not people with a certain skin color or kind of genitalia.
So how does this proposal fix that?
It’s almost like this is addressing a problem that doesn’t exst. Yes, African immigrants benefit from AA. But I’m guessing it is only a tiny percentage of the total. And I’m not bothered that they benefit from AA, since they experience the same discrimination that the descendents of American slaves face.
I think that is a terribly defeatist attitude.
I’m morally against discrimination in order to fight discrimination. Well drafted and forcefully maintained legislation together with investment in the deprived and disadvantaged areas will get you there. It certainly won’t be as quick but I think it’ll more sustainable.
It would be difficult to ascertain the exact moment in history when women ceased to be legally chattel/slaves. I think the most recent measure in the US might even be suffrage. I want to say it was 1919 in the US, and Was it Greece which held out until the 1950’s?
Anyway, an argument could easily be made that all of us are descended from slaves. It’s horrid, but not the same as the institutional racism suffered by all people of color in the USA.
Furthermore, if you wanted to limit it to the descendants of African American slaves, then you’d have to include me, with my blue eyes and pale Irish complexion. It really wouldn’t address the issue at all.
Why should it benefit only the descendants of American slaves? Why would we discriminate against the descendants of people enslaved in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Central and South America, and other places? Why not the descendants of those subjected to forced labor by the Nazis? Why not the victims of Soviet Communism? Why not slaves in ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, or Babylon? If we’re correcting vestigial ramifications of history, why not correct all the vestigial ramifications of history?
Brilliant! That could actually be the ultimate push to get us to the tipping point of a society with little to no racial bias. If everybody who qualifies under the “One Drop Laws” were motivated to announce their ancestry, I’m betting “Black” would no longer be a minority designation.
No, I meant that there are probably a surprising number of people with non-trivial black ancestry who don’t currently self-identify as Black, who would definitely do so if college admission aid or scholarship money was on the line, and there was no definite cut-off.
And the majority of these would probably be people who currently identify as white.
You’d have to have some sort of cut-off, like for example, 1/4 Black or something.
The genesis for my thought is a buddy of mine who’s 1/8 Mexican, and nearly 7/8 white (he’s also like 1/64 black) , and who would happily have signed up as hispanic or black if it meant he’d have got more scholarship money or eased the college admissions process.
So, what would be the difference? Is it just a legalistic, semantic thing to get around using race? Because there aren’t very many people in the US who are “black” but who are NOT “slave descendants”.