FEW SOCIALLY progressive measures have been met with an opposition comparable to the remonstrations against affirmative action. Opponents constantly accuse advocates of affirmative action of "reverse discrimination" and straying from the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.Although some of the claims against affirmative action seem superficially appealing, they are generally of dubious nature.
Many opponents of affirmative action claim that race means absolutely nothing and that the amount one could infer from someone's skin color is similar to how much you could infer from any other genetic feature. Wrapping themselves around the banner of "equality," the warring forces against affirmative action are unconsciously (I hope) fighting equality by claiming that it already exists.
First of all, unfortunately enough, certain judgments can be made about a black person that would not be as accurate when made about a white person, simply based on statistics. Let's look at a few examples. In the 1990s, about 50 percent of families headed by a single white woman were classified as "poor," compared to 85 percent of families headed by single black women. The U.S. Census shows that the poverty rate among blacks in general is nearly 30 percent, compared to an 11.2 percent rate among whites and a 28.9 percent rate among those with work disabilities!
There are other widespread facts that we are all unfortunately aware of such as DWB, driving while black -- blacks are much more likely to be harassed by police. State penitentiaries also contain vastly disproportionate numbers of blacks. Given that blacks make up 12.8 percent of the population, these striking numbers should be met with a good degree of scrutiny. Claims that race constitutes a no greater difference than any physical feature fall apart, and thus emerges the necessity of alternate, realistic explanations. Surely, correlation does not dictate causation, and in this case, it certainly does not. The truth is that blacks face an inherent disadvantage competing in contemporary America, a disadvantage that clearly implies that the "equal opportunity" that conservatives swear by is nonexistent, or incomplete at best.
Anti-affirmative action proponents go on to imply that racial divisions exist because people are constantly reminded of their race through progams such as affirmative action. This claim, both unfounded and reprehensible, is one that has gone too long without being debunked. In actuality, although tremendous victories have been won against conscious racism, people today, including blacks, remain unconsciously biased against blacks. This counter-intuitive assertion was demonstrated by psychologists using the IAT, a test used to prove implicit racism (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/). In another experiment by Stanford psychologist Claude Steele, black Yale students did significantly worse on reasoning tests when asked to check their race before taking the test. Many non-blacks joke that they wish they could check the box next to African American -- little do they know such a simple activation of an implicit attitude has a significant, negative effect on their score.
The point is that the hypothesized (but not proven) reinforcement of racial divisions by progressive programs such as affirmative action is dwarfed by the effects of widespread implicit racism, which can be attributed to differences between blacks and whites in society. And nonetheless, the idea that a non-racist would look at a minority with hatred over the idea of affirmative action is weakly supported, if not unfounded. Some may react to this by saying such thoughts are unconscious, but I'd remind them that scores on the IAT don't correlate with implementation of affirmative action. Affirmative action just gives racists a reason to say that "minorities are bad," and without it, they'd simply come up with another line of vindication.
On one thing most Democrats and Republicans can agree: that true diversity will only be accomplished when, as the astute Dr. King observed, people are judged not by their race but by "the content of their character." But the disagreement occurs when we talk about whether or not racism still affects public attitudes towards blacks.
While some ambitious conservatives claim that race is no longer a factor in the equation of success, the empirical data indicate otherwise. The ongoing and unfortunate statistics that show blacks at a disadvantage continually reinforce implicit racism, and this is the major problem. Affirmative action, in the form of a small boost to minorities, is an excellent measure that will at least help counter the cognitive burden that blacks face in our society. As a result, eventually our society will shift toward a more comfortable equilibrium in which ridiculously disproportionate statistics based on race no longer exist, and in turn, implicit racism will slowly disappear.
Although many people misinterpret Dr. King's thoughts to further their own political agenda, his words were descriptive of a distant America that is ideally racially indifferent, an America that will take a bipartisan, consolidated effort to achieve.
Sina' Kians column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at skian@cavalierdaily.com.
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