· The percentage of female chemists grew from 10% to 30% of all chemists; and,
· The percentage of female college faculty went from 28% to 42% of all faculty.
The overwhelming majority of the women represented in these statistics are white. The Department of Labor's statistics also estimated that 6 million women workers are in higher occupational classifications today than they would have been without affirmative action policies---I believe that it is also important to note that Black and Hispanic men, on average, trail White women in earnings. So once again, why do most white women oppose affirmative action? I believe, as Wise alluded to, it is because it has been racialized in the public discourse. The critics of affirmative action characterize it as a Black issue because this enables them to use the negative racial stereotypes associated with Blacks to portray these policies as undeserved hand-outs to an "underqualified and unmotivated" group of people. The media is often complicit in these portrayals. In this respect, the heavy participation of white women in these programs is obscured by media portrayals which, for the most part, completely ignore the role of affirmative action in promoting equality for women. Furthermore, because affirmative action explicitly states that race can be one consideration (among many others, most whites (and some people of color as well) ignore or reject the more pervasive implicit truth that whiteness plays an integral role in the acquisition of jobs, scholarships, promotions, cars, houses and so on---more so than any group of people. The absence of the word "white" does not connote an absence of its presence, privilege or power.
Wise, in his aforementioned piece, also goes on to show that "ultimately, white women's views on affirmative action are hardly different from their male counterparts, particularly when the issue is framed as one of preferences. According to National Election Studies since 1986, white women are not substantially different from white men when it comes to their feelings on this issue. Opposition to 'preferential hiring and promotion' ... [grew] from 86% for white men and 79% for white women in 1986, to 90% for white men and 88% for white women in 1994. Similarly, opposition to admissions preferences in colleges [stood] at around 76% for white men and 70% for white women (Citrin 1996, 43)." This reality played out in Washington (1998) with 51% of white women voting against affirmative action and in the recent defeat of affirmative action programs in Michigan with 59 percent of white women (82 percent of non-white women voted against it) voting to approve Proposal 2---the measure was approved 58 to 42 percent. A consequence of this dynamic that I believe bears mentioning, is that women of color (especially Black & Hispanic women) are not able to work with White women on other issues of concern (sexism, misogyny etc.) when they perceive that the vast majority of them are indifferent or antagonistic to the realities of racial discrimination in their lives and to the mechanisms that they believe would be instrumental in redressing those realities --- and we have begun to see this play out between Black and White women in this Democratic presidential primary.
So let us recap the issues of affirmative action and "racial preferences." Blacks and other people of color are the face of a program that benefits white women more than any other group of people. Society ultimately ignores the actual racial preferences that create more job and career opportunities for whites---even to the point of white ex-cons having the same shot at employment as Blacks who don't have a criminal record; the white privilege that still allows white students (more than any other group) to get into their college of first choice---while loading up on admission evaluation points made possible by past discrimination and current educational and economic inequities; as well as the racial and class preferences that got President Bush into Yale and kept him out of Vietnam. Additionally, while Blacks ultimately will receive less pay than their white counterparts (even with similar or better credentials and experience) and inherit less (based largely on past and current discriminatory practices), they will still pay more for automobiles and houses---houses which will accrue less equity than those owned by whites.
Thomas M. Shapiro in his book "The Hidden Costs of Being African American" perfectly encapsulates the impetus for this series of writings: "Because wealth sometimes represents inequalities from the past, it not only is a measure of differences in contemporary resources but also suggests inequalities that will play out in the future. Looking at racial inequality through wealth changes our conception of its nature and magnitude and of whether it is declining or increasing." Additionally, the African Policy Forum's Focus on Affirmative Action website presents the facts as thus:
$1.6 trillion: The estimated economic loss for African Americans as a result of legal segregation for 1929-1969 (in 1983 dollars).
+ Several trillion dollars: The cost of discrimination from the end of slavery in 1865 to the year 1969, the end of American style apartheid, based on year-2000 dollars.
+ $94-123 billion: The estimate of how much Black workers lose annually from continuing discrimination and informal segregation in employment.
+ 100 billion: The estimated amount that Blacks in this generation have lost in home equity as a result of the racial discrimination they confront when they attempt to secure mortgages for homes and businesses.
= $5 to $24 trillion: The sum total of the worth of all the Black labor stolen through the means of slavery, segregation, and contemporary discrimination in today's dollars.
It is ironic that the patriotic (both conservative and progressive) don't view the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution or the Revolutionary & Civil Wars as historical curiosities divorced and detached from where we find ourselves today. On the contrary, the significance of those documents and events are invoked into the debate and dialogue consistently in regard to current events. So what sort of collective and selective amnesia has to take place in order for us to deny the equally important role that racism has played in the shaping of America? For example, politicians on both the left and the right; the fiscally-conservative and the socially progressive speak of "runaway spending" and how the government is leaving a deficit that our children and grandchildren will have to pay---and many people say amen to this. Yet, those same people will either ignore or deny the historical and current debt and deficit of racism that has been piled on this nation's oppressed; that their children and grandchildren, past and present, are now paying and will pay in generations to come.
This piece was not written in an us-against-them spirit, but rather a specific answer to specific lies that were spoken by the afore-mentioned Pat Buchanan (and many others here in America). Nor do I wish to ignore the millions of poor and working class whites who are drowning in poverty and debt. However, it is my hope that this will aid in the furthering of a conversation based upon truth not myth; a dialogue that is framed by the factual historical and public record.
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