When I called Barack Obama’s race speech “The Liberal Side of Colorblind: Obama’s Post-Affirmative Action Politics,” a reader asked me to clarify what I meant.
Simply put, Obama’s speech marks a clear pivot on the discussion of race in America. When a surging black candidate for president gives an honest speech focusing on the complexities of the race problem in this country, it’s certainly a brand new day. A change, if you will.
It just may not be the change any of us who have long fought for racial injustice imagined.
Already some are suggesting that if a black man wins, that’s it. Game over. Race equity is achieved. Forget about slavery. Any racial debts are paid. The playing field is level.
Doesn’t make sense, of course. But tell that to the anti-affirmative action folks doing their share of hand-wringing hoping for an Obama victory.
Indeed, an Obama presidency may play right into the hands of affirmative action’s most ardent detractors, and leave us struggling without the proper tool to deal with racial inequities.
At the advent of affirmative action politics, the question about the need to move toward racial equity was never in doubt. Affirmative action didn’t just lift the guilt of a society dealing with a history of slavery, it lifted up qualified minorities in employment and education. Affirmative action was seen as the proper remedy for people of color and other minorities who never quite got that fair shake.
But as the civil rights actions of the ’60s were challenged over decades, the remedy has been seemingly extended to everyone with a lawyer. Indeed, increasingly in later years, recipients have included whites who have argued for their share of equity rights as aggrieved targets of “reverse discrimination.”
This is what has become of affirmative action politics. The ideal is bastardized. Affirmative action is mischaracterized. Dr. Martin Luther King’s colorblind society idea has been manipulated by the likes of Ward Connerly, the man who helped make affirmative action illegal in state hiring and education practices in California. He’s intent on going from state to state to make affirmative action illegal — everywhere.
That’s the world of post-affirmative action politics.
And now we’ve come to the tipping point, where the biggest tool to negate affirmative action may be one Barack Hussein Obama. He can’t help it. He’s the smartest guy in the room. And a person of color. He’s also where he is on merit, not because of his race.
If Obama wins the presidency, he becomes the embodiment of what afflicts every successful Asian American — he becomes the model minority. And a rhetorical tool for all those who want to see affirmative action die.
Connerly is so gleeful about an Obama victory that he has reportedly contributed $500 to the Obama campaign. Said Connerly in a Boston Globe report this week: “The whole argument in favor of race preferences is that there is ‘institutional racism’ and ‘institutional sexism’ in American life, and you need affirmative action to level the playing field. How can you say there is institutional racism when people in Nebraska vote for a guy who is a self-identified black man?”
But does one man who could ascend to the presidency level the playing field? Of course it doesn’t. Minorities still struggle to get by, and find themselves stymied by glass ceilings and discriminatory attitudes. They know the difficulties that remain.
Without some form of affirmative action, what is there? A bureaucrat staring you in the eye saying “deal with it” is not an answer.
That’s why when critics talk about Obama’s race speech and continue to focus on the proper denunciation of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, they miss the larger point.
When Obama talks about race, focus instead on how he seems to lean more toward class-based remedies rather than race-based ones. That’s going to rile those with a traditional civil rights bent and delight the Connerlys of the world.
As I said of Obama last week, he’s espousing the liberal side of colorblind, the ideal vision of Dr. King. But it’s still not going to be easy. When you’re the model minority, you’re society’s exemplar. You can do it all on your own, without anyone’s help. And so can everyone else. Equality? Create your own.
That’s what I call “post-affirmative action politics.” And it’s already under way.
emil@amok.com