Affirmative Action

Affirmative action refers to America's legal mandates set in place to give disadvantaged minorities better access to education and employment. Proponents of affirmative action argue that it is a necessary vehicle to help the targeted communities rise above the social, political and economic repression that has hounded them since the founding of our nation. Opponents believe that even if minority groups have been historically oppressed, the civil rights movement has given them all the opportunities needed to escape poverty. Therefore, anyone who is not successful has no one to blame but themselves. Opponents also often view affirmative action as reverse discrimination. The arguments for and against this policy have truths and fallacies.

There should be no questioning that minority groups have been oppressed throughout America's history. Blacks were stolen from Africa, subjected to slavery, and emancipated without any form of a safety net to help them adjust to society. Native Americans were subjected to a genocidal extermination campaign, put through brutal assimilation programs, and forced onto a few small, poor-quality plots of land now known as Reservations. Other minority groups have suffered ill-treatment as well, from poor labor conditions to internment camps.

There should also be no question that the poor conditions present in many of today's minority communities have been fostered by these such historical trends. And even though a great deal of freedoms have been granted universally to the American people, minority communities still suffer from a torn social fabric that contributes to high rates of crime and drug and alcohol abuse. Also, political and economic forces that are outside of the communities' hands still work against them (lack of investment, little land ownership, few employment opportunities, rampant racism, limited access to health care).

We should not forget, however, that many of the aforementioned hardships affect poor white communities as well. We should also remember that there are many middle- and upper-class minorities. Unfortunately, the American conscience is quick to take race into account but slow to consider class issues. In effect, racism is a problem because it degrades minorities to a lower-class status. Therefore, the opportunities created by affirmative action should not be accessible to those minorities who have already successfully climbed the class ladder; they should be accessible only to those who can't reach the bottom rung. If poor whites are affected by much of the same problems that affect ghettos and reservations -- with the exception of racism, of course -- the benefits of affirmative action should be extended to them as well.

A class-based form of affirmative action would be a program that would help the most poor and historically oppressed minority groups -- but not exclusively. It would be colorblind in the sense that it would not be designed exclusively for minorities. But at the same time, no class-based program can be considered colorblind because of the intricately wound relationship between class and race in America. Reforming our affirmative action in this manner can satisfy both sides of the current debate. (Except for libertarians.)