"Affirmative action" in the modern sense arose from a policy (the "Philadelphia Plan") of Nixon's, announced in 1969, to give blacks some preference in federal hiring. (It's sort of funny that Bush's intervention into the U-M case is described in the media as a courageous stand for "Traditional Republican values" in opposing a policy created by Nixon and formulated for higher ed by Justice Powell.) The term was coined by Kennedy, and Johnson formulated the concept (nothing that it's not a fairrace to unshackle one participant and set him to run on equal terms with another whp has been running for 400 years), but it was Nixon who made the plan into policy. Melvin is right that the demand did not arise from popular struggle, and was in fact ! intended to defuse the (at that time greater) demands for black power and the like.
I do not want to give the impression that this matter of Affirmative Action is not a complex issue as policy. Yesterday I watched MS. Rice in a television interview try and explain the Bush administration intervention into the affairs of the University of Michigan. Basically, MS. Rice stated that the administration was seeking another approach to ensure "equality of opportunity" - now called "diversity," other than inflating test scores for "minority" applicants.
Equality of opportunity is no longer spoken of because it contains a class component in American society. The social motion of the African American people, that is the societal movement of the black descendants of Southern slavery, has always by necessity reflected and expressed the level of development of the productive forces, the productive (social) relations and the political maneuvering of the ruling class to keep these two components of the societal infrastructure harmoniously united.
The political maneuvering and social response of the African American people to their social position in the infrastructure relations has kept them at the center of the country's history. First as a class of slaves, then as a class of sharecroppers and with the mechanization of agriculture and the following relocation of heavy industry to the South (during the 1950s) and today as part of the primary core of a mass of citizens increasingly consolidating as what can only be called a communist class. This consolidating communist class - for lack of better words, is drifting along a logic where they will be compelled to demand the distribution of social products outside the act of the sell and purchase of their labor power because it cannot be sold for enough money to fully engage exchange.
This communist class is by no means all black, black and brown or black, brown and female, but includes an enormous segment of the Anglo-American peoples who are fundamentally working class - proletarian.
The market ethic of the industrial era says that if you sell your labor and work hard you will be compensated and gain access to the world of exchange. Market ethics is not morality, but appears as bourgeois morality in everyday life. It is becoming clear to millions of Americans that no matter how hard you work - and the entire family must now work, access to medical care, education, transportation, insurance, child support networks, etc., are being prices outside and above the capacity of folks to access these services. This is not a break down of morality but a shattering of the market ethic of industrial society. The shattering of this market ethic is little by little running into the underlying morality of the American people whose sense of Justice - fair play, supports and give preference to the underdog, the "little people," and less fortunate.
When the majority of society is understood to be increasingly "the underdog, the 'little people,' and less fortunate," the demand for equality increasingly becomes more of a class demand on the part of the mass. Hence, the polls I have read over the past 48 hours state that a majority of people are in favor of affirmative action, but oppose quotas. Affirmative action means the policy and mechanism by which the equal rights legislation is implemented or affirmed. How can one support a policy that affirms fair treatment - access, but oppose the mechanism that ensures equal access?
This is a slippery slope because what the above means to me is that everyone wants access.
The market ethic of the industrial era - which we are leaving and have left in a fundamental way, was to give support to the auxiliary of the wage earner so that he could daily work, care for "his woman," and a new generation of workers could be conditioned and trained for industrial production. The former auxiliary of the wage earner - the women and children, are no longer necessary to produce a previously existing mass of commodities. The industrial character of the medical industry is being displaced and no longer needed to service a mass of industrial workers and their former auxiliary. The industrial character of education - mass education, is no longer needed to train and discipline the children of workers.
The issue of equality and justice has been stood on its head. Nor as the result of increasing insight into questions of morality but because of quiet changes in the mode of production - the material power of the productive forces. The issue is posed as Justice and equality for all.
Yesterday morning I was watching a program in the wee hours of the morning and the question asked and polled amongst blacks was "do you think it fair to be given an automatic 20 test points more than a white person to get into college." Eighty-five percent (85%) of blacks said "No." The same question was asked of whites, "Should blacks and minorities be given an automatic 20 test points more than a white person to get into college." Eighty-five percent of whites answered "No."
Should some kind of affirmative action be used to ensure that everyone has equal access to education? Again roughly 85% of each group said yes.
This is not a question of preferential treatment to athletes and the morality of the individual judge in their interpretation of the law system governing the production process and legislation governing behavior. It is a question of a need for new market ethics - those based on money or those based on need.
Given the historic social position of the slave and their descendant and the fact that the working class in our country was initially constituted from European immigrants, matters of justice and equality have been fought out in society on the basis of the so called Negro Question. However, this question today has shifted and its sharpest edge is becoming the demands of consolidating communist class.
Not diversity but access to all as measured through access by the most poverty stricken.
The matter becomes a tad bit more complex because of the very real phenomenon called "the Black Leader." Here is a political figure whose career is based on his or her ability to serve as "power broker" between the officials of the ruling class and this historic mass of segregated blacks. In yesteryear there existed a definable black community embracing all classes whose compactness - unity, was based on segregation and violence on the part of the Anglo-American peoples. This is not the case today.
There are certainly black neighborhoods in America. But lets face it - Snoop Dog Dog, Puff Daddy and even my main man Denzel Washington do not live in my neighborhood. Nor does "Big Jesse" - Jesse Jackson. The day of the black leader is numbered because of the extreme class stratification of American society.
Now Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are authentic black leaders. Colin Powell and MS Rice are leaders that are black. Black leaders emerge on the basis of more than less Civil Rights Organizations based in the social motion of the African American people. Colin Powell is a Jamaican whose rise to political authority is based in the military apparatus. Colin has never claimed to be a black leader as such, not because he is an "Uncle Tom" but because he crystallizes another phenomenon in American society.
Now Minister Louis Farakan is a black leader - Not because of his distinct theology, but because of the apparatus in which he arose to power. This phenomenon called the black leader rest entirely on the color factor in American history and a relationship with the representative of the ruling class. It is in the interest of the ruling class to preserve this relationship because it helps to stabilize political relationships.
The clincher is that nothing can stabilize the relationship between the level of development of the productive forces and the productive (social) relations. The old industrial relations of production are being shattered as the economy is revolutionized on the basis of injecting a new labor replacing technology into the process of production - electronic computerized-digitalized production processes.
The ruling class can no longer keep the two basic components of the societal infrastructure harmoniously united - social relations of production or how people were organized on the basis of industrial implements and the new emerging infrastructure. This movement in antagonism between the old (industrial) relations of production and the material power of the productive forces is what is pulling the rung from the feet of the black leader, the ruling class and their various lackeys. In a fundamental way, the black leader has a material interest in preserving the issue of race, although the more astute one are attempting to transform themselves without leaving their historic base of support. Big Jesse tried this with his old Rainbow Coalition.
Today what is needed is a genuine class party - not a Marxist party but a party that champions the demands of a class. This in my opinion is the meaning of the 85% who arrived at the same position on the matter of affirmative action proceeding from somewhat different logic. No one really wants to deny the other anything and all want equal access.
This of course does not include the fascist current in our society that desires to subjugate the world for the privileges of the few. We are undergoing a profound transition in society and whether this last 5, 50 or 100 years I do not know. I do understand that the rapid emergence of a world wide antiwar movement over this issue of Iraq is profound and has everything to do with modern communications.
Melvin P.
