‘The Race’ and Affirmative Action
using a familiar analogy to explain why such action is still needed
One analogy often used to explicate what life for humans is like is that of a race. The idea is that we are in a constant competition with others, whether we want it or not or like it or not, to ‘get ahead’. We can borrow that analogy to explain why affirmative action is necessary.
People of sub-Sharan African heritage were unaware of any race. There had been at times in that area the rise of political units resembling empires, but like those that arose in what has come to be called Central America, they all failed and the idea of such societal entities was abandoned. People went back to living in small groups, content with the material goods the world in they lived provided for them.
Like a similar group of people I read about who lived in the Caucuses, they were preyed upon by more aggressive people to be a source of slaves. When European political and economic elites, who were all about the notion of life as a contest like a race, discovered the existence of those ‘backward’ souls in Africa, they turned the slave trade into a factory of human misery.
Many of those slaves were brought to America. For about two and a half centuries, enslavement was the way of life for almost all people of African heritage in this part of the world.
Then we had our Civil War. Slavery was abolished. The former slaves became citizens of the nation.
For the next century, they would be forced to live subordinated lives. As much as possible, without resort to reservations (or concentration camps), they were segregated from the mainstream of American life. As much as possible, they were systematically denied opportunities of any kind for ‘getting ahead’.
Finally, in the middle of the 1960’s, laws were passed to put an end to the systematic subordination of Americans of African heritage. Their right to vote was enforced. Discrimination based on ‘race’ was outlawed.
So, to return to our analogy, it was like people of African heritage had been literally dragged into the race. For roughly two and a half centuries in this part of the word they were literally in chains. Then the chains were replaced with rules, formal and informal, all enforced with the most heinous brutality people could invent, that effectively forced them to run the race in flip-flops.
Then, the flip-flops were removed. Were they replaced with running shoes? I trow not.
Yet, many people’s attitude is, ‘Hey, the chains were removed and then so were the state-sanctioned terror and the flip-flops? What’s the problem? Why aren’t you happy to compete starting now on a ‘level field’?’
Affirmative action has been an attempt to remedy in some half-assed way the grotesque unfairness of the race in this part of the world for the previous three and a half centuries (extended to other groups ‘white’ males had systematically deprived of opportunities to get ahead). To be sure, it really was the least this nation could do. Still, it was better than nothing.