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This Strikes Us …
A Sojourner’s Truth Editorial
Let’s toss this one out there. Is there a downside for
African-Americans to a Barack Obama victory in the November
general election? Is there a possibility that social
progress may be slowed or delayed if Obama moves into the
White House?
Or is it simply possible that progress will not be slowed
but the mechanisms we have employed in the past to ensure
progress may be held up to closer scrutiny?
In a recent conversation on race held here in Toledo, one of
the panelists suggested that an Obama victory might mean
that affirmative action for African-Americans “might be
de-emphasized with the idea that … OK, we reached a point,
the world’s not perfect, but possibly some of the strategies
and remedies of the past are not needed as much any more.”
The panel did not really have an opportunity to get into a
discussion of this point because the speaker took his
comments in another direction and that sidebar captured
everyone’s attention.
Nevertheless, the question remains, will an Obama victory
lead many Americans to believe that “see, anything is
possible for anybody as long as he or she is determined to
succeed?” If that is the case, the pressure to eliminate
programs that assist the disadvantaged may well increase to
the tipping point – due to the success of a single
individual.
There are few issues in America today that are as
contentious as affirmative action. In the recent Supreme
Court cases ( Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v.
Bollinger, 2003) involving preferential treatment at the
University of Michigan undergraduate and law schools, the
Court split the baby and preserved some elements of the
program and struck down others.
One of the critical points of then-Justice Sandra Day
O’Connor’s line of questioning during oral arguments to the
UM legal team was – how long will we need any sort of
preferential treatment for underrepresented minorities in
situations such as college enrollment?
In her decision, O’Connor took the decidedly arbitrary
stance that this ruling in favor of continuing at least some
form of affirmative action should be good for 25 years. Why
25 years?
At that point, O’Connor had no idea that a black man would
be in a position, just five years later, to capture the
presidency. At that point, Barack Obama was on no one’s
horizon as a transformative political figure. We have no
doubt that were she writing that decision today, she would
have been much less generous with her timetable – 10 years,
five years?
The reality is that an Obama victory, in and of itself, will
mean absolutely nothing to the social standing, the
educational attainment, the housing prospects or the
pocketbooks of the various members of minority groups in
this country.
The other reality is that his victory will mean everything,
at least psychologically, to the downtrodden, not only in
this nation but also around the world. And that counts for a
great deal.
But there is no way we can envision that an Obama victory
will reaffirm the need for continued preferential treatment
for underrepresented minorities. Many of those in both the
minority and majority populations will see a need to move
past the policies of the 1960’s that have brought programs
such as affirmative action into so many aspects of our
lives, regardless of the perceptions about the success of
these initiatives.
The Pew Research Center stated recently that 57 percent of
blacks believe the nation should make “every effort to
improve the position of blacks and minorities, even if it
means giving preferential treatment,” according to a poll
conducted last year. That’s barely a majority. But only 27
percent of whites feel the same way and 48 percent of whites
feel the country has gone too far in pushing equal rights.
Twenty-seven percent of black Americans feel we have gone
too far.
These numbers are hardly etched in stone.
Here are some interesting numbers. A CNN poll in December
2006 revealed that 65 percent of whites and 54 percent of
blacks felt the country was ready for a black president.
Answering the same question in a CNN poll conducted in
January of 2008, 72 percent of whites and 61 percent of
blacks felt the country was ready for a black president.
Both of these questions were posed well before anyone had an
inkling that Obama would, in fact, be the Democratic Party’s
presumptive nominee and hold, at least for now, a five to
six point lead over his Republican counterpart in the polls.
It’s the feeling here that an Obama victory will
substantially erode support for affirmative action among all
groups. |
