In response to the Supreme Court's decision which overturned an appellate court ruling which had given a thumbs up to affirmative action in the New Haven firefighter's case (Ricci vs. DeStefano), and in tacit support of Judge Sonya Sotomayor, who had participated in that decision, Jesse Jackson has written a piece for the Chicago Sun Times.
Read his words for yourself and then tell me, is he being racist?
For hundreds of years, white males have enjoyed more than 95 percent of
the best jobs, the best housing, the best incomes, the best health
care, whether they were best suited or not. When small steps are taken
to level the playing field, the court determines that no inconvenience
to white applicants is permissible.
What has bedeviled us these last 30 years since Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke is the notion that any pen-and-paper test can reveal everything you need to know in order to assess a candidate's ability to lead. And so we persist with the legal fictions that every qualification can be numerically assessed and that history counts for nothing.
The decision does not address the big questions about affirmative action, namely: How much may white employees be inconvenienced in order to rectify centuries of past discrimination?
Our penchant for rugged individualism and laissez-faire survival of the fittest seduces us into believing that every person is entitled to every benefit society has to offer and that no individual should pay a price for the greater good of the society as a whole.
This reasoning depends on a hyperindividualistic interpretation of American rights. Blacks were enslaved as a group. They were segregated as a group. They were held in economic and political subjugation in the South for decades following Reconstruction as a group. But now that we have reached the enlightened 21st century, remedies for these crimes cannot take the group stigma against blacks into account. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution protects individuals and not groups. We disagree.
Perhaps it is time to scrap the entire legal analysis of voluntary efforts to address discrimination. Perhaps we should permit employers and schools to devise plans to foster inclusion that straightforwardly account for past discrimination.
What has bedeviled us these last 30 years since Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke is the notion that any pen-and-paper test can reveal everything you need to know in order to assess a candidate's ability to lead. And so we persist with the legal fictions that every qualification can be numerically assessed and that history counts for nothing.
The decision does not address the big questions about affirmative action, namely: How much may white employees be inconvenienced in order to rectify centuries of past discrimination?
Our penchant for rugged individualism and laissez-faire survival of the fittest seduces us into believing that every person is entitled to every benefit society has to offer and that no individual should pay a price for the greater good of the society as a whole.
This reasoning depends on a hyperindividualistic interpretation of American rights. Blacks were enslaved as a group. They were segregated as a group. They were held in economic and political subjugation in the South for decades following Reconstruction as a group. But now that we have reached the enlightened 21st century, remedies for these crimes cannot take the group stigma against blacks into account. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution protects individuals and not groups. We disagree.
Perhaps it is time to scrap the entire legal analysis of voluntary efforts to address discrimination. Perhaps we should permit employers and schools to devise plans to foster inclusion that straightforwardly account for past discrimination.
Kiss my White Arse, Jessy. My Grandfather died as a union soilder to give you the freedom
you so handily use to "beat Whitey" over the head for all of your failures to "empower" youselves an stop blaming others for you failures.
Posted by: Joe Q Public | July 31, 2009 at 12:23 AM